The Impact of wide-scale sport events on local development: an assessment of the XXth Torino Olympics through the sustainability report

Olympics have only recently been included in the sustainability debate. This contribute summarizes the process and outcome of the sustainability reporting on the last Olympic Winter Games, held in Torino in 2006, basing on the experience of IEFE - Bocconi University as scientific partner in such process. The contribute is organized as follows. Section 1 highlights key “Olympic sustainability issues”, focusing on the most important opportunities and challenges for hosting areas related with the organization of such events. Section 2 and 3 describe the methodology adopted and the main findings of the Torino Olympics sustainability reporting process, whose goal was to measure, assess, communicate and improve the social and environmental performance of the Organising Committee. Recommendations for responsible public authorities, organisers of future Olympics (and even large-scale sport events) and other social-economic actors involved are discussed in the last Section of the work.