Alysa Liu, Eileen Gu, and the largest winners of the 2026 Winter Olympics

[ad_1] At each Olympic Video games, there are winners, and there are various extra losers. Dozens of gold, silver, bronze…and an entire bunch of people that stroll away with nothing. Formally, Norway gained probably the most in Milan and Cortina, with 41 whole medals, 18 of which have been gold. The US (with 33 general and 12 gold), and Italy (with 30 whole and 10 gold) got here in second and third place, respectively.

However the medals solely inform one a part of the story. There are tales of heroism, resilience, and typically the occasional bank card fraud that medals can not totally seize. Sure, bank card fraud! And people are the bits that are likely to change into iconic moments in Olympic historical past over time.

Listed here are the winners and losers from this 12 months’s Olympics that we’ll keep in mind perpetually.

After the 2022 Olympics, the Worldwide Skating Union carried out a rule elevating the age of opponents from 15 to 17. The change got here on the heels of then-15-year-old Kamila Valieva’s positive doping test and greater questions on abuse within the Russian system. The brand new age requirement was the ISU’s means of attempting to make the game safer for younger women.

Alysa Liu’s gold medal win looks like a step in the best course. Liu, skating to Donna Summer season’s iconic rendition of “MacArthur Park,” delivered a efficiency that was equal components ability and pleasure. Liu’s spins and dance sequences have been simply as spectacular, if no more, than the jumps she nailed. She was additionally a implausible sport, cheering on and comforting fellow medal winners Kaori Sakamoto and Ami Nakai.

Liu herself is a testomony to how brutal determine skating may be. In 2022, after going to the Beijing Video games and inserting sixth, Liu retired on the age of 16. On the time, she mentioned she needed to go to varsity, hang around together with her siblings, get a driver’s license, and sit back together with her cats — issues she couldn’t do as a result of she was an elite skater and one of many sport’s brightest American stars.

Two years in the past, in 2024, Liu returned to determine skating with a renewed love for the game. Since her return, she’s been vocal in regards to the significance of mental health and the significance of not letting a contest outline her. As an alternative of specializing in medals and accomplishments on the 2026 Video games, Liu was clear that she was there to share her artwork and her pleasure with the world.

“I used to be peak happiness after I was on the market on the ice. Nothing might convey me greater than that,” Liu informed NBC in an interview after her win .

And everybody watching might inform.

The Olympics all the time contain some form of nonsense, shenanigans, and levity. However this 12 months’s Winter Video games have been particular in that the athletes, on prime of acting at a excessive stage, have been additionally agents of chaos , dabbling in confessions of adultery, bank card fraud, penis-injections (allegedly), and AI music. The scandals off the ice and slopes have been simply as thrilling as no matter was taking place within the biathlon.

Loser: Canada’s “good” fame

This week, the world was shocked upon studying the information that Canadians — lengthy identified for being good and apologetic folks — are able to dishonest. And, extra astonishingly, that they'd achieve this in curling.

The cost is that Canada’s Marc Kennedy touched the rock after it handed the “hog line,” a no-no in curling. The Swedish crew, which Canada was dealing with within the spherical robin portion of the competitors, introduced Kennedy’s alleged double-touchery to gentle, which Kennedy responded to with a sequence of expletives (precise, for actual unhealthy phrases):

Regardless of the back-and-forth and after receiving a misconduct warning from World Curling, the game’s governing physique, Staff Canada ended up successful the gold medal . However, alas, now we all know that Canadians, irrespective of how good they're, aren't a monolith — particularly not ones who curl.

Loser: The US Males’s Hockey Staff

Despite the fact that they gained a momentous and hard-fought gold medal recreation in opposition to chief rival Canada, the US males’s hockey crew and its followers barely obtained an opportunity to savor it. The dialog surrounding the win shortly shifted into how the crew celebrated and who it celebrated with.

