2026 Winter Olympics opening weekend recap

Here’s a look at the athletes who have won medals at the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympic Games:

Alpine Skiing

Men’s downhill

🥇Franjo von Allmen, Switzerland

🥈Giovanni Franzoni, Italy

🥉Dominik Paris, Italy

Women’s downhill

🥇Breezy Johnson, United States

🥈Emma Aicher, Germany

🥉Sofia Goggia

Men’s team combined

🥇Switzerland (Franjo von Allmen, Tanguy, Nef)

🥈Austria (Vincent Kreichmayr, Manuel Feller)

🥉Switzerland (Marco Odermatt, Loic Meillard)

Biathlon

Mixed relay (4x6 kilometer)

🥇France (Eric Perrot, Quentin Fillon Maillet, Lou Jeanmonnot, Julia Simon)

🥈Italy (Tommaso Giacomel, Luka Hofer, Dorothea Wierer, Lisa Vittozzi)

🥉Germany (Justus Strelow, Philipp Nawrath, Vanessa Voigt, Franziska Preuss)

Cross-country skiing

Women’s skiathlon

🥇Frida Karlsson, Sweden

🥈Ebba Andersson, Sweden

🥉Heidi Weng, Norway

Men’s skiathlon

🥇Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, Norway

🥈Mathis Desloges, France

🥉Martin Loewstroem Nyenget, Norway

Figure skating

Team competition

🥇United States

🥈Japan

🥉Italy

Freestyle skiing

Women’s freeski slopestyle

🥇Mathilde Gremaud, Switzerland

🥈Eileen Gu, China

🥉Megan Oldham, Canada

Luge

Men’s singles

🥇Max Langenhan, Germany

🥈Jonas Mueller, Austria

🥉Dominik Fischnaller, Italy

Ski jumping

Women’s normal hill

🥇Anna Odine Stroem, Norway

🥈Nika Prevc, Slovenia

🥉Nozomi Maruyama, Japan

Men’s normal hill

🥇Philipp Raimund, Germany

🥈Kacper Tomasiak, Poland

🥉Ren Nikaido, Japan

🥉Gregor Deschwanden, Switzerland

Snowboarding

Women’s parallel giant slalom

🥇Zuzana Maderova, Czechia

🥈Sabine Payer, Austria

🥉Lucia Dalmasso, Italy

Men’s parallel giant slalom

🥇Benjmain Karl, Austria

🥈Sangkyum Kim, South Korea

🥉Tervel Zamfirov, Bulgaria

Women’s big air

🥇Kokomo Murase, Japan

🥈Zoi Sadowski Synnott, New Zealand

🥉Seungeun Yu, South Korea

Men’s big air

🥇Kira Kimura, Japan

🥈Ryoma Kimata, Japan

🥉Yiming Su, China

Speedskating

Women’s 3,000 meters

🥇Francesca Lollobrigida, Italy

🥈Ragne Wiklund, Norway

🥉Valerie Maltais, Canada

Men’s 5,000 meters

🥇Sander Eitrem, Norway

🥈Metodej Jilek, Czechia

🥉Riccardo Lorello

Women’s 5,000 meters

🥇Jutta Leerdam, Netherlands

🥈Femke Kok, Netherlands

🥉Miho Takagi, Japan

Tuesday’s live TV and streaming broadcasts unless noted (subject to change). All events stream live on Peacock or NBCOlympics.com with a streaming or cable login. All times Pacific. 🏅 — medal event for live broadcasts.

MULTIPLE SPORTS

8 p.m. — “Primetime in Milan” (delay) — Figure skating, skiing, cross-country skiing, curling, luge and more | NBC

ALPINE SKIING

1:30 a.m. — Women’s combined, downhill | USA

4:50 a.m. — 🏅Women’s combined, slalom | USA

MILAN — Brittany Bowe will not leave her last 1,000-meter race on Olympic ice with a medal. She’ll take something more valuable.

“What makes this more special than anything is having my mom, my dad, my sister, up there in the stands cheering for me,” said Bowe, who finished fourth in her strongest speedskating event Monday at Milano Speed Skating Stadium. “Win, lose, draw, they’re going to be cheering for me just as much, and to have them out there after not having anyone in Beijing, really puts everything into perspective that it’s so much bigger than just that one moment out there.”

Flag bearer Yelyzaveta Sydorko leads Team Ukraine in the athletes’ parade during the opening ceremony of the Milan-Cortina Olympics on Friday in Milan.

(Sarah Stier / Getty Images)

MILAN — Ukraine’s sports minister decried actions by the International Olympic Committee that his government says indicate the body may soon ease restrictions against Russian athletes, allowing them to once again represent their country in future Olympic Games.

At the Milan Cortina Olympics, 13 Russians are competing as “Individual Neutral Athletes,” meaning they cannot wear any Russian symbols and won’t hear the Russian national anthem if they win a gold medal. Athletes from Russian ally Belarus face the same limits.

Matvii Bidnyi, Ukraine’s minister of youth and sports, told The Associated Press in an interview Sunday in Milan that any change would be “irresponsible” and appear to condone Russia’s invasion as the war’s fourth anniversary approaches.

