The Future Takes Flight and Form: How Drones and 3D Printing Are Revolutionizing the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympics
The Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics aren't just about who crosses the finish line first or lands the perfect triple axel. They're about something equally thrilling: a technological revolution that's transforming how we experience elite winter sports and how athletes compete at the highest level. Two cutting-edge technologies—drone cinematography and 3D printing—are taking center stage in the Italian Alps, fundamentally changing Olympic competition and broadcasting in ways that would have seemed like science fiction just a decade ago.
As the world watches athletes push human limits on snow and ice, they're witnessing a parallel performance: technology pushing the boundaries of what's possible in both athletic performance and viewer experience.
The Drone Revolution: Bringing Viewers Into the Action
A Sky Full of Eyes: The Scale of Drone Deployment
A total of 25 drones, including 15 first-person-view (FPV) drones, are operating across all outdoor sports and selected indoor sports such as speed skating, capturing dynamic angles that were previously not possible at the Winter Games.
This isn't a tentative experiment. This is a full-scale transformation of Olympic broadcasting.
These aren't your hobbyist drones from the local electronics store. The drones are flying live at speeds of up to 75 miles per hour, delivering broadcast-quality video that races alongside athletes and dives into spaces once impossible to film. Imagine a camera that can follow a downhill skier at 80+ mph, navigate the tight curves of a luge track, and hover mere feet from a snowboarder executing a mid-air rotation—all while transmitting pristine HD footage in real-time.
What Makes FPV Different?
The game-changer at Milano Cortina 2026 is the extensive use of first-person-view (FPV) technology. Unlike traditional broadcast cameras, FPV drones are piloted using immersive goggles that allow operators to see in real time from the drone's perspective.
The pilots don't watch the drone from the ground—they see exactly what the drone sees, flying with a visceral, immediate connection that allows for split-second maneuvering through complex terrain and around high-speed athletes. It's the difference between driving a remote-control car and playing a virtual reality racing game—the level of precision and immersion is fundamentally different.
Experiencing Speed Like Never Before
For decades, Olympic broadcasts relied on what NBC Olympics coordinating director Michael Sheehan described as "wide, perpendicular shots". You watched from the side. You saw athletes from a distance. You understood they were moving fast, but you couldn't truly feel it.
That's changed dramatically.
"For the first time, many of the athletes could really say: 'Now people can experience what it feels like to ride a bob, to race in the luge, or to go downhill,'" says Yiannis Exarchos, CEO of Olympic Broadcasting Services.
"When a camera is chasing the athlete down the hill — right in front of them or right behind them — you truly get the sense of how fast they're going," Michael Sheehan explained. "That's virtually impossible to capture with a wide shot shooting from the side".
The sliding sports—luge, skeleton, and bobsled—where speeds reach 70 to 90 miles per hour through narrow, banked ice chutes, have been particularly transformed. FPV drones trail just behind or alongside the sleds, putting viewers directly in the action. It's visceral. It's immediate. And for many viewers, it's the closest they'll ever get to understanding what it's like to hurtle down an ice track at highway speeds.
The Cinematic Olympics
The drone deployment at Milano Cortina 2026 is part of a broader shift toward what Olympic Broadcasting Services calls the "Cinelive" philosophy—prioritizing cinematic emotion over clinical documentation.
The Games feature over 810 camera systems, 32 dedicated cinematic cameras, and an infrastructure including 1,800 microphones, 50 jibs and cranes, and 12 cablecam rigs. But it's the drones that capture the imagination most vividly.
The aerial capabilities alone are stunning. The backdrop of the Italian Alps—the Dolomites rising dramatically around Cortina d'Ampezzo, the snow-covered peaks of Lombardy and Veneto—provides cinematography that rivals any nature documentary. The drones have been a revelation for first-person views—but their more traditional use for cinematic aerial views is just as stunning.
The Sound of Innovation
There's an auditory element to this drone revolution that's become part of the Olympic experience itself. The high-pitched whine of FPV drones racing through the air is now recognizable even to those who follow the Games only on television.
Some have complained about the noise. Athletes have varied in their responses—some barely notice, focused entirely on their performance, while others find it distracting. But organizers insist the impact is minimal and the broadcast benefit is transformative.
Not Without Controversy
No technological revolution comes without growing pains. In one of the first downhill training sessions, one device crashed and left debris on the piste, with no sporting consequences but a symbolic impact.
