1/23/26

A local Security guard dies at the Winter Olympics from tragic cold weather.

Fifty five year old Pertro Zantonini unfortunately passed away in the snow at the site of the 2026 Winter Olympics. His body was discovered Saturday morning on January 8th. Pertro Zantonini was working his 12-hour shift as a night guard, yet he left his heated cabin during the night to do his rounds of checking the game’s parameters every 2 hours. The cold of the winter night was about 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 12 degrees celsius), and tragedy struck not long after he left.

Mid-walk, he suffered a heart attack and collapsed into the cold snow late into Thursday night. Unable to get back up, he laid in the snow for hours until he died around 2am from hypothermia. His death sent tremors through the Olympics community, as his passing happened 4 weeks before the start of the games. The CEO of Fondazione Milano Cortina, the location where the Olympics are being held, Andrea Varnier, said, “The information we have is that the death was a natural cause, it was a heart attack, and we are investigating.”

According to the testing event at the new hockey arena, “All the documentation that we have was in order, and we are waiting for the investigation to understand what the specific cause was. At the moment, the information we have from the emergency services is that it was a death caused by natural causes while he was on site.” Due to the fact that Pertro Zantonini’s death was a cause of natural happenings, the Olympic site, Fondazione Milano Cortina, was not held responsible legally and will not be held accountable for the death of the security guard. The city officials were saddened by the death, but The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics are still going to continue and are rescheduled from February 6th-22nd.