“It looks like you want to legitimize this evil,” Bidnyi said, referring to supporters of bringing Russia back into the Games. “We must keep this pressure until this war ends.”

The IOC took a step toward relaxing policy on Russia in December when it advised sports bodies to allow Russian youth athletes to participate with their flag and anthem ahead of the IOC’s own Youth Olympics later this year. Russia has consistently pushed for a full lifting of restrictions.

In response, Russian fencers have been competing this year in junior events under the Russian flag. But the biggest change so far came Friday, when swimming body World Aquatics dropped its restrictions on Russian youth and junior athletes.

Asked Monday whether it is considering further steps to allow Russian participation ahead of the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, the IOC referred the AP to a December statement following the Olympic Summit in Switzerland.

The summit’s participants “reaffirmed that athletes have a fundamental right to access sport across the world, and to compete free from political interference or pressure from governmental organizations,” the statement said.

While new IOC President Kirsty Coventry has not specifically addressed Russian athletes at these Games, earlier this month she used her keynote speech ahead of the Milan Cortina Games to reiterate a renewed focus on sports, less so on engaging in politics. Coventry’s predecessor Thomas Bach oversaw the system allowing Russian athletes to compete as neutral individuals.

“We are a sports organization,” Coventry said Feb. 3, calling sports the IOC’s core priority. “We understand politics and we know we don’t operate in a vacuum. But our game is sport.”

Sports sanctions are an important negotiating tool for Ukraine, Bidnyi said, as Russia takes pride in its history of athletic prowess and has long used its success in sport for propaganda. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday said the U.S. has given Ukraine and Russia a June deadline to reach a peace deal.

As the frigid Ukrainian winter drags on, Russian airstrikes continue to hammer the power grid. Ukraine is struggling with blackouts that have kept millions in the dark and without heat amid freezing temperatures. When generators are deployed, Bidnyi said they’re not used to power sports venues so athletes can practice.

“You must make a choice before keeping ice arenas or, for example, give electricity to the families in houses,” he said.

Russian athletes haven’t competed under their country’s flag at a Winter Olympics since 2014, when Russia hosted a doping-tainted Games in Sochi.

Over years of legal battles, fallout from those drug cases meant Russians had to compete in Pyeongchang in 2018 as “Olympic Athletes from Russia” and in Beijing in 2022 under the team name of just “ROC” — so that it wouldn’t have the words Russia or Olympic — both times without the national anthem.

The World Anti-Doping Agency still lists Russia’s national testing body as “non-compliant” and says it can’t visit Russia for in-person checks on its performance.

Russia denied the state was complicit in doping.

Many sports barred Russian athletes from competing as part of the diplomatic fallout after Russian troops moved into Ukraine four days after the last Winter Olympics in 2022. Ahead of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, the International Olympic Committee gradually opened up paths for athletes from Russia and its ally Belarus to qualify with neutral status.

Fifteen Russians competed as neutral athletes in Paris, winning their only medal in tennis. They were not allowed to parade as a delegation in either Games’ opening ceremony.

Coventry and the IOC have come under increasing pressure to put similar restrictions on athletes from Israel following the war in Gaza.

At present, Russian athletes are ineligible for neutral status from the IOC if under contract with Russian or Belarusian security agencies or the military, or if they have expressed support for Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Ukrainian officials have disputed whether some of those Russians competing in Olympic qualifiers truly meet the neutral restrictions.

Most winter sports bodies have allowed Russians to compete in such qualifiers in recent weeks, amid a series of legal defeats for policies banning Russian athletes.

War has taken a heavy toll on Ukrainian sport. Athletes were displaced or called up to fight. Soccer matches are often interrupted by air raid sirens so attendance is capped by bomb shelter capacity. Elite skaters, skiers and biathletes usually train abroad, with attacks and frequent blackouts shuttering local facilities.

Nevertheless, Ukraine has managed to bring 46 athletes to Milan Cortina. They range from Kyrylo Marsak, the country’s lone figure skater in Milan, to six cross-country skiers and 10 biathletes.

They aim to send an important message to Russia and the rest of the world, Bidnyi said.

“We have the opportunity to raise our flag to show that Ukraine is resilient, Ukraine is still in power,” he said. “We have a will to win and we continue to be one of the most successful sport teams in the world because success in sports always was a part of the Ukrainian national brand.”

MILAN — On the same day Amber Glenn won Olympic gold as part of the team event, and stepped away from social media due to backlash over her comments on politics and the LGBTQ+ community, the American figure skater ended up with another headache.

Canadian artist Seb McKinnon, who produces music under the name CLANN, took to social media late Sunday to object to the use of his song “The Return,” which Glenn had used in her free skate — and has been using for the past two years without issue.

“So just found out an Olympic figure skater used one of my songs without permission for their routine. It aired all over the world ... what? Is that usual practice for the Olympics?” McKinnon posted to X, shortly after the team competition had ended.

Figure skaters are required to obtain permission for the music they use, but that process is hardly straightforward.

Sometimes the label or record producer owns the copyright, other times the artist themselves, and often there are multiple parties involved. Skaters sometimes will piece together different cuts of music, too. Throw in third-party companies such as ClicknClear that try to smooth out the permission process, and the entire copyright issue becomes murky and nuanced.

