[OLY] Winter Olympics 2026, Milano/Cortina d'Ampezzo

Capt. Factorial

Capt. Factorial

ceterum censeo delendum esse Argentum
Staff member
It's about time for the Winter Olympics to get going, so I figured I'd start a discussion thread.

Unfortunately for us west-coast folks, sports in Italy are timed pretty lousy for us to watch them live. It appears that a typical day is going to start about midnight PST and finish up around noon PST, so if you sleep and/or work you're probably going to be watching just about everything on replay.

I would recommend that discussion of live events be placed in spoilers; discussion of replayed events in U.S. afternoon/prime time is probably OK out in the open as long as the feed has played on the west coast. (I'm not actually sure if prime time broadcasts will be consolidated or if there will be separate east coast/west coast replays...)
 
QWERTYLICIOUS said:
My brother is currently en route to Italy as he was selected to be one of the EM (emergency medicine) physicians for the U.S. Men's (Ice) Hockey team.
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That's super cool! Free admission to some premier events and getting paid to be there. I'm gonna have to root for Canada to win gold in Men's Ice Hockey on account of Celebrini being on the roster, but we have a pretty good national team too (which should have had Jason Robertson on it).
 
I imagine that I feel about the Winter Olympics not unlike the way I hear people talking about the Summer Olympics, in terms of there being sports that you only watch every four years. That doesn't really apply to me for the Summer Games, because I watch track and field every year, I watch swimming every year... and now that this new volleyball league has a TV deal, I've been watching some of that, too. Whereas with the Winter Games, there's no other occasion that I would ever watch, like, curling, or skiing, or bobsled, or speed skating, except at the Olympics.

Hell, I only ever watch hockey at the Olympics, and that's mostly because it's not usually on at times that compete with the NBA for my attention.
 
Breezy Johnson (women's downhill) wins the first medal for United States (and first Gold Medal) in Milan Cortina.
 
I don't like these solo races as much as the ones where they race against other Olympians. Like, I'm watching the men's Luge finals and, it's exciting, but you can't really get the best sense of how fast they're going when they're all alone on the course.
 
Also, I misspoke earlier because I misunderstood initially when I found out...The EM team actually is not specific to the nation (i.e. we don't have our own team of emergency physicians, Canada doesn't have their own team of emergency physicians, etc.). It is a single EM team for the entire event (men's hockey). So he will get to attend most of the men's games, and not just the USA ones.
 
QWERTYLICIOUS said:
Also, I misspoke earlier because I misunderstood initially when I found out...The EM team actually is not specific to the nation (i.e. we don't have our own team of emergency physicians, Canada doesn't have their own team of emergency physicians, etc.). It is a single EM team for the entire event (men's hockey). So he will get to attend most of the men's games, and not just the USA ones.
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That actually makes a lot of sense. Looks like the next 5 days have all of the round robin games for Men's Ice Hockey. I'll have to catch the highlights though, none of them are on in the afternoon when I would have time to watch them.
 
It's crazy how, since the fall of the Soviet Union, only the United States has managed to stay consistently relevant in both the Summer and the Winter Olympics. Like, USA hasn't finished atop the overall medal count at the Winter Games since Vancouver, and hasn't finished at the top of the Gold Medal count since Lake Placid (the first time), but they're consistently in the Top 5, the only nation that is always around there in both the summer and the winter.

Contrast that to Norway, who hasn't finished in the Top 10 at the Summer Games since Paris (in 1924), but has finished first at the Winter Games three times in a row, and has only finished out of the Top 10 twice, ever.
 
Elana Meyers-Taylor and Kailie Humphries (USA) finish 1-3 in women's mono bobsleigh. Laura Nolte (GER) takes silver. Meyers-Taylor ties Bonnie Blair as the most decorated American woman at the Winter Olympics, and finally wins her first career gold.
 
Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara (JPN) win the pairs free skate, the first-ever Gold Medal in this event for Japan.
 
Not exactly Olympics related but while watching ski jumping I asked my partner if she remembered the "agony of defeat" guy (Vinko Bogataj). Turns out in the 90s he was interviewed for a Wide World of Sports segment during another ski jump event and got into a minor automobile crash. First thing he tells the reporter is "every time I am on ABC I crash".

While his best career finish had been 57th prior to the crash, he would go on to coach 1991 World Champion in 1991 Franci Petek. He is apparently still with us today and is also an award winning painter and enjoys wood carving.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1386391807320264707
 
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