More dramatically, 16-year-old Australian Ally Hickman was almost struck mid-jump by a drone that passed centimeters from her back during the snowboard big air competition. The operator triggered an emergency mechanism that made the drone climb sharply, avoiding contact.
Hickman didn't even notice until she saw the replay—she was entirely focused on executing her trick. No protest was lodged, but the incident highlighted the risks of operating sophisticated machinery in close proximity to athletes moving at high speeds and executing complex maneuvers.
Despite these isolated incidents, International Olympic Committee Sports Director Pierre Ducrey insisted that "the drones do not impact significantly the experience of the athletes. We have looked into it to make sure it doesn't".
Evolution, Not Revolution
It's worth noting that the use of drones to cover the Winter Olympics is not a new development, but a new generation of technology has given the Milano Cortina Games a major boost.
Drones burst onto the Olympic scene at the 2018 PyeongChang Opening Ceremony with a record-setting light show of 1,218 synchronized drones. They featured heavily in Beijing 2022's coverage. But Milano Cortina 2026 represents a quantum leap in integration—drones aren't just spectacle anymore; they're fundamental to how the Games are broadcast.
"We look at this as an evolution of the sport," Pierre Ducrey explained. "The expectation today is to have this kind of experience when you consume a sports event, even more so for the Olympic Games".
The Hidden Revolution: 3D Printing Behind the Medals
While drones capture the attention of millions of viewers worldwide, another technology is working behind the scenes to give athletes the competitive edge that separates gold from silver.
3D printing—also known as additive manufacturing—has become deeply embedded in Olympic-level winter sports, though most viewers will never see it directly. The technology is reshaping equipment, optimizing performance, and even changing how officials maintain competition surfaces.
Speed on Ice: Bobsled Innovation
Bobsled has become one of the primary proving grounds for 3D printing at the Winter Olympics.
Bobsleigh teams have used 3D printed components for a number of years, with BMW and other firms helping optimize the shape and performance of 3D printed bobsleighs, as well as the spikes on the bobsleigh shoes.
It's not just minor components—entire composite bodies have been 3D printed, especially steering components.
Why 3D printing for bobsleds? Several reasons:
Aerodynamic Optimization: Traditional manufacturing constrains design to shapes that can be machined or molded. 3D printing allows for complex aerodynamic features—internal structures, specific surface textures, optimized curves—that would be impossible or prohibitively expensive to create otherwise.
Rapid Iteration: Testing a new sled design traditionally meant months of tooling and manufacturing. With 3D printing, teams can test a new component design, evaluate it in practice runs or wind tunnels, make modifications, and have an improved version ready in days.
Customization: Every track is different. Every team has different athletes with different weights and sizes. 3D printing allows for bespoke components tailored to specific conditions and competitors.
Weight Optimization: Using advanced computational design, engineers can create components that are precisely as strong as needed exactly where strength matters, with material removed everywhere else. This topology optimization results in structures that look organic—almost skeletal—but deliver maximum performance per gram.
The US team is making bobsled components for this year's Olympics with CRP, and significant carbon fiber work is being undertaken on the bobsleighs, along with metal weight-saving components and balance components to improve control and performance.
Helmets and Safety Equipment
The Chinese team 3D printed a helmet for its riders, and the US Luge team worked with Stratasys on similar initiatives.
Helmets represent an ideal application for 3D printing technology:
Perfect Fit: Traditional helmets come in standard sizes. A 3D printed helmet can be based on an exact scan of an athlete's head, providing superior comfort and safety through optimal fit.
Aerodynamic Customization: The shape can be optimized not just for safety but for aerodynamics specific to that athlete's position and discipline.
Integrated Design: Mounting points for visors, communication systems, and sensors can be built directly into the helmet structure rather than added as afterthoughts.
Material Optimization: Different parts of the helmet can use different materials or different densities of the same material—rigid where impact protection is needed, flexible where comfort matters, vented for airflow.
From Blades to Bindings
The applications extend across winter sports:
Skating: Skating blades and gloves have been made using 3D printing. Custom blade mounts can position the blade at precisely the optimal angle for a specific skater's technique. Gloves can integrate grip patterns optimized for that athlete's hand size and grip strength.