According to McKinnon, “The deal I have with my label is that I alone can give the OK to license my music.” McKinnon later said that he’d be looking into the situation, but did congratulate Glenn: “And plus she won Gold??? Huge congratz,” he posted.

Glenn was not available for comment on the music issue Monday. She planned to take the day off from training and then depart Milan to practice elsewhere ahead of the individual women’s event, which begins Feb. 17 with the short program.

Messages left by The Associated Press with U.S. Figure Skating about Glenn’s copyright problem were not returned.

The issue is not the first bit of controversy involving Glenn at the Milan Cortina Games.

The outspoken LGBTQ+ rights activist said she received threats on social media after saying during a pre-Olympics press conference that the queer community is going through a “hard time” amid the political climate under President Donald Trump.

“I was disappointed because I’ve never had so many people wish me harm before, just for being me and speaking ‍about being decent — human rights and decency,” Glenn said Sunday night, wearing an LGBTQ+ pin on her team jacket during the team medal ceremony.

“So that was really disappointing,” Glenn added, “and I do think it kind of lowered that excitement for this.”

Copyrights never used to be a problem in figure skating because the International Skating Union barred any music involving vocals, and most classical music is considered public domain. But when those rules were relaxed in 2014, and modern music began to be used, artists soon demanded that they receive compensation for their work.

It all came to a head at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, when one of the indie artists who covered “House of the Rising Sun” objected to its use by American pairs skaters Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier. The ensuing lawsuit prompted the ISU to step in and try to develop systems that would help skaters avoid copyright infringement claims.

“It’s never been an issue and then suddenly it is, and I don’t understand why,” Glenn told the AP ahead of the Winter Games. “I understand there was a big upset at the last Olympics because some artist — I’m sorry, they decided to be (jerks). Like, they couldn’t just appreciate this Olympic team competing? It wasn’t even their song to begin with; it was a cover.

“It’s not like we’re a TV show and playing music in the background for an emotional scene. It just feels like a cash grab for different companies, and it’s really upsetting that they can’t just appreciate that their music has inspired something creative.”

Justin Dillon, the director of high performance for U.S. Figure Skating, said the governing body has tried to help its skaters avoid any copyright claims. It is unclear whether the organization played any role in getting Glenn’s music approved.

Numerous fans and even fellow skaters have been quick to rush to the American’s defense.

“I’d be so honored that someone wants to skate to my music and give the music some amazing exposure,” said retired Canadian pairs skater Meagan Duhamel, a two-time Olympian and three-time medalist. “I used a piece of music for the 2018 Olympics and the artist was so excited she flew to the Olympics to listen and watch it live.”

After Nathan Chen won gold at the Beijing Games with a free skate set to “Rocket Man,” Elton John effusively praised the American for his performance. Chen later collaborated with the musical legend for a music video to a version of “Hold Me Closer.”

“We really rely on our music,” said Alysa Liu, part of the gold medal-winning U.S. team. “Without music, we’re not really our sport.”

Korey Dropkin and Cory Thiesse guaranteed the U.S. its first Olympic medal in mixed doubles curling, reaching the final Monday with a 9-8 victory over Italy.

Dropkin, of Massachusetts, and Thiesse, who is from Minnesota, whooped and hollered after edging the hosts, hugging tightly.

The Americans will play Swedish siblings Isabella and Rasmus Wrana, who upset the British duo of Jennifer Dodds and Brett Mouat 9-3 in the other semifinal.

Dodds and Mouat, best friends who grew up curling together, entered the field as favorites and were widely expected to be in the final.

Sweden’s brother-and-sister team are curling together after growing up as rivals. Sweden won bronze in mixed doubles in 2022

In a curling match, two teams compete to see which can get the most granite stones closest to a bullseye target called the tee by sliding them along a narrow sheet of ice.

The distance between where a player must release the stone and the tee at the other end is about 93 feet (28 meters).

The sheet is only 5 meters (16.4 feet) wide and both teams’ stones accumulate every round, so it gets crowded.

Each round, for up to 10 rounds, teams have eight chances to slide the specialized 44-pound (20 kg) stones toward the tee. They can aim directly for the center, try to knock their opponents’ stones away or nudge their own stones closer to the target. Strategies include blocking and take-outs.

CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy — Lindsey Vonn’s downhill run lasted 13 seconds. The question of whether she should have been racing at all with a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament will be debated for years.

The legendary 41-year-old ski racer, whose violent crash resulted in her being airlifted off the course and in surgery hours later Sunday with a complex tibia fracture that will require multiple surgeries, broke her silence late Monday night.

BORMIO, Italy — Swiss skiers Franjo von Allmen and Tanguy Nef stormed back to win gold in the team combined Monday as the event made its Olympic debut at the Milan Cortina Games.

In fourth place after von Allmen’s downhill run, Nef found speed on a rutted slalom course to help the Swiss-2 team finish in a combined time of 2 minutes, 44.04 seconds. The Swiss-1 team of Marco Odermatt and Loic Meillard tied for silver with the Austrian-1 team of Vincent Kriechmayr and Manuel Feller. Both teams finished 0.99 seconds behind.

