At each Olympic Video games, there are winners, and there are lots of extra losers. Dozens of gold, silver, bronze…and an entire bunch of people that stroll away with nothing. Formally, Norway received essentially 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 absolutely seize. Sure, bank card fraud! And people are the bits that are inclined to turn out to be iconic moments in Olympic historical past over time.
Listed below are the winners and losers from this 12 months’s Olympics that we’ll bear in mind endlessly.
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 optimistic doping check and larger questions on abuse within the Russian system. The brand new age requirement was the ISU’s approach of attempting to make the game safer for younger ladies.
Alysa Liu’s gold medal win looks like a step in the suitable path. Liu, skating to Donna Summer season’s iconic rendition of “MacArthur Park,” delivered a efficiency that was equal elements 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 incredible sport, cheering on and comforting fellow medal winners Kaori Sakamoto and Ami Nakai.
Liu herself is a testomony to how brutal determine skating might be. In 2022, after going to the Beijing Video games and inserting sixth, Liu retired on the age of 16. On the time, she stated she wished to go to varsity, hang around together with her siblings, get a driver’s license, and relax 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 concerning the significance of psychological well being 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 once I was on the market on the ice. Nothing may carry me increased than that,” Liu informed NBC in an interview after her win.
And everybody watching may inform.
The Olympics all the time contain some kind of nonsense, shenanigans, and levity. However this 12 months’s Winter Video games have been particular in that the athletes, on high of acting at a excessive stage, have been additionally brokers 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 occurring within the biathlon.
Loser: Canada’s “good” status
This week, the world was shocked upon studying the information that Canadians — lengthy recognized for being good and apologetic individuals — are able to dishonest. And, extra astonishingly, that they might 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 going through within the spherical robin portion of the competitors, introduced Kennedy’s alleged double-touchery to gentle, which Kennedy responded to with a collection of expletives (precise, for actual dangerous phrases):
Regardless of the back-and-forth and after receiving a misconduct warning from World Curling, the game’s governing physique, Crew Canada ended up profitable the gold medal. However, alas, now we all know that Canadians, regardless of how good they’re, will not be a monolith — particularly not ones who curl.
Loser: The US males’s hockey crew
Though they received a momentous and hard-fought gold medal recreation towards chief rival Canada, the US males’s hockey crew and its followers barely bought 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 telephone name from President Donald Trump, inviting them to the State of the Union tackle on February 24. In the course of 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 carry the ladies’s crew,” he stated. “You do know that. I do imagine I’d most likely be impeached.”
The US girls’s hockey crew dominated the Olympics and has been the gold customary for ladies’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 assets and American taxpayer cash, and why he was there within the first place, particularly since there are issues Patel could possibly be tending to stateside (an intruder was shot at Mar-A-Lago on the identical day).
Patel tweeted that he was invited by his associates, 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 associate was banned from the game for six years after a rape investigation and Cizeron’s former associate, Gabriella Papadakis, retired and later alleged that Cizeron had been emotionally abusive to her.
This isn’t the sort 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 “terrible” for the sort of message it sends concerning the sort of abuse the game tolerates behind the scenes.
However there’s additionally the truth that many followers imagine 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 under the judging panel’s common and gave her house nation’s duo roughly 3 factors greater than the typical, ESPN reported. At one level, it appeared like Bates and Chock would possibly problem the outcome, however nothing materialized.
Followers of ice dancing might be left to argue concerning the sport’s transparency and accountability for the subsequent 4 years.
Eileen Gu received 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 some of the worthwhile and recognizable athletes on the 2026 Winter Olympics. As she reminded reporters this previous week, Gu is essentially the most embellished free skier in historical past.
Nevertheless it’s Gu’s determination to signify 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 similar time, extraordinarily good at her sport. She’s the sort 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 signify a unique nation (Gu selected to signify China at 15).
That’s made her particularly incendiary through 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 must be representing the US.
“I definitely assume that someone who grew up in the US of America, who benefited from our training system, from the freedoms and liberties that make this nation an important place, I might hope that they need to compete with the US of America,” Vance informed Fox Information. “So, I’m going to root for American athletes, and I feel a part of that’s individuals who determine themselves as People.”
Gu isn’t the primary American-born athlete to signify a unique nation, however she could be essentially the most profitable. And that appears to be why she’s drawn a lot consideration for the final two Winter Olympics.
“If I wasn’t doing effectively, I feel that they most likely wouldn’t care as a lot, and that’s okay for me. Individuals are entitled to their opinions,” Gu informed 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 assist 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 essential for it.