Skiing and Snowboarding: Easier bindings have been crafted for skiing and snowboarding Olympic athletes. Custom binding interfaces can account for specific boot geometries, preferred stance angles, and release characteristics tuned to the athlete's style and safety needs.
The NASCAR Connection: Digital Athletes
One of the most fascinating applications of 3D printing at Milano Cortina 2026 has nothing to do with equipment the athletes use directly.
NASCAR is making life-sized 3D printed copies of athletes to make better wind tunnel tests, using CFD work to optimize their gear and performance. Luge and other athletes were scanned in the right position for their sports, with Honda and Totalsim helping analyze the models, and Stratasys printers being used to make models of equipment for wind tunnel testing.
Think about this: Engineers can now test aerodynamic equipment on exact physical replicas of athletes in precise competition positions. They can iterate through dozens of helmet designs, suit modifications, and position adjustments without requiring the actual athlete to spend hours in a wind tunnel.
This represents a convergence of technologies: 3D body scanning captures the athlete's exact form, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulates airflow digitally, and 3D printing creates physical test models. The result is equipment optimized to a degree that would have been impossible just a few years ago.
The Most Unexpected Application: Pebbleheads for Curling
Perhaps the most surprising 3D printing innovation at Milano Cortina 2026 has nothing to do with speed or aerodynamics—it's about ice texture.
Using copper ice makers, curling officials add ice droplets to smooth ice surfaces to add more difficulty and make the indoor ice resemble natural ice conditions. A Canadian firm has developed Pebbleheads: 3D printed ice droplet spreaders made with an ABS blend, which are lighter than the copper units they replace.
Finished with Diamant, a gas and watertight sealant, they have been engineered to specifically work in spreading droplets in the right pattern.
This might seem like a minor application, but it illustrates how 3D printing enables solutions to highly specialized problems. The market for curling ice preparation tools is tiny—far too small for traditional manufacturing investment. But with 3D printing, a small Canadian company could identify a need, design a solution, and manufacture precisely the number needed.
It's democratization of manufacturing in action, even at the Olympic level.
The Convergence: How These Technologies Work Together
At first glance, drones and 3D printing might seem like unrelated technologies that just happen to be prominent at the same Olympics. But look closer, and you'll see they're part of the same fundamental shift in how we approach both competition and storytelling.
The Digital-Physical Pipeline
Both technologies represent the collapsing distance between digital design and physical reality:
Drones: Pilots use digital goggles to see through the drone's camera in real-time, controlling a physical device through digital interface with minimal latency. The footage is instantly transmitted, processed, and broadcast globally. The physical and digital are seamlessly integrated.
3D Printing: Engineers design components in digital 3D modeling software, simulate their performance using computational tools, and then materialize those exact designs as physical objects layer by layer. The digital file becomes the physical product without traditional manufacturing intermediaries.
Rapid Iteration and Optimization
Both technologies enable a pace of improvement that was previously impossible:
Drones: Broadcasting teams can experiment with new angles, receive instant feedback from viewers and commentators, and adjust their approach in real-time. New drone capabilities can be programmed and deployed between events.
3D Printing: Athletes can test equipment modifications and have improved versions ready for the next training session. What once took months now takes days.
Customization and Personalization
Both technologies move us away from one-size-fits-all approaches:
Drones: Each sport gets drone coverage tailored to its specific characteristics. Alpine skiing gets different treatment than figure skating. The technology adapts to the need.
3D Printing: Every athlete gets equipment optimized for their specific body, technique, and preferences. Mass customization at Olympic scale.
Democratization
Both technologies are making capabilities that were once exclusive to the wealthy and powerful available more broadly:
Drones: Smaller broadcasters and even individual creators can now capture professional-quality aerial footage that once required helicopters and massive budgets.
3D Printing: Smaller nations with limited budgets can now create custom equipment that rivals what wealthier Olympic programs produce. The barrier is no longer money for manufacturing—it's expertise in design and optimization.
The Broader Impact: Beyond Milano Cortina 2026
The technologies showcased at Milano Cortina 2026 won't stay confined to Olympic venues.
Broadcasting Revolution
The FPV drone techniques pioneered at these Olympics are already spreading:
- Professional sports leagues are incorporating similar coverage for football, motorsports, and extreme sports
- Documentary filmmakers are using FPV drones to capture nature and adventure content that was previously impossible
- Real estate, tourism, and commercial applications are adopting cinematic drone techniques
Time will tell where advances in drone technology over the next four years take us for the 2030 Winter Olympics in the French Alps, but the trajectory is clear: more drones, more sophisticated, more integrated into every aspect of sports broadcasting.