No bronze medal was awarded as a result of two teams finishing in a tie for silver.

The team combined event involves one racer competing in a downhill run and another in a slalom, with their two times added up to determine the final results.

New partner, same results for von Allmen. He won gold at world championships last February by uniting with Meillard. This time, he had Nef, who turned in a sensational run on a warm day along the Stelvio course. It’s the second gold medal for von Allmen, who won the Olympic downhill title over the weekend.

Nef had to make up a 0.42-second deficit on a course that was growing bumpier and bumpier. He did and von Allmen met him in the finish area to celebrate.

Giovanni Franzoni, the silver medalist in the downhill, had Italy-1 in first place after the opening run. But Alex Vinatzer, the last racer on the course, struggled to settle into a rhythm and they fell to sixth.

The Swiss swept gold, silver and bronze in the men’s team combined at the world championships last February.

In the women’s event slated for Tuesday, Mikaela Shiffrin and Breezy Johnson will pair up. They combined to win the event at worlds. Johnson is the reigning Olympic downhill champion after winning Sunday.

Italy’s goalkeeper Gabriella Durante makes a save on a shot by Japan’s Yumeka Wajima during a Winter Olympics match in Milan on Monday.

(Petr David Josek / Associated Press)

MILAN — Host nation Italy secured a place in the quarterfinals of the Olympic women’s hockey tournament for the first time by beating Japan 3-2 on Monday.

Italy improved to 2-1, with one game left against Germany, and is guaranteed one of the three quarterfinal spots in Group B, where the five lower-ranked teams play.

“I think this is everybody’s dream coming true,” Italy’s Canada-born goalie Gabriella Durante said. “Hopefully this just grows hockey in Italia that much more for little girls all over the country.”

Matilde Fantin scored the first two goals, giving Italy a 2-0 lead after the first period.

After Rui Ukita scored for Japan in the second period, Italy responded with Kristin Della Rovere scoring in the third. Akane Shiga’s goal in the third period, confirmed after a lengthy video review to check the puck had crossed the line, kept the pressure on Italy.

Italy’s players poured off the bench at the buzzer to hug Durante, who made 27 saves.

“We had so many people blocking shots and dumping pucks in, just hard work that hurts the body,” she said. “Everybody’s willing to sacrifice for the family and it’s really an amazing feeling to win like that.”

Italy is making just its second Olympic appearance — both as the host team — and lost all four outings at the 2006 Turin Games, finishing last among the eight-team field.

Later Monday, the United States seeks its third win against Switzerland and Canada aims to improve to 2-0 against Czechia. Germany plays France.

LIVIGNO, Italy — Mathilde Gremaud successfully defended her Olympic freeski slopestyle title and denied Eileen Gu a gold medal for a second straight Winter Games.

Gremaud won Monday’s final with a score of 86.96 from the best of her three jumps, while Gu again took silver behind her Swiss rival with her best effort of 86.58.

Gu needed a huge score on her final run when she had one last chance to better Gremaud, but that run barely lasted. Gu skittered off the first rail and toppled to her side, dashing her title hopes.

Knowing she had locked up the gold after Gu fell, Gremaud tied a Swiss flag around her neck and wore it like a cape as she cruised down the course on her victory lap. After coming off the course, she embraced her teammates to celebrate her fourth career Olympic medal. Nearby, ecstatic supporters waved Swiss flags.

Gremaud, who turned 26 the day before the final, has now beaten Gu twice in Olympic finals by the slightest of margins: 0.33 points in 2022, and 0.38 in 2026.

Strong as Gremaud was in the jumps, Gu was undone by the railing section at the start of her run.

Gu led after the first of three runs when she nailed her routine, but Gremaud laid down her winning run on her second go to move to the top of the points table. Gu then wobbled off the rail on her second run; even though she kept her balance, but the mistake resulted in a low score.

That same rail section had caused Gu to fall during Saturday’s qualifying, when she had to execute perfectly on a second go to advance to the final.

But when it mattered most on Monday and Gu had her last shot to snatch a win, the result was the same: Just seconds into her run she went tipping off the rail and tumbled in the snow.

Gu, who was born in America but competes for China, became a global star at the 2022 Beijing Games where she won three medals, including gold in freeski halfpipe and big air. She will now turn to defending her titles at these Games.

Gremaud’s medal chest includes a silver in slopestyle from the 2018 Winter Games and a bronze in big air from 2022. She is also a two-time world champion in slopestyle in 2025 and 2023, among other titles.

In slopestyle, skiers perform acrobatic tricks while skiing over rails and jumps that are judged for difficulty and execution. The Livigno course consists of three rail sections followed by three jumps. The best score of the three jumps counts.

MILAN — Figure skater Amber Glenn didn’t even get the chance to try to qualify for the 2022 U.S. Olympic team because she tested positive for COVID-19. Clearly, that sticks with her.

This time around, with the American preparing to contend for an individual medal at the Milan Cortina Winter Games next week, she is relying on “an insane amount of hand sanitizer” — defined by Glenn as “a handbag-full” — to make sure that sort of thing doesn’t sideline her again.

She and other athletes whose Beijing Olympics were waylaid by the pandemic four years ago are still dealing with those memories and those worries.

