MILAN — This winter Olympics was the most spread out in history, with four venues hosting speedskating, hockey and figure skating on the outskirts of the city and the other 12 games of the Games spread out in mountain towns that are difficult to reach for hours.
But those who made the effort to get to the Winter Olympics in Milan Cortina saw the Games remembered by “The King,” crashes, cheating scandals, drones, historic medal hauls and victories for the participating countries.
The US earns a record 12 gold medals
Those twelve golds marked the most ever won by the US in a single Winter Olympics. First-time gold medalists included Elana Meyers Taylor, 41-year-old who won the monobob by four hundredths of a second; Jordan Stolz, 500 and 1000 meter speedskating gold medalist, and Alex Ferreira, 31-year-old freeski halfpipe winner.
US hockey sweeps the gold
With a sweep of hockey gold medals, the US men won the Olympic tournament for the first time since 1980, and the women for the first time since 2018.
With Canada trailing, 1-0, with two minutes left in regulation, captain Hilary Knight, playing in her fifth and final Olympics, sent the gold medal game into overtime. Veteran Megan Keller then scored a thrilling gold goal to earn the US women their third-ever Olympic gold and first since 2018. The win capped a roller-coaster two days for Knight, who had proposed to speedskater Brittany Bowe a day earlier.
The men’s tournament, the first to feature NHL players since 2014, also came down to a Canada-US final that ended with Jack Hughes’ golden goal in overtime.
Amazing results of US figure skating
After the US won the team event – made up of men’s singles, women’s singles, figure skating and ice dance – it looked like the country was on the verge of winning the individual event. It didn’t end like that.
Ilia Malinin, the heavy favorite for the gold medal in the men’s singles, entered the final leading but fell several times and dropped to eighth place in a major upset of the Games. He said the pressure hit him hard.
Madison Chock and Evan Bates, the pair’s favourites, had outstanding performances but were awarded silver after France’s Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron (somewhat controversially) passed them.
The highlight of the Olympics, however, may have been Alysa Liu. The 20-year-old, who retired from figure skating four years ago, played for many years in the women’s singles final and claimed gold when she won on her own terms.
“That’s what I’m——g talking about,” said Liu as he skated after his gold performance.
Norway leads the medal count
Despite having a population of just 5.6 million, the Nordic nation has long been a force in Winter Olympic endurance sports such as skiing and biathlon.
But Norway’s dominance extended to historic levels in Italy, where it led the medal count with 41, making it the first country to win more than 40 medals in a single Winter Olympics. Its six gold medals were won by national skier Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, known as “King Klæbo,” who became the first person to win multiple Winter Games and only the fifth athlete to win more than six golds at any Olympics, joining swimmers Mark Spitz (seven in 1972) (8) O1x Kristin (8) and Kristin Kristin (8) each in 2004 and 2008) and gymnast Vitaly Scherbo (six in 1992).
Lindsey Vonn’s comeback ends in disaster
Forced to retire with injuries in 2019 before returning in 2024, the 41-year-old American skier entered the Olympics enjoying the healthiest season he could remember.
That changed less than a week before the women’s downhill began, when she tore a hamstring in an accident. Determined to compete in the brace despite the injury, Vonn qualified for the downhill final with one of the fastest times in the entire field. But just 13 seconds into the run, he connected the gate with his right arm and was sent into the snow, on the ice, in a crash that left the Cortina d’Ampezzo crowd full of friends and family in silence. He has had five surgeries, his father said he does not want him to run again.
Johnson and Shiffrin won skiing gold
In the same downhill race where Vonn crashed, her US teammate Breezy Johnson cut down Tofane’s treacherous course to join Vonn as the only other woman in US history to win Olympic downhill gold. In the combined Alpine skiing team event, Johnson and teammate Mikaela Shiffrin finished fourth, while Americans Paula Moltzan and Jackie Wiles – less than a year removed from surviving a plane crash – took bronze.
Johnson will end the Games on a happy note after her boyfriend proposed in the giant slalom competition. Shiffrin, who hasn’t won an Olympic medal since 2018, had a heartbreaking end to the Games by dominating the slalom gold.
Ukrainian athlete banned from racing
Vladyslav Heraskevych planned to compete with a skeleton while wearing a helmet with pictures of Ukrainian athletes killed since Russia invaded the country in 2022. But the helmet did not comply with the “athlete presentation guidelines” of the International Olympic Committee, said the IOC, and the judge of the International Bobsletingskeigh Federation and S Herades. His refusal to wear another helmet was due to his belief that there are things “more important than medals,” he said.
Trump calls American athlete a ‘failure’
When asked how he feels about representing the US, freeski athlete Hunter Hess responded that “just because I wear the flag, it doesn’t mean I represent everything that happens in the US” That quickly caught the attention of President Donald Trump, who took to social media to call Hess a “failure.” The attention the comments generated was “challenging” to deal with, Hess later said, but he stood by his words and flashed an “L” sign after finishing the race, a self-conscious nod to Trump’s comments.
“I love the United States of America,” Hess said. “I can’t say enough. My first statement, I felt like I said it, but obviously people didn’t take it that way.”
Italy is enjoying its best ever Winter Olympics
Prior to these Games, the high water mark of Italy’s success at the Winter Olympics came in 1994, when the Azzurri won 20 medals, including seven golds.
On home soil this month, the team’s host country beat those marks, earning 30 medals, the third most of any country, and 10 golds. Speedskater Francesca Lollobrigida won the 3,000 meters in an Olympic record on her 35th birthday, and she celebrated with her 2-year-old son. He added another gold later in the Games. After a year with a serious leg injury, Federica Brignone won gold in the giant slalom. And speedskater Arianna Fontana won her 14th Olympic medal.
Cheating admits and suspects
Norwegian skier Sturla Holm Lægreid’s emotional admission in a postrace interview that he cheated on his girlfriend and hoped to win her back soon made him one of the most talked about athletes at the Olympics. “I hope it’s a community suicide [like this] he might show him how much I love him,” he said.
However, Lægreid was not the only athlete caught up in the cheating scandal. On the ice, Canada and Sweden got into a heated match after the Swedes accused Canada’s Marc Kennedy of two illegal touches during the curling game.
Kennedy could be heard swearing at the Swedish team. When asked why he was so angry, Kennedy said: “He’s still accusing us of cheating, and I didn’t like it, so I told him where he should stick, because we’re not the right team to do that.”
You’ve never seen an Olympics like this
For the first time, an athlete representing South America won a medal at the Winter Olympics. That was thanks to Lucas Pinheiro Braathen, the Oslo-born slalom giant who once represented Norway, retired from the sport, and returned to the Brazilian flag, where his mother was raised.
Skiers like Pinheiro Braathen have been captured throughout the Olympics from unprecedented camera angles by small, worn-out drones that follow athletes at speeds of up to 75 mph. Focused views of athletes running down the slopes, skating courses and speedskating tracks were a hit with viewers.
