Over the course of 19 days in February, the 2026 Winter Olympic covered more ground than the 11-hour drive from Milan to Cortina to Livigno\/Bormio \u2014 the three main clusters of these Games. It started with a ski jumping scandal that involved, of all things, the crotch. Ended with an epic hockey game between two bitter rivals. Sandwiched in between was the golden glory of an American who\u2019s more famous in Europe than in his hometown in Wisconsin and the sheer guts and determination of an American icon who simply went for it.<\/p>\n
Here is the winding path taken during these Olympic Games:<\/p>\n
(Hassan Ahmad\/Yahoo Sports illustration)<\/p>\n
From Jeff Eisenberg:<\/em><\/p>\n MILAN \u2014 Male ski jumpers must wear tight-fitting suits that are no more than 4 centimeters larger than their body measurements at any point. Most national teams seek to find every millimeter they can because a bigger, baggier suit catches more wind and provides more lift during flight than a smaller one does.<\/p>\n Fittingly, the most advantageous place to enlarge a ski jumper\u2019s suit is the crotch area.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a story you have to read to believe<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Once the Games began, all eyes quickly turned to Cortina, where Lindsey Vonn was attempting to win a gold medal on a busted ACL she\u2019d torn just a week earlier. She managed both training runs in the downhill without incident, and <\/em>actually appeared strong<\/em><\/a>. But then \u2026 <\/em><\/p>\n Lindsey Vonn crashes during the women’s downhill. (Screengrab by IOC via Getty Images)<\/p>\n From Dan Wolken:<\/em><\/p>\n LIVIGNO, Italy \u2014 It was devastating to watch, even more brutal to hear.<\/p>\n For a nation that had become enraptured in Lindsey Vonn\u2019s comeback story and the norm-defying attempt to win an Olympic medal without an ACL in her left knee, the helpless cries of pain as she lay on her back and as the mountain fell silent will be hard to erase from memory.<\/p>\n Downhill skiing is often breathtaking. It is sometimes gruesome. And for the second time in nine days, the images of an American sports heroine being strapped to a board and lifted into a helicopter<\/a> churned the stomach.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s skiing down a mountain at 80 miles per hour. That\u2019s the risk Vonn signed up for when she decided to compete in an Olympics nine days after an ACL tear<\/a> during a different competition in Switzerland. That\u2019s what happens sometimes when you go for it.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s exactly what Vonn did<\/a>.<\/p>\n While Vonn\u2019s daily health updates from surgery after surgery and her eventual return to the United States captured everyone\u2019s attention, so did Jordan Stolz, a celebrity in Europe but a virtual unknown in America until \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n Jordan Stolz celebrates after winning the men’s 1000 meters, his first gold of the 2026 Olympics. (Robert Gauthier \/ Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)<\/p>\n From Jeff Eisenberg:<\/em><\/p>\n MILAN \u2014 Since rocketing onto the global speedskating scene three years ago, Jordan Stolz \u2014 called the next Eric Heiden by none other than Eric Heiden<\/a> \u2014 has become the rare athlete more famous internationally than in his home country. The 21-year-old is a superstar in speedskating hotspots like the Netherlands, Norway and Germany, but he remains almost completely unknown across America and even in his home state of Wisconsin.<\/p>\n Stolz took a big step toward changing that Wednesday night in Milan when he shined in the first of his four races on the Olympic stage. The kid who learned to skate on his family\u2019s backyard pond in Kewaskum, Wisconsin, outraced a world-class field in the men\u2019s 1,000 meters to win his first Olympic gold medal.<\/p>\n Stolz wasn\u2019t done.<\/a><\/p>\n But while Stolz lived up to the pre-Olympics hype, even if <\/em>claiming silver in the 1500 left him feeling these Olympics were only a \u201cpartial success\u201d<\/em><\/a>, Ilia Malinin felt the pressure, and it got to him.<\/em><\/p>\n Ilia Malinin reacts after competing in the men\u2019s singles free program. (James Lang-Imagn Images)<\/p>\n From Jay Busbee:<\/em><\/p>\n MILAN \u2014\u00a0Something was wrong from the very start. Something about Ilia Malinin\u2019s free skate Friday seemed tentative, uncertain, so very unlike the \u201cQuad God.\u201d This was his gold-medal moment, and it was slipping away from him.