“We have certain B vitamins, vitamin C, that kind of stuff, that’s cleared with the (U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee), that we take. Anything that will keep me from getting sick, I’m like, ‘Give it to me now!’ I’m drinking all these green juices,” said Glenn, a 26-year-old from Plano, Texas, who is the first woman to claim three consecutive U.S. Figure Skating titles since Michelle Kwan two decades ago.

“When you’re in such a high-tense environment, and everybody is sweating, and unfortunately snot is going everywhere, and everyone is so stressed, there’s so much happening,” Glenn said. “And then our bodies come down, and our minds come down, and we’re very vulnerable.”

Speedskater Casey Dawson missed the opening ceremony four years ago and then skipped his first event, the 5,000 meters, because he contracted COVID before he was supposed to fly to China.

“Tested positive for 50 straight tests,” said Dawson, a 25-year-old from Park City, Utah. “Showed up 12 hours before my 1,500 meters.”

Like Glenn, he’s been opting for generous helpings of vitamins and dusting off his masks, which were so ubiquitous at the last Winter Olympics. After finishing eighth in the 5,000 in Milan on Sunday, he’s also planning to enter the 10,000 on Friday, the team pursuit and the 1,500.

“Taking the right precautions,” Dawson said. “We’ve learned a lot since the COVID pandemic.”

Seems as though it was long ago, in some regards.

Yet it’s also fresh in the minds of Dawson, Glenn and others, even if there aren’t the constant reminders that there were back then: the uncomfortable nose and throat swabs, the quarantines or, in the words of Owen Power, a member of Canada’s 2022 men’s hockey team, “People walking around in hazmat suits, coming in and cleaning your room.”

The athletes who made it to Beijing and Milan are well aware of the differences.

“This is a lot less stressful,” said American ice dancer Evan Bates, who along with Madison Chock is favored for gold in ice dancing. Thinking back to China, Bates said: “There was so much uncertainty.”

In hopes of eliminating some unknowns, U.S. biathlon athletes are working with the University of Utah to track heart rates, fatigue and other data to “really catch the illness before it affects the team,” explained biathlete Chloe Levins, who got COVID at the start of the 2022 Olympic season and was sidelined from November until March.

This new program is not for COVID, specifically; Levins called it “illness mitigation.” She and teammates will get $3 for each survey providing the requested information.

Some, such as speedskating star Jordan Stolz, actually were pleased to deal with ailments like a head cold ahead of the trip to Italy. The 21-year-old Stolz got sick just before last month’s U.S. Olympic trials in his home state of Wisconsin and, he said, it contributed to a surprising fall he took in the 1,000 meters.

“It’s nice,” Stolz said then, “that I can get sick now and hopefully not get sick later.”

Glenn, the figure skater, harbored a similar thought when she came down with the flu in December.

“I was like, ‘OK, we’re good. Antibodies. Great!’” she recalled.

Then there are others, such as American short track speedskater Kristen Santos-Griswold, who went through the 2022 Games and everything they entailed away from the ice. While she’s aware of the sorts of things that can help her stay healthy in 2026, she opted to be a tad less strict.

“I’m keeping up with hygiene and all of that, (but) I’m not trying to go too overboard,” said Santos-Griswold, “because I think that’s the kind of thing that can also drive you crazy.”

MILAN — Chloe Kim is prepared to defend her Olympic title, even with one healthy shoulder.

When the halfpipe superstar tore her labrum in her left shoulder in training a month ago, her hopes of becoming the first person to win three consecutive Olympic snowboarding gold medals were in jeopardy. But she said during a news conference in Livigno, Italy, on Monday that she got back on her board about two weeks ago and her shoulder is “feeling good.”

MILAN — Believe in the Quad God.

Ilia Malinin saved the United States with a gutsy and gritty free skate Sunday to win the country’s second consecutive Olympic team figure skating gold medal at the Milan-Cortina Olympic Games. His program scored 200.03 points and edged out Shun Sato’s season-best 194.86 for Japan and sealed a 69-68 victory for the United States.

After Amber Glenn fought through a shaky free program that finished third and lost the United States’ two-point lead, Malinin knew he would be the tiebreaker for the first figure skating medal of these Olympics.

MILAN — Mikaela Shiffrin has generally let her performances do the talking during a career that has seen her win two Olympic titles and more World Cup races than any skier in history.

But she clearly had something more to say before taking the slopes for the first time in the Milan-Cortina Winter Games.

“I actually have some thoughts,” she said when asked by a reporter how she felt about representing the U.S. at a time when the country is riven by deep political divides. “I can read something that I have written if you guys don’t mind.”

MILAN — The Ducks’ Lukas Dostal was in a rush to get to the Olympics. Earlier this week, the Czech goaltender became the first NHL player to take the ice for practice with his national team.

“What would I do in Anaheim, shoot the puck to the boards and try to stop it myself? It probably wouldn’t really work,” Dostal said.

He is no longer alone.

The rest of the players from the best hockey league in the world arrived in Milan on Sunday. Sweden was the first of the teams made up of almost exclusively NHL talent to take the ice for practice at Milano Santagiulia Arena, with the U.S., Czech Republic, Canada and Finland to follow.

