Winter Olympics 2026: The winners and losers of the Milan Cortina Olympics

MILAN — There’s something endearingly chaotic about the Winter Olympics. This is a collection of sports that could very easily kill you … and also, curling. So it makes sense that the latest installment of the Winter Games would include one scandal involving skating judging, another involving the crotches of uniforms, and a third involving a scrape of a fingernail. These are the Games where several Olympians got engaged … and one blew up his relationship right there on the podium.

It’s time to honor the most (and least) notable performers in the Olympics, the same way we honor the best (and worst) for our American sports back home with our “Winners and Losers” columns. Let’s be honest, though: there aren’t really any “losers” in the Olympics, just people who didn’t quite make the podium. So we’ll change it up a bit here, awarding gold, silver and bronze medals to those who deserve it … and no podium whatsoever for those that don’t.

Now, please bring out the medals and the little stuffed toys …

Gold medal: Alysa Liu

In an Olympics where so many crumbled under the pressure of the rings, Liu laughed … and then went out and snared gold. She’s brought joy and exuberance back to skating, and she might have at least one more Olympics in her to share with the world.

Off the podium: Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo

Kidding! The Norwegian cross country skier entered six events and won six gold medals. At this Olympics! Not only is he on the podium, he is the podium. Everybody else, give him your golds. He’s going to win them from you anyway. He is inevitable.

Gold medal: Nazgul the Dog

Yes, if you or I ran onto an active Olympic cross country race course and started sniffing the skiers, we’d get in a lot of trouble, but Nazgul the dog got nothing but praise. That’s what happens when you’re a very good boy. Bonus: Nazgul didn’t get himself in trouble with any post-race interviews.

Silver: Brittany Bowe

Look, when you get three straight fourth-place finishes in your final Olympics, you damn sure deserve some kind of medal for that, even if it’s a made-up one. At least Bowe left with a ring courtesy of fiancee Hilary Knight, who proposed before the gold medal game. (Wise idea.)

Gold medal: Jordan Stolz

Sure, he tapered off a bit at the end, but wouldn’t you? Two golds and a silver in speed skating is a pretty solid haul. And when your quads are getting compared to Saquon Barkley’s, well, you’re in rare air. Next Olympics, he needs to jump over one of his challengers.

Off the podium: The International Olympic Committee

The IOC has a difficult role trying to thread the needle of creating a competition where the parties involved don’t get too competitive. The Olympics would be a whole lot easier if nations actually carried through on their promise to leave politics out of the Games. The Olympics would also be a whole lot easier if everybody got a participation trophy instead of a gold medal, too. By its own standards of misfiring, this Olympics wasn’t a catastrophic one for the IOC. But the mishandling of the case of a Ukrainian skeleton pilot’s helmet, and the inexplicable decision to sell 1936 Berlin Olympics gear on its website marked two more of the IOC’s self-inflicted black eyes. But with Russia eyeing a full return to the Games, the IOC’s real challenges still lie ahead.

BORMIO, ITALY - FEBRUARY 21: A general view on day fifteen of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic games at Stelvio Alpine Skiing Centre on February 21, 2026 in Bormio, Italy. (Photo by Christophe Pallot/Agence Zoom/Getty Images) — In ski mountaineering, part of the discipline is climbing up … perfectly crafted stairs. (Christophe Pallot/Agence Zoom/Getty Images)

(Christophe Pallot/Agence Zoom via Getty Images)

Silver medal: Ski Mountaineering

What a weird, glorious sport! Skiing uphill, carrying your boots up stairs, skiing downhill! Throw in “waiting in absurdly long lift lines” and “drinking way too much right after you get off the mountain” and you’ve got yourself the full skiing experience! No idea if this sport will stick around or not, but we applaud the Olympics for taking chances with new, strange ideas.

Bronze medal: Amber Glenn

So close. So very, very close. Amber Glenn missed out on a likely medal by a single missed jump in her short program, then rallied in her longer free skate to climb from 13th place all the way up to fifth. It’s one of the real tragedies of the Olympics that once you learn how to handle the pressure of them … you might be out of chances to compete in them.