<\/p>\n He landed his first element, a quad flip, but it had the feel of an unexpected success, like a half-court heave that went through the net, rather than the start of a triumphal procession. And then he skated toward his planned quad axel, a move literally only he can land, a move that could have put him on a direct path to the top of the podium.<\/p>\n He flinched \u2026 and was lost.<\/p>\n In one of the most stunning collapses in Olympic figure skating history, Malinin plummeted from a near-certain gold medal all the way to eighth place<\/a>. <\/p>\n Malinin wasn\u2019t the only American feeling the pressure. Maybe nobody was under more than Mikaela Shiffrin, the most accomplished World Cup skier of all-time but one who has <\/em>struggled on the Olympic stage<\/em><\/a>. Early in the Games, <\/em>she let slip a lead in the women\u2019s team ski event<\/em><\/a>, one staked to her by Breezy Johnson, <\/em>the gold medalist in the downhill<\/em><\/a>. After going medal-less four years ago in Beijing, the doubts started to creep in. And then \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n Mikaela Shiffrin celebrartes winning the women’s slalom. (Fei Maohua\/Xinhua via Getty Images)<\/p>\n From Jay Busbee:<\/em><\/p>\n MILAN \u2014\u00a0One of the cruel ironies about the Olympics is that it\u2019s better to be a one-and-done medalist than a win-a-few, lose-a-bunch multi-time Olympian. Beijing blanked Mikaela Shiffrin; she didn\u2019t even finish three of the events she entered. Milan Cortina was a bit kinder \u2014 she at least made it down the mountain in her earlier events, though at underwhelming-for-her speeds.<\/p>\n With every event that passed without hardware, though, the muttering grew louder. Was Shiffrin spooked by the Olympics? Cursed? How could the most decorated World Cup skier in history dominate everywhere else on the calendar except these two weeks every four years?<\/p>\n So that\u2019s why Wednesday\u2019s race was so critical for Shiffrin. Imagine if she\u2019d fallen short yet again. Imagine if her pole had broken, or if she\u2019d caught that first gate, or suffered any of the other hundred woes that would have kept her off the podium. Imagine the questions that would have followed her, the media second-guessing, the social-media garbage, the internal anxieties that would have wracked her for another four years, and maybe for forever.<\/p>\n “There will always be criticism, but I was here to earn the moment and that is going to require some risk,\u201d she said. \u201cRisk of not finishing. It\u2019s also risk of being criticized, and to accept that. (It is) not the easiest thing to do, but in the end today we were able to do that.”<\/p>\n She stared that grim future in the face \u2026 and she flat-out skied right through it.<\/p>\n A little more than 24 hours later, these Olympic Games hit maxim overdrive when, simultaneously, the women of USA and Canada squared off on the ice for gold, while Alysa Liu tried to become the first American women to medal in figure skating in 20 years \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n Gold medalist Alysa Liu celebrates on the podium during the medal ceremony for the women’s single skating. (Tang Xinyu\/VCG via Getty Images)<\/p>\n From Jay Busbee:<\/em><\/p>\n MILAN \u2014 As she skated around the Assago Ice Skating Arena rink, moments before the most important routine of her life, Alysa Liu caught sight of her teammate Amber Glenn near the kiss-and-cry couch. Glenn, devastated after Tuesday night\u2019s program, had skated a spectacular routine of her own nearly two hours before<\/a>. As Liu drew close, she gave Glenn a congratulatory thumbs-up.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d an exasperated Glenn replied. \u201cGo skate!\u201d<\/p>\n So Alysa Liu did. And she won herself a gold medal<\/a>, smiling all the way.<\/p>\n There are no record books to measure such things, but it\u2019s entirely possible that no Olympian has ever smiled as much as Liu did on Thursday night, executing a brilliant, virtually flawless free skate that vaulted her from third place into first. She smiled when she stepped onto the ice, she smiled when she spotted Glenn, she smiled through her lutzes and loops and salchows, she smiled when she pointed her left finger to the sky to close out her routine. And she smiled \u2014 and giggled a triumphant laugh \u2014 when she skated right up to the rinkside camera and bellowed, \u201cThat\u2019s what I\u2019m f***ing talking about!\u201d<\/p>\n That is the entire breadth of the Alysa Liu experience \u2014 giddiness, confidence, joy, serenity \u2014 and gold-medal-winning talent. At an Olympics where so many others have crumbled under the pressure, she literally laughed in pressure\u2019s face.