Over the course of 19 days in February, the 2026 Winter Olympic lined extra floor than the 11-hour drive from Milan to Cortina to Livigno/Bormio — the three fundamental clusters of those Video games. It began with a ski leaping scandal that concerned, of all issues, the crotch. Ended with an epic hockey recreation between two bitter rivals. Sandwiched in between was the golden glory of an American who’s extra well-known in Europe than in his hometown in Wisconsin and the sheer guts and dedication of an American icon who merely went for it.
Right here is the winding path taken throughout these Olympic Video games:
(Hassan Ahmad/Yahoo Sports activities illustration)
From Jeff Eisenberg:
Commercial
MILAN — Male ski jumpers should put on tight-fitting fits which can be not more than 4 centimeters bigger than their physique measurements at any level. Most nationwide groups search to seek out each millimeter they’ll as a result of an even bigger, baggier go well with catches extra wind and offers extra elevate throughout flight than a smaller one does.
Fittingly, essentially the most advantageous place to enlarge a ski jumper’s go well with is the crotch space.
It’s a narrative it’s a must to learn to imagine.
As soon as the Video games started, all eyes rapidly turned to Cortina, the place Lindsey Vonn was making an attempt to win a gold medal on a busted ACL she’d torn only a week earlier. She managed each coaching runs within the downhill with out incident, and really appeared robust. However then …
Lindsey Vonn crashes through the girls’s downhill. (Screengrab by IOC through Getty Pictures)
(Handout through Getty Pictures)
From Dan Wolken:
Commercial
LIVIGNO, Italy — It was devastating to observe, much more brutal to listen to.
For a nation that had develop into enraptured in Lindsey Vonn’s comeback story and the norm-defying try to win an Olympic medal with out an ACL in her left knee, the helpless cries of ache as she lay on her again and because the mountain fell silent can be laborious to erase from reminiscence.
Downhill snowboarding is commonly breathtaking. It’s generally ugly. And for the second time in 9 days, the pictures of an American sports activities heroine being strapped to a board and lifted right into a helicopter churned the abdomen.
However that’s snowboarding down a mountain at 80 miles per hour. That’s the danger Vonn signed up for when she determined to compete in an Olympics 9 days after an ACL tear throughout a distinct competitors in Switzerland. That’s what occurs generally once you go for it.
Commercial
And that’s precisely what Vonn did.
Whereas Vonn’s every day well being updates from surgical procedure after surgical procedure and her eventual return to the USA captured everybody’s consideration, so did Jordan Stolz, a celeb in Europe however a digital unknown in America till …
Jordan Stolz celebrates after profitable the boys’s 1000 meters, his first gold of the 2026 Olympics. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Instances through Getty Pictures)
(Robert Gauthier through Getty Pictures)
From Jeff Eisenberg:
MILAN — Since rocketing onto the worldwide speedskating scene three years in the past, Jordan Stolz — referred to as the following Eric Heiden by none aside from Eric Heiden — has develop into the uncommon athlete extra well-known internationally than in his dwelling nation. The 21-year-old is a celebrity in speedskating hotspots just like the Netherlands, Norway and Germany, however he stays nearly fully unknown throughout America and even in his dwelling state of Wisconsin.
Commercial
Stolz took an enormous step towards altering that Wednesday evening in Milan when he shined within the first of his 4 races on the Olympic stage. The child who discovered to skate on his household’s yard pond in Kewaskum, Wisconsin, outraced a world-class discipline within the males’s 1,000 meters to win his first Olympic gold medal.
Stolz wasn’t carried out.
However whereas Stolz lived as much as the pre-Olympics hype, even when claiming silver within the 1500 left him feeling these Olympics have been solely a “partial success”, Ilia Malinin felt the strain, and it acquired to him.
Ilia Malinin reacts after competing within the males’s singles free program. (James Lang-Imagn Pictures)
(IMAGN IMAGES through Reuters Join / Reuters)
From Jay Busbee:
MILAN — One thing was improper from the very begin. One thing about Ilia Malinin’s free skate Friday appeared tentative, unsure, so very not like the “Quad God.” This was his gold-medal second, and it was slipping away from him.
Commercial
He landed his first factor, a quad flip, however it had the texture of an surprising success, like a half-court heave that went by means of the online, slightly than the beginning of a triumphal procession. After which he skated towards his deliberate quad axel, a transfer actually solely he can land, a transfer that would have put him on a direct path to the highest of the rostrum.
He flinched … and was misplaced.
In one of the vital beautiful collapses in Olympic determine skating historical past, Malinin plummeted from a near-certain gold medal all the best way to eighth place.
