ONE CLUSTER.
THREE FOP.
VERY DIFFERENT WORLDS.

Planning, venue preparation and bump-in were managed as a true two-venue cluster. As competition approached, the operating reality became clear: two live venues could not be meaningfully controlled by one person in two places at the same time.

I pushed for a dedicated Venue Manager at Palavela. That created the right Games-time structure: Palavela had daily venue leadership; I retained cluster oversight and verification visits while concentrating roughly ninety per cent of my on-site time at PalaTazzoli, where two FOP and a denser competition schedule demanded continuous presence.

The men's ice hockey final arrived at the end of the Games, when competition elsewhere had largely finished. It was naturally going to attract not only ticketed spectators, but also staff, delegations and accreditation holders with broad “All” venue privileges.

After close scrutiny from the administrative police during the event, I became the venue's TULPS delegate. Capacity control therefore had a very concrete meaning: the venue could not be safe simply because the public ticket allocation was sold out. Accredited people also had to count.

I anticipated the issue and created a parallel reservation/ticket layer for accredited non-public attendees. Accreditation still established entitlement to the Games environment; for the final, a dedicated ticket controlled the number of people actually entering the venue.

The result mattered twice: the capacity stayed under control, and the scarcity itself contributed to the atmosphere. Safety and event energy were not competing objectives.