<\/p>\n And then \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n Megan Keller celebrates after scoring the game-winning goal in overtime as Claire Thompson of Team Canada reacts during the women’s gold medal game. (Photo by Bruce Bennett\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n From Jeff Eisenberg:<\/em><\/p>\n MILAN \u2014 Hilary Knight felt the responsibility to speak up.<\/p>\n The previously unbeaten, unchallenged\u00a0 U.S. women\u2019s hockey team was facing real game pressure for the first time at these Olympics, down a goal and running low on time with just one period left in Thursday\u2019s gold-medal match.<\/p>\n \u201cWho\u2019s going to be the hero?\u201d the 36-year-old American captain said. \u201cWe need a hero. There\u2019s a hero in this room.\u201d<\/p>\n Turns out Knight was wrong about one thing . There wasn\u2019t one hero in the U.S. locker room. There was two.<\/em><\/p>\n The U.S. doesn\u2019t take gold and glory without Knight\u00a0giving her team new life with a tying goal with just over two minutes left in regulation, nor without Megan Keller juking a Canadian defender out of her skates to set up the winning goal four minutes into overtime. Those are the plays that made possible a 2-1 gold-medal-clinching, come-from-behind U.S. win.<\/a> Those are the plays that will live on in U.S. women\u2019s hockey lore long after the American victory celebration comes to an end.<\/p>\n Outside of Liu and, no American-born female individual athlete generated more attention than Eileen Gu \u2026 who doesn\u2019t compete for the United States. She skis for China, which has many wondering: Why?<\/em><\/p>\n Eileen Gu, born in San Francisco, decided as a 15-year-old that she would compete in the Olympics for China, where her mother was born. (Photo by Wang Peng\/Xinhua via Getty Images)<\/p>\n From Dan Wolken:<\/em><\/p>\n The answers that many of you seem to want? Sorry, but they\u2019re not coming \u2014 certainly not in a press conference room in the Italian Alps after jumping off a 15-story ramp. They\u2019ll probably never come.<\/p>\n Did she cut a deal with the CCP to keep her American passport, in defiance of Chinese law that does not allow for dual citizenship?<\/p>\n Did the $6.6 million she and another American-born athlete earned from the Beijing Municipal Sports Bureau last year<\/a> \u2014 an amount that was accidentally disclosed on a fiscal report before it was scrubbed from the Internet, according to the Wall Street Journal \u2014 come with unsavory strings attached?<\/p>\n Does she really believe that inspiring Chinese women to participate in winter sports will make women\u2019s lives better under a regime that is embarrassingly far behind most of the modern world in terms of political representation, economic opportunity and rights for domestic abuse victims?<\/p>\n She\u2019s been asked about all these things, many times over many years in many different venues. And as good as she is on the slopes, she\u2019s even better at Never Going There.<\/p>\n \u2026 Here\u2019s the truth: Gu may wear the Five-star Red Flag on her ski suit, but the only entity she truly represents is Eileen Gu, Inc. To present her as anything more than that to fuel American political outrage on social media represents something almost as obnoxious as she is.<\/p>\n But if Eileen Gu is, indeed, all about Eileen Gu, the final gold-medal winners of this Olympics were all about team, and in particular, one member of the team that couldn\u2019t be in Milan. <\/em><\/p>\n After winning gold, Team USA made sure to honor the late Johnny Gaudreau. (Photo by Peter Kneffel\/picture alliance via Getty Images)<\/p>\n From Jay Busbee:<\/em><\/p>\n MILAN \u2014 They gathered on the ice, two dozen of the best hockey players the United States has ever produced, all of them with wide smiles on their faces and gold medals around their necks having just beaten Canada 2-1 in an overtime thriller<\/a>. They carried the American flag with them, but they carried something else, too: a Team USA jersey emblazoned with the No. 13 on the back, the name of Johnny Gaudreau embroidered along the shoulders.<\/p>\nLindsey Vonn goes for it<\/a><\/h2>\n
America, meet Jordan Stolz<\/a><\/h2>\n
\u2018I blew it\u2019<\/a><\/h2>\n
Mikaela Shiffrin gets her mojo back<\/a><\/h2>\n
The happiest Olympian alive<\/a><\/h2>\n
\u2018Who\u2019s going to be the hero?\u2019<\/a><\/h2>\n
Eileen Gu, Inc.<\/a><\/h2>\n
Team USA honors the late Johnny Gaudreau<\/a><\/h2>\n