Along with Dostal, about a dozen others arranged transportation to get to Italy before the five charter planes from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport that arrived Sunday morning. That group included Canada’s Connor McDavid, Germany’s Leon Draisaitl, Czechia’s David Pastrnak and a quartet of Americans.

“Really cool just to be around all the athletes,” McDavid told TSN in a brief interview after meeting up with the rest of his Canada teammates. “Special to be here.”

Charlie McAvoy, Zach Werenski, Jake Oettinger and Jeremy Swayman marched in the opening ceremony with the rest of the U.S. delegation at San Siro stadium, as did Switzerland’s Nico Hischier, Timo Meier and Jonas Siegenthaler. Draisaitl and Pastrnak were among the seven men’s hockey players who served as their nation’s flag bearer.

This is the first Olympics with NHL players in a dozen years, dating to Sochi in 2014. The league opted not to participate in 2018, and pandemic-related scheduling issues caused an eleventh-hour change of plans in 2022.

That gap means an entire generation of stars, including McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, Auston Matthews and Jack Eichel, have never represented their country on this international stage. This is the first so-called best-on-best tournament since the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, but even that had a couple of made-up teams — North Americans 23-and-under and then Europeans from various countries not included — to keep McDavid and MacKinnon from playing with two-time gold medalists Sidney Crosby, Drew Doughty and others.

A few hours before practice, Hockey Canada announced the obvious that Crosby would again wear the “C” as captain. McDavid and Cale Makar are the alternates.

“Connor and Cale, along with our entire group, provide incredible leadership, and I am happy to represent Canada together on the same team,” Crosby said.

Sweden named Gabriel Landeskog captain, as expected, with Victor Hedman and Erik Karlsson the alternates. Landeskog and Karlsson are among the four Swedes who also played in the 2014 Olympics, along with Oliver Ekman-Larsson and injury replacement Marcus Johansson.

Whyno writes for the Associated Press.

ANTERSELVA, Italy — France dominated the second half of the mixed relay biathlon race at the Milan Cortina Olympics on Sunday with fast skiing and strong shooting to take gold ahead of Italy and Germany.

Julia Simon hit her final five targets and left the range alone, taking her team of Eric Perrot, Quentin Fillon Maillet and Lou Jeanmonnot to a solid win at a time of 1:04:15.

Italy’s Lisa Vittozzi also cleaned her last targets, left the range in second place and held the Germans off to take the silver medal, to the great delight of the roaring capacity crowd. Italy’s Tommaso Giacomel, Lukas Hofer, Dorothea Wierer and Vittozzi finished 25.8 seconds behind France.

The German team of Justus Strelow, Philipp Nawrath, Vanessa Voigt and Franziska Preuss secured bronze, 1.05 behind France.

Racers each skied three, 2-kilometer (1.2 mile) loops and shot twice, once prone and once standing, at the Südtirol Arena Alto Adige, which sits at 5,200 feet (1,600 meters) above sea level, before tagging off to their teammate. The men went first on a bluebird day with mild temperatures and little to no wind.

While Simon was the anchor for France for this win in Italy, Fillon Maillet anchored the team when they won silver in the mixed relay at the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022. Norway took the gold that time and the Russian Olympic Committee team won bronze.

France also won gold in the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics and Italy took bronze with a team made up of Vittozzi, Wierer, Hofer and Dominik Windish.

Bellisle writes for the Associated Press.

TESERO, Italy — Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo used a trademark burst of speed late in the race to pull away for a sixth Olympic gold by winning the men’s skiathlon Sunday at the Milan Cortina Games.

His latest win puts the 29-year-old Norwegian just two gold medals away from equaling the Winter Olympic record, and he still has five more chances to add to his haul in Italy.

Klaebo was in the lead pack throughout and then shifted into another gear just before coming into the stadium for the final time, quickly leaving his four remaining rivals in his wake. He could cruise to the line after that to finish in a time of 46 minutes, 11 seconds, ahead of Mathis Desloges of France and Norwegian teammate Martin Loewstroem Nyenget, who were 2.0 seconds and 2.1 seconds behind.

Desloges escaped disqualification earlier in the race after skiing through the cones to cut a corner. Judges cleared him after reviewing the incident.

After leaving the rest of the pack behind, Klaebo eased up in the final meters and waved to the crowd and traveling Norway supporters before crossing the finish line at the Tesero cross-country stadium in northern Italy.

He carries the massive expectations of his cross-country mad home nation at these games after a clean sweep of all six events at last year’s world championships.

“(There were) a lot of nerves before this race. And I really felt like I wanted to do well here,” Klaebo said. “And my body feels good. We had good skis. And it was an amazing day.”

Klaebo won three golds at the 2018 Olympics and added two more four years ago in Beijing, but all five came in either sprint of relay events.

“It’s my first (gold) on distance race so it for sure means a lot,” he said. “I just wanted to try to stay in the pack and have some energy left for the last uphill.”

Three other Norwegians, Marit Bjoergen, Bjoern Daehlie (both cross-country skiing) and Ole Einar Bjoerndalen (biathlon) share the Winter Olympic record of eight golds.