Gold medal: Liz Lemley

The best Olympic stories are the surprises, the unknowns who leap from nowhere right to the top of the podium. Just 20 years old, Lemley was expected to be good — but not this good, this fast. She claimed gold in the moguls event, outperforming a much deeper, older, more experienced field. Sometimes Olympic pressure is no pressure at all.

Bronze medal: The wayward biathlete

Sturla Holm Lægreid became an instant worldwide sensation/cautionary tale when he decided to use his bronze medal-winning podium interview to confess to cheating on his girlfriend … after three months. “Six months ago, I met the love of my life, the most beautiful, kindest person in the world. And three months ago, I made the biggest mistake of my life and cheated on her, and I told her about it a week ago.” That’s … that’s a whole lot to deal with there, Sturla! Here’s another bronze, maybe you can give it to a third party … we predict you’re going to have some trouble reconnecting with the first two.

Gold medal: Lindsey Vonn

Sure, her 2026 Olympic experience didn’t last very long, and ended in the most painful and churning way possible. But she made it there, she made it onto the top of the mountain, she made it onto the slope — despite her age, despite her injuries, despite a terrible crash just a week before the Opening Ceremony. That’s as Olympian as it gets.

Off the podium: Figure skating judges

One of the traditions about the Olympics is the way that the vast majority of America comes parachuting into a sport with ready-made indignant snap judgments — like, Hey, these figure skating judges sure seem biased! — while the regulars just shake their heads in resignation. Americans raised on football don’t much care for judged sports, but we sure do love to judge the judges. Irony, huh?

Gold medal: The U.S. men’s hockey team

This wasn’t exactly a miracle — Team USA is end-to-end NHL players —- but knocking off Canada 101 seconds into a dramatic 3-on-3 overtime wasn’t exactly a Dream Team-esque romp, either. Plus, the way the Americans honored their fallen friend Johnny Gaudreau at center ice after the win brought tears along with the smiles.

Silver medal: Mikaela Shiffrin

Splitting the difference between her gold medal-winning run and her earlier Olympic missteps. Shiffrin is the world’s greatest skater by the numbers, but Olympics ghosts have lived in her head since 2018. She finally evicted them with her final run of the 2026 Milan Cortina games, a thoroughly dominant gold medal-winning slalom run that reasserted her dominance over the sport.

Bronze medal: Eileen Gu

An award purely for her attitude. Gu has managed to deftly straddle the line between U.S. and Chinese culture with more skill — and more profit-taking — than any other public figure. She can leap right over intrusive questions or condescending presumptions and land with more style than anyone in the room. It’s an impressive show … and that’s very much what it is with Gu, a show.

21 February 2026, Italy, Cortina: Olympia, Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics, view of the city. Photo: Michael Kappeler/dpa (Photo by Michael Kappeler/picture alliance via Getty Images) — (Michael Kappeler/picture alliance via Getty Images)

(picture alliance via Getty Images)

Silver medal: Cortina d’Ampezzo

Cortina made for an absolutely gorgeous tableau for all the mountain sports. The Dolomites were a spectacular backdrop … and a terrifying one, too, when we got a look at the helicopter rescue of Lindsey Vonn. There were logistical problems with buses, of course, and the weather wasn’t always on the Olympics’ side, but still … what a view.

Off the podium: Snoop Dogg

We’re way past the point where it’s weird to see the onetime proponent of smokin’ indo and sippin’ on gin and juice palling around with Martha Stewart. Now, Snoop is just flat-out overexposed, stealing the spotlight from every sport he visits. And he visits every sport.

Gold medal: Alex Ferreira

Yes, the halfpipe legend won a gold medal, validating an entire career. That’s worthy of praise. But he also revealed that he has the finest motivational slogan we’ve ever heard: “I am greatness, and this is my moment.” Perfect.