Due to an Instagram Stay and subsequent leaked video , we all know the gamers partied with FBI Director Kash Patel and took a congratulatory cellphone name from President Donald Trump, inviting them to the State of the Union deal with on February 24. Throughout the name, Trump additionally made a joke about reluctantly having to ask the US girls’s crew, too.

“I have to let you know, we’re going to need to convey the ladies’s crew,” he mentioned. “You do know that. I do consider I’d in all probability be impeached.”

The US girls’s hockey crew dominated the Olympics and has been the gold customary for girls’s hockey for the previous two years.

In the meantime, Patel’s post-game rowdiness raised questions on whether or not this was one of the best use of FBI sources and American taxpayer cash, and why he was there within the first place, particularly since there are issues Patel may very well be tending to stateside ( an intruder was shot at Mar-A-Lago on the identical day).

Patel tweeted that he was invited by his pals, the US males’s hockey crew:

Regardless of a storybook ending for bronze medalists Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier of Canada, the Video games’ ice dancing competitors was not one which followers felt good about. For starters, the gold medal winners — France’s Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron — have been introduced collectively by two unlucky circumstances. Fournier Beaudry’s boyfriend and former accomplice was banned from the game for six years after a rape investigation and Cizeron’s former accomplice, Gabriella Papadakis, retired and later alleged that Cizeron had been emotionally abusive to her.

This isn’t the type of materials that’s often featured on Olympic broadcast segments, and it’s not one which determine skating media has been keen to look at. Critics have known as the win “ awful ” for the type of message it sends in regards to the type of abuse the game tolerates behind the scenes.

However there’s additionally the truth that many followers consider US silver medalists Madison Chock and Evan Bates skated higher and have been victims of nefarious favoritism. French decide Jezabel Dabouis scored the American pair greater than 5 factors beneath the judging panel’s common and gave her dwelling nation’s duo roughly 3 factors greater than the typical, ESPN reported . At one level, it appeared like Bates and Chock may problem the end result, however nothing materialized .

Followers of ice dancing might be left to argue in regards to the sport’s transparency and accountability for the following 4 years.

Eileen Gu gained three medals — one gold and two silver — in Milan and now has six whole medals over the span of two quadrennials. She additionally made herself one of the crucial worthwhile and recognizable athletes on the 2026 Winter Olympics. As she reminded reporters this previous week, Gu is probably the most adorned free skier in historical past.

Nevertheless it’s Gu’s choice to symbolize China that’s made her a polarizing determine during the last two Olympic cycles.

For the uninitiated, Gu was born within the US, goes to Stanford, is extraordinarily marketable, and is, on the identical time, extraordinarily good at her sport. She’s the type of star that American media and American manufacturers would fawn over. However regardless of her being as American as athletes just like the aforementioned Alysa Liu, or Simone Biles, or Michael Phelps, she’s chosen to symbolize a unique nation (Gu chose to symbolize China at 15).

That’s made her particularly incendiary throughout the second Trump administration with its anti-China rhetoric. At one level within the competitors, US Vice President JD Vance weighed in on Gu, saying she needs to be representing the US.

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“I definitely assume that any person who grew up in america of America, who benefited from our training system, from the freedoms and liberties that make this nation a fantastic place, I might hope that they wish to compete with america of America,” Vance told Fox News . “So, I’m going to root for American athletes, and I feel a part of that's individuals who establish themselves as People.”

Gu isn’t the primary American-born athlete to symbolize a unique nation, however she may be probably the most profitable. And that appears to be why she’s drawn a lot consideration for the final two Winter Olympics.

“[I]f I wasn’t doing nicely, I feel that they in all probability wouldn’t care as a lot, and that’s okay for me. Persons are entitled to their opinions,” Gu told reporters in Milan this previous week, acknowledging that her success is central to the narratives and controversy surrounding her nationality.

Gu symbolizes the truth that athletes don’t want the US’s backing or help to be commercially profitable. That makes some People like Vance uneasy. She additionally embodies the very American concept of relentlessly pursuing success and maximizing it, it doesn't matter what it takes. Gu represents the American dream and the startling idea that America isn’t obligatory for it.