Race challengers Edvin Anger of Sweden and Norway’s Harald Oestberg Amundsen suffered falls on the icy course.

Klaebo entered as the clear favorite in the 20 kilometer skiathlon, which splits the race between classic and freestyle techniques, with athletes switching skis midway. This year marks the first Olympic Games where both men and women race an equal 20 kilometer distance, with men reducing the distance from 30 kilometers. Sweden’s Friday Karlsson won the women’s race on Saturday. Nyenget made the podium despite taking a knock from Savelli Korostelev of Russia who finished fourth, 3.6 seconds behind the leader, and later apologized. “I didn’t see him. I was a little surprised about it. I’m so sorry,” said Korostelev, who is competing as an independent due to a team ban on Russia.

On a good day for France, outsider Hugo Lapalus place fifth, 4.3 seconds behind the winner. Nyenget, who led the pack at the front for much of the race, said he felt great to to recover from the collision. “It’s tough to latch back onto a group of the world’s best skiers. On the plus side, I felt really strong today,” he said. “I’m a little relieved to get a medal. The course was rock hard and a little icy,” Nyenget said, adding that there wasn’t much to do about his star teammate.

“He’s pretty good at skiing,” he said.

Gatopoulos writes for the Associated Press.

Ester Ledecka’s quest to become the first snowboarder to win gold medals at three straight Olympics came to a surprisingly early end Sunday.

She lost her quarterfinal race in the sport’s parallel giant slalom by 0.06 seconds to Austria’s Sabine Payer.

Instead of Ledecka, the gold medal went to another Czech racer. It was Zuzana Maderova, a 22-year-old with no World Cup wins who opened a gap on the slip-sliding Payer and blew her away by 0.83 seconds in the gold-medal race for her first victory in a major event.

The only repeat on this day belonged to Austria’s Benjamin Karl, who won his second straight title, then celebrated by stripping off his shirt, doing a huge weightlifter flex, then falling, bare-chested, into the snow.

Ledecka was a spectator for all of it after coming into the Milan Cortina Games as a big favorite for gold. She hadn’t lost a PGS World Cup race in almost two years and hadn’t missed a podium in five.

She dominated through the qualifying heats, finishing her two time trials a full .69 seconds faster than the next-best racer to draw top seeding in the 16-woman bracket. That second-place racer was Maderova, and in a sign of how the Czech Republic dominates this sport right now, nobody else was within 1.39 seconds of her.

But in the second round of head-to-head action, Ledecka was done. Payer bolted out to an early lead, carved tight lines between the gates and never trailed. She adds this silver medal to two wins on the World Cup circuit this season.

For Maderova, win No. 1 came at the very best place — the Olympics on a bright, sunny day at Livigno Snow Park.

Ledecka made history in 2018 when she became the first athlete to win both a snowboard race and one on skis at the same Olympics. Her Alpine skiing super-G win was considered a shocker, but most who follow the sport expected her to dominate in her “better” event, the PGS, and she did.

She defended the snowboarding title in China four years ago.

This year, she was hoping to get wins in both the Alpine women’s downhill and PGS, but they were scheduled on the same day. She chose snowboard and ended up with neither title — her loss coming a couple hours after Lindsey Vonn’s wipeout on the downhill course.

Ledecka is still scheduled to race in skiing’s super-G on Thursday.

She has raced almost exclusively on skis in the leadup to the Olympics this season — nine Alpine races, which netted one podium, compared to only one snowboard event, which she won.

Ledecka’s loss gives Austria’s Anna Gasser a chance to become the first snowboarder to win three straight Olympic titles. Gasser takes the hill in big air qualifying later Sunday. Also trying for a three-peat is Chloe Kim. Her halfpipe contest starts Wednesday.

Pells writes for the Associated Press.

Breezy Johnson won the women’s downhill skiing competition, clinching the United States’ first medal of the Winter Olympics on Sunday after Lindsey Vonn crashed early in the same event and had to be airlifted off the mountain.

In 2022, Johnson suffered a severe knee injury on this same course, causing her to miss the Olympics. Her crash happened during training run.

American Breezy Johnson celebrates at the finish line of a downhill skiing run during Winter Olympics at Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, on Sunday.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

Johnson earned redemption with a time 1:36.10, beating Emma Archer of Germany by 0.04 seconds. Italy’s Sofia Goggia finished third.

CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy — It was just the kind of mechanical failure Breezy Johnson could abide.

Her gold medal snapped off its ribbon when she was jumping around in jubilation. She stuffed the prize — the first medal for an American athlete at the Milan-Cortina Olympics — into her jacket pocket for safekeeping.

PREDAZZO, Italy — Anna Odine Stroem entered the women’s normal ski jumping competition Saturday thinking the best she could do was finish second.

With a consistent and smooth performance under pressure, the Norwegian did much better, seizing the gold medal most assumed would be won by Slovenian favorite Nika Prevc, who has dominated the sport this season.

“I didn’t jump (in practice) yesterday and I saw Nika was in a league of her own — as she usually is,” Stroem said. “So I thought we were all competing for silver here.”

Prevc was tearful taking silver and Nozomi Maruyama of Japan was jubilant in winning bronze.

