Every two years or so, I pay attention to sports, because that’s when the Olympics roll around. Having long ago lost all interest in mainstream American ball fondling, the opening weekend of the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics had everything a casual spectacle hound like myself could want from the games: Stadium-spanning production numbers, humanist values, extreme speed, heartbreak, and lame commentary.
I view the Olympic opening ceremonies as one of the premiere outlets for avant garde theater and dance, and while it’s impossible to top the 2024 Paris summer games for sheer unhinged weirdness, the Italians did not disappoint. When I saw the dancers dressed as espresso makers, I made the chef’s kiss gesture towards my TV.
The summer games have the longest pedigree and the most accessible events: Who can run the fastest? Who can jump the highest? Who can throw a heavy metal frisbee the farthest? The winter games have a harder edge: Who can survive this icy death plunge? Take this gun on your cross-country ski trip and see how many targets you can hit. Here are all the ways your whimsical ice dance is inadequate.
The brutality was evident during the opening weekend. During the qualifying round of the women’s freeski slopestyle, a newish event heavily influenced by skateboarding, most of the competitors couldn’t complete the course upright. The skiathlon competitors repeatedly climbed a snowy slope the size of a 10-story building. The first luge runs were so close, 0.8 seconds separated the leader from 15th place. In the speed skating arena, records were falling left and right.
Italian skater Francesca Lollobrigida came from behind to set an Olympic record in front of a delirious hometown crowd. It was her 35th birthday. In the men’s 5000m speed skating event, Norwegian Sander Eitrem demolished the previous Olympic record. His Italian opponent also beat the previous Olympic record, but didn’t even win his own race. A split screen showed the elation of snowboarder Su Yiming and the pain of snowboarder Ollie Martin as the Chinese athlete denied the American a medal in the big air event; Martin later revealed that he was competing with a broken arm.
The saga of American skier Lindsey Vonn produced the most gut-wrenching moments of opening weekend. The 41-year-old was going to retire after a distinguished career that included five World Cup titles and becoming the first American woman to win a gold medal in the downhill event, but she decided to return for one more Olympics to ski the historic Cortina course. Despite tearing an ACL in training, she was in third place after the qualifying run. On race day, American Breezy Johnson opened with a run that one of NBC’s commentators called the best he had ever seen. With the broadcast team hyping her return, Vonn looked stiff in warmups. At race time she roared out of the gate, only to wipe out seconds into her run. NBC’s state-of-the-art high-speed cameras captured her pinwheeling down the mountain from multiple angles. The crowd gasped and grew silent as Vonn’s screams of agony echoed across the mountainside. She ended her skiing career being airlifted from the slope with a broken leg.
Broadcasting the Olympics is the most gargantuan feat in television production, and the games have never looked better. The Dolomite Mountains of northern Italy are spectacular from every angle, and the addition of high-speed camera drones, derived from weapons refined on Ukrainian battlefields, have brought breathtaking new depth to the skiing and snowboarding events.
Unfortunately, NBC’s editorial choices have not lived up to the operation’s technical perfection. When Vice President JD Vance was roundly booed during the opening ceremonies, NBC cut the footage from their primetime coverage. After freestyle skier Hunter Hess said he only represented “the things that I believe are good about the U.S.,” President Trump called him a “loser.” Snowboarders Chloe Kim and Eileen Gu spoke up to defend Hess. The Olympics aims to unite humanity, but even high in the snowy Dolomites, there’s no escape from America’s national meltdown.
The 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics is broadcasting on NBC and streaming on Peacock through February 22nd.