Manufacturing Transformation
The 3D printing applications at the Olympics represent the tip of a much larger iceberg:
Personalized Sports Equipment: What works for Olympic bobsleds will filter down to consumer products. Expect custom 3D printed running shoes, bike components, and golf clubs optimized for your specific biomechanics.
Medical Applications: The same scanning and printing techniques used for Olympic helmets are revolutionizing prosthetics, orthotics, and surgical planning.
On-Demand Manufacturing: The principle of printing parts as needed rather than maintaining massive inventories is transforming supply chains across industries.
Sustainable Production: 3D printing's ability to use only the material needed, combined with recyclable filaments, points toward more sustainable manufacturing futures.
The Human Element: Technology Serving Performance
For all the technological sophistication, it's crucial to remember that these innovations serve a fundamentally human purpose.
The drones exist to help audiences connect emotionally with athletes' performances—to feel the speed, appreciate the skill, and understand the difficulty of what these competitors are achieving.
The 3D printed equipment exists to help athletes perform at their absolute peak—to remove technological barriers so that human excellence can shine through.
"We strive to offer the best viewing experience whether in the stadium or outside," says Pierre Ducrey. The technology isn't the point—the athletes are. The technology is simply the means to better appreciate human achievement.
Looking Ahead: Los Angeles 2028 and Beyond
If Milano Cortina 2026 represents a leap forward in Olympic technology, what comes next?
Autonomous Drone Choreography: AI-assisted drone piloting could enable even more complex shots while reducing the risk of incidents like the near-miss in snowboard big air.
Real-Time 3D Printing: Imagine equipment modifications being printed trackside between runs, allowing for adjustments based on changing conditions or athlete feedback.
Volumetric Video: Milano Cortina 2026 already features AI-enhanced replays and stroboscopic analysis powered by Alibaba Cloud's AI algorithm. The next step might be full 3D reconstructions allowing viewers to watch replays from any angle.
Bioprinting Applications: While still experimental, bioprinting could eventually create custom padding materials perfectly tuned to an athlete's body geometry and the specific impact characteristics of their sport.
Augmented Reality Integration: Drone footage combined with AR overlays could provide real-time data visualization—speed, g-forces, trajectory predictions—layered directly onto the broadcast.
The Milano Cortina Legacy
The Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics will be remembered for athletic achievements—for records broken, underdogs triumphing, and champions crowned. But they'll also be remembered as the Games where broadcasting and equipment technology took quantum leaps forward.
By harmonizing the aesthetic of cinema with the immediacy of broadcast, and supporting it with an AI-driven, IP-based infrastructure, OBS and its partners have placed the viewer inside the helmet of the skier via FPV drone, beside the nervous athlete in the tunnel via robotic PTZ, and inside the physics of the jump via AI replay.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, 3D printers have been quietly producing the components that give athletes their competitive edges—customized, optimized, and iterated to perfection.
These technologies aren't just changing how we watch the Olympics or how athletes compete. They're changing our relationship with physical space, mechanical performance, and human achievement. They're collapsing the distance between imagination and reality, between digital design and physical manifestation.
When a FPV drone races alongside a downhill skier wearing a custom 3D printed helmet, both traveling at 80 miles per hour through the Italian Alps while millions watch in real-time around the world, we're witnessing something unprecedented: the complete integration of digital and physical, of technology and human performance, of innovation and tradition.
The Olympics have always been about pushing the boundaries of human potential. At Milano Cortina 2026, we're discovering that the boundaries being pushed include not just athletic achievement but the very technologies that help us compete, perform, and share those achievements with the world.
The future of sports—and of manufacturing, broadcasting, and innovation more broadly—is being written in the skies above Cortina and materialized layer by layer in workshops across northern Italy. And it's spectacular.
As the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics continue through February 22, watch for the distinctive whine of FPV drones capturing unprecedented angles, and remember that much of the equipment you're seeing was created using additive manufacturing techniques that didn't exist in practical form just 15 years ago. The future isn't coming—it's already here, flying at 75 miles per hour and being printed one layer at a time.