Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala, second from right, and members of the Milan-Cortina delegation celebrate after winning the bid to host the 2026 Winter Olympic Games during the first day of the 134th Session of the International Olympic Committee at the SwissTech Convention Centre in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Monday. (AP photo)

International Olympic Committee members voted 47-34 for the long-favored Milan-Cortina bid over Stockholm-Are from Sweden that also included a bobsled track in Latvia.

Milan-Cortina’s jubilant delegation broke into chants of “Italia! Italia!” when the result was announced, giving the Alpine nation a second Winter Games in 20 years.

“I’m really emotional,” Italian Olympic president Giovanni Malago said, close to tears at the winner’s news conference. “It’s a very important result, not only for me but the whole country.”

Italy will get a third Winter Games, after Turin hosted in 2006 and ski resort Cortina staged in 1956.

Mayor of Milan Giuseppe Sala, center, and members of Milan-Cortina delegation celebrate after winning the bid to host the 2026 Winter Olympic Games during the first day of the 134th Session of the International Olympic Committee at the SwissTech Convention Centre in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Monday. (AP photo)

Sweden never hosted the Winter Games and was sent to an eighth loss in bidding in the past 41 years.

A lack of enthusiasm for the project in Sweden — rating 28% below the Italians in the IOC’s own polls — was a decisive factor.

“What was clear was the gap in public support,” IOC President Thomas Bach said, suggesting it hinted at weaker political backing.

A spirited late campaign effort was in vain, including Stockholm’s mayor Anna Konig Jerlmyr appealing to voters from the stage by singing a lyric from Abba song ‘Dancing Queen’.

A sign of simmering Swedish frustration came minutes later when IOC board member Gunilla Lindberg pushed the limit of Olympic diplomacy ending her team’s 30-minute presentation.

Lindberg challenged her colleagues to reward a new kind of creative, cost-effective bid the IOC has said it wanted — “Or is it just talk?”

“It just came. I felt it (needed to be said),” Lindberg told The Associated Press after the vote.

Instead, IOC members picked Italy despite a debt-hit economy which faces increasing European Union scrutiny.

“We submit with full confidence to your judgment,” Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte told IOC members before their vote.

Both candidates would likely have failed to get this far in previous Olympic bidding contests.

The IOC has relaxed previously strict rules that demanded financial guarantees and government support earlier in the process.