MILAN, ITALY - FEBRUARY 02: General view of the Olympic rings outside the Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena on day minus four ahead of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics on February 02, 2026 in Milan, Italy. (Photo by Maja Hitij/Getty Images) — General view of the Olympic rings outside the Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena. (Photo by Maja Hitij/Getty Images)

(Maja Hitij via Getty Images)

Bronze medal: Milan

This is the average of two scores: the gold medal for the very small, but very festive area around the Duomo (that giant cathedral you saw in all the background of all those NBC shots) … and the anonymous office-park vibe that smothered the skating and hockey arenas. Much of Milan didn’t even appear to notice the Games were happening. But in the area around the Duomo and the Arco della Pace — the arch where the Olympic flame hung — you could catch a bit of the classic multicultural Olympic vibe.

Silver medal: Curling

Every Olympics, America falls in love with curling … and then forgets all about it right after the torch goes out. It’s a shame, really, because curling is a perfect kind of rec sport — easy to learn, difficult to master, able to be done while drinking beer. The Canadian curling scandal — don’t touch that rock! — elevated the sport this year, but the United States’ struggles on the big stage brought it back down to earth a bit. Can a new curling league tide us all over until 2030?

Off the podium: The Blade Angels hype

Well, that didn’t work out so well. The Blade Angels — Alysa Liu, Amber Glenn and Isabeau Levito — came skating into the Olympics with some observers suggesting they could sweep the podium. That didn’t come close to happening: Liu won gold, but Glenn made a crucial mistake and Levito never really got going. Did NBC (and, uh, other media) hype the Blade Angels too much, or did they underachieve? This is one of those cases where two things can be true at once.

Gold medal: Team USA women’s hockey

American Olympic hockey is in a very, very good place right now. The men are NHL players, and playing up to every bit of their potential. But the women … the women are just flat-out crushing it. When you allow only two goals during the entire Olympics, you’re doing something very right. And an overtime gold medal win over Canada? Are you kidding me?

Bronze medal: The Slovakian criminal who loved hockey too much.

Look, some things are bigger than the law, like fandom. A Slovakian fugitive who’d been on the run from Italian authorities for 16 years over a series of thefts made the ill-fated decision to come to Milan — which is, in fact, in Italy — to watch his team play hockey. Italian authorities nabbed him when he checked into a campsite in Milan. You’ve got to respect the dedication to his team, though. Maybe he can trade this bronze in prison.

Off the podium: Italian Olympic organizers

We get it, planning a full Olympics is hard work. And nobody ever writes about the medals that don’t fall apart. But still … from finishing the hockey arena literal hours before the start of the first game to creating an ice skating medal podium that shredded ice skates, the Italian Olympic organizers had some struggles.

Silver medal: Crotch-gate

No matter how ridiculous you thought the “crotch-gate” scandal involving ski jumping could be, we guarantee you it was better than that. From fake junk to penis injection, this was perhaps the perfect Olympic scandal — hysterical and absurdly well-planned. The only knock is that it blew up a couple years too early; there actually wasn’t any crotch-related skulduggery in the Milan Cortina Olympics. Well, not on the ski jump, at least …

Off the podium: Ilia Malinin, Team USA figure skater

The Olympics are the ultimate test of physical skill, yes, but they’re also a test of mental fortitude, too … which is why it’s not enough just to be the most talented skater in the world for the other three years and 50 weeks between the Games. You’ve got to prove it when the torch is lit … and sadly, world champion Ilia Malinin didn’t get it done in Milan, conceding that Olympic pressure got to him. Maybe he’ll fare better in the French Alps … but he’s got four years to wait.

Gold medal: “Free Bird” and “Country Roads”

A couple of ‘70s classics have found new life as Olympic anthems — “Free Bird” for every time Team USA scored one of its (many) goals, “Country Roads” as the Netherlands won one of its (many) speed-skating medals. There’s a reason why these songs have stuck around … plus, any time playing them is time not playing “Sweet Caroline” or that agonizing “Freed from Desire” song (the Euro-singalong one that goes “Na-na-na-na-na-na-naaaaa”). John Denver forever!

So there you have it, a wrap on the 2026 Winter Olympics. Congratulations to all the medalists, and better luck in the French Alps to everyone else. Next up: Los Angeles 2028!

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