{"id":2264150,"date":"2026-02-03T04:23:17","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T04:23:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2264150"},"modified":"2026-02-03T04:23:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T04:23:17","slug":"italian-boy-forced-off-bus-into-snow-after-olympic-price-hike-gets-incredible-turnaround","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/italian-boy-forced-off-bus-into-snow-after-olympic-price-hike-gets-incredible-turnaround\/","title":{"rendered":"Italian Boy Forced Off Bus Into Snow After Olympic Price Hike Gets Incredible Turnaround"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<div class=\"primary-cli cli cli-text \">\n<p>MILAN, Feb 1 (Reuters) &#8211; A child who was forced off a bus in the snow in northern Italy for not having the full fare will play a part in the opening ceremony of the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics on Friday, his mother said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"primary-cli cli cli-text \">\n<p>Riccardo Z, an 11-year-old boy from a town less than 20 km (12 miles) from Cortina d\u2019Ampezzo, did not have enough money for a bus fare surcharge introduced by the local transport company for the Olympics and had to walk six kilometres home in sub-zero, snowy weather, triggering outrage from parents and local authorities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"primary-cli cli cli-text \">\n<p>After the incident the Milano Cortina 2026 Foundation contacted the family and offered the boy a symbolic role in the opening ceremony.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"primary-cli cli cli-text \">\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve never seen him so happy and excited,\u201d his mother Sole Vatalano told Italian state broadcaster RAI 1. \u201cIt was the most beautiful gift they could have given him.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"primary-cli cli cli-text \">\n<p>The boy\u2019s story attracted nationwide media coverage in Italy, amid concern about price gouging for the February 6-22 Games.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"primary-cli cli cli-text \">\n<p>The Foundation has not disclosed the nature of the role for Riccardo, who is himself part of a junior skiing team.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"primary-cli cli cli-text \">\n<p>The Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Games will be the first Olympics jointly hosted by different venues. Over 1,300 performers, including around 1,200 volunteers from 27 countries, have been preparing for months for the opening ceremony in a rehearsal tent near Milan\u2019s historic San Siro stadium.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"primary-cli cli cli-text \">\n<p>San Siro, however, will not be the only stage of the show on Friday night.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"primary-cli cli cli-text \">\n<p>Sharing the global spotlight with the Lombardy capital Milan will be several ski resorts across northern Italy: co-host Cortina, Livigno in Valtellina and Predazzo in the Trento province, marking the first \u201cwidespread ceremony\u201d in the history of the Games.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"cli cli-related-articles js-cet-subunit\"\/><\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.celebrity.land \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MILAN, Feb 1 (Reuters) &#8211; A child who was forced off a bus in the snow in northern Italy for not having the full fare will play a part in the opening ceremony of the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics on Friday, his mother said. Riccardo Z, an 11-year-old boy from a town less than 20 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2264151,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25174],"tags":[419547,419548],"class_list":["post-2264150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gossip","tag-olympics","tag-winter-olympics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Italian-Boy-Forced-Off-Bus-Into-Snow-After-Olympic-Price.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2264150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2264150"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2264150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2264152,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2264150\/revisions\/2264152"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2264151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2264150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2264150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2264150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}