Malinin wasn’t the one American feeling the strain. Perhaps no one was underneath greater than Mikaela Shiffrin, essentially the most achieved World Cup skier of all-time however one who has struggled on the Olympic stage. Early within the Video games, she let slip a lead within the girls’s staff ski occasion, one staked to her by Breezy Johnson, the gold medalist within the downhill. After going medal-less 4 years in the past in Beijing, the doubts began to creep in. After which …
Mikaela Shiffrin celebrartes profitable the ladies’s slalom. (Fei Maohua/Xinhua through Getty Pictures)
(Xinhua Information Company through Getty Pictures)
From Jay Busbee:
Commercial
MILAN — One of many merciless ironies concerning the Olympics is that it’s higher to be a one-and-done medalist than a win-a-few, lose-a-bunch multi-time Olympian. Beijing blanked Mikaela Shiffrin; she didn’t even end three of the occasions she entered. Milan Cortina was a bit kinder — she no less than made it down the mountain in her earlier occasions, although at underwhelming-for-her speeds.
With each occasion that handed with out {hardware}, although, the muttering grew louder. Was Shiffrin spooked by the Olympics? Cursed? How might essentially the most adorned World Cup skier in historical past dominate all over the place else on the calendar besides these two weeks each 4 years?
In order that’s why Wednesday’s race was so important for Shiffrin. Think about if she’d fallen brief but once more. Think about if her pole had damaged, or if she’d caught that first gate, or suffered any of the opposite hundred woes that might have stored her off the rostrum. Think about the questions that might have adopted her, the media second-guessing, the social-media rubbish, the inner anxieties that might have wracked her for one more 4 years, and possibly for endlessly.
“There’ll at all times be criticism, however I used to be right here to earn the second and that’s going to require some danger,” she mentioned. “Danger of not ending. It’s additionally danger of being criticized, and to just accept that. (It’s) not the simplest factor to do, however ultimately at present we have been ready to do this.”
Commercial
She stared that grim future within the face … and she or he flat-out skied proper by means of it.
A bit greater than 24 hours later, these Olympic Video games hit maxim overdrive when, concurrently, the ladies of USA and Canada squared off on the ice for gold, whereas Alysa Liu tried to develop into the primary American girls to medal in determine skating in 20 years …
Gold medalist Alysa Liu celebrates on the rostrum through the medal ceremony for the ladies’s single skating. (Tang Xinyu/VCG through Getty Pictures)
(VCG through Getty Pictures)
From Jay Busbee:
MILAN — As she skated across the Assago Ice Skating Enviornment rink, moments earlier than crucial routine of her life, Alysa Liu caught sight of her teammate Amber Glenn close to the kiss-and-cry sofa. Glenn, devastated after Tuesday evening’s program, had skated a spectacular routine of her personal almost two hours earlier than. As Liu drew shut, she gave Glenn a congratulatory thumbs-up.
Commercial
“What are you doing?” an exasperated Glenn replied. “Go skate!”
So Alysa Liu did. And he or she gained herself a gold medal, smiling all the best way.
There are not any file books to measure such issues, however it’s totally attainable that no Olympian has ever smiled as a lot as Liu did on Thursday evening, executing an excellent, nearly flawless free skate that vaulted her from third place into first. She smiled when she stepped onto the ice, she smiled when she noticed Glenn, she smiled by means of her lutzes and loops and salchows, she smiled when she pointed her left finger to the sky to shut out her routine. And he or she smiled — and giggled a triumphant giggle — when she skated proper as much as the rinkside digital camera and bellowed, “That’s what I’m f***ing speaking about!”
That’s the total breadth of the Alysa Liu expertise — giddiness, confidence, pleasure, serenity — and gold-medal-winning expertise. At an Olympics the place so many others have crumbled underneath the strain, she actually laughed in strain’s face.
Commercial
After which …
Megan Keller celebrates after scoring the game-winning purpose in time beyond regulation as Claire Thompson of Workforce Canada reacts through the girls’s gold medal recreation. (Picture by Bruce Bennett/Getty Pictures)
(Bruce Bennett through Getty Pictures)
From Jeff Eisenberg:
MILAN — Hilary Knight felt the duty to talk up.
The beforehand unbeaten, unchallenged U.S. girls’s hockey staff was dealing with actual recreation strain for the primary time at these Olympics, down a purpose and working low on time with only one interval left in Thursday’s gold-medal match.
“Who’s going to be the hero?” the 36-year-old American captain mentioned. “We want a hero. There’s a hero on this room.”
Seems Knight was improper about one factor . There wasn’t one hero within the U.S. locker room. There was two.
The U.S. doesn’t take gold and glory with out Knight giving her staff new life with a tying purpose with simply over two minutes left in regulation, nor with out Megan Keller juking a Canadian defender out of her skates to arrange the profitable purpose 4 minutes into time beyond regulation. These are the performs that made attainable a 2-1 gold-medal-clinching, come-from-behind U.S. win. These are the performs that can stay on in U.S. girls’s hockey lore lengthy after the American victory celebration involves an finish.
Commercial
Exterior of Liu and, no American-born feminine particular person athlete generated extra consideration than Eileen Gu … who doesn’t compete for the USA. She skis for China, which has many questioning: Why?
Eileen Gu, born in San Francisco, determined as a 15-year-old that she would compete within the Olympics for China, the place her mom was born. (Picture by Wang Peng/Xinhua through Getty Pictures)
(Xinhua Information Company through Getty Pictures)
Support Greater and Subscribe to view content
This is premium stuff. Subscribe to read the entire article.