Stroem has come back from a serious knee injury in 2023 to reach fourth place in the World Cup standings this season. Prevc sits at the top by a large margin over Maruyama. Based on those standings, they started the first round in reverse of their ranking, with Prevc going last.

Going into the final jump, Prevc trailed Stroem by a single point and Maruyama was in third, two-tenths of a point behind Prevc.

Because Stroem was in first place after one round, she was the final skier to jump — right after Prevc.

The crowd was silent as she sat on the bar atop the steep in-run.

“I thought this is going to be hard,” Stroem said at a news conference after being awarded her medal.

She said she went through a mental checklist to focus and then looked down the hill, where a green light showed the longest distance anyone had landed.

“I saw that green was very far down so I just thought I’ve got to get over that,” she said.

The crowd roared as she appeared to clear the mark but she couldn’t hear the noise because she was going so fast, she said.

“I’m going to be honest, I didn’t quite believe it until my teammates hugged me,” she said.

Her final jump was 101 meters (331 feet) for a total score of 267.3 points, edging Prevc by 1.1 points.

“Luckily, I managed to do my things well and I suspect Nika didn’t do hers quite as well as she wished, as she’s done earlier,” Stroem said. “But I reckon she’s going to be hard to beat in the big hill.”

Prevc, last year’s world champ and record holder for the longest women’s jump, said too much pressure had been put on her before the event. Coach Jurij Tepes said she made two technical mistakes that cost her.

Prevc said she’s happy her first Olympic competition is behind her and she can focus on two events ahead: the mixed team event Tuesday and the women’s large hill jump Feb. 15.

“I’m very happy with my first Olympic medal,” she said. “My childhood dreams are coming true. Now I will continue and go on.”

There was a consolation prize of sorts for Prevc by becoming the first sister to join a brother — two in her case — to have also won Olympic medals in the sport.

Prevc follows in the footsteps of her brothers, Peter, a four-time Olympic medalist who won gold in the mixed team jump four years ago in Beijing, and Cene, who shared a team silver with his brother in Beijing in the team event.

The famous Prevc ski jumping family could make more Olympic history Monday when brother Domen, who has also been dominant this year, competes in the men’s normal hill event. If he wins a medal, it would mark the first time brother and sister ski jumpers have medaled at the same Olympics.

Depending on the outcome of that event, the two could also team up Tuesday.

The gold medal was only the second for women ski jumpers from Norway — the country that invented the sport and has long dominated competition — since women began ski jumping in the Olympics in 2014. Maren Lundby won gold in the 2018 Pyeongchang Games.

It also marks a bright spot for Norway, which was tainted by scandal at last year’s World Championships, when coaches on the men’s team were caught tampering with ski suits to give its two top men an advantage.

Head coach Magnus Brevik, assistant coach Thomas Lobben and staff member Adrian Livelten were recently banned from the sport for 18 months for tampering with the suits before the men’s large hill event.

Norwegian ski jumpers Marius Lindvik and Johann André Forfang accepted three-month suspensions that allowed them to compete in this season’s events.

Asked about the scandal, Stroem made it clear that the women weren’t implicated.

“We have put that behind us now and tried to stick together and just work hard,” she said. “I hope that my performance here today can inspire the boys to do well.”

Milley writes for the Associated Press.

LIVIGNO, Italy — That ever-growing bench of Japanese snowboarders runs deep. Jumps very high, too.

The country that has steadily been asserting mastery over the halfpipe took that show to the Winter Olympics big air contest Saturday night, where Kira Kimura and Ryoma Kimata flew and stomped their way to a 1-2 finish to put their country on the top of the sport’s highest flying event.

“It’s not only the winter season, it’s the summer season, as well,” Kimura said in explaining Japan’s 365-day-a-year obsession with this sport. “We practice on the air bags. Our coaches are really good. We had a really good offseason, lots of preparation.”

No single country has benefitted the way Japan has from the relatively new phenomenon of being able to practice using air bags to cushion falls during practice. It opens up new possibilities, both in the difficulty of the tricks riders can perfect and the time they can spend doing it.

For Japan, this had been showing up on the halfpipe — the sport’s signature event — for at least 12 years now. When Ayumu Hirano won the Olympic title four years ago, it marked has third Olympic medal. Even though he comes into these Games injured, a big crew from his country is ready to fill the void.

But in a different sign of how deep, and wide, this Japanese team rolls, they placed all four of their riders into the 12-man final of big air, an event that was added to the Olympic program in 2018. The rider who led qualifying, Hiroto Ogiwara, finished last. The other one, Taiga Hasegawa, finished 11th.

Why is their country so good at this?

“We hate to lose,” said Ogiwara, who has won the last two X Games big air contests.

It was not a night of groundbreaking tricks on a hill that has not been generating breakneck speed this week. NBC’s Todd Richards, a 1998 halfpipe Olympian, got caught telling the truth on a hot mic after the event was over: “That was so boring,” he said.

But Japan can do boring, too. In a contest where the judges rewarded consistency, Japan was there to scoop up the medals. Kimura, whose best previous results were three second-place finishes in World Cup events, won with a score of 179.50, the total of his two best runs out of three.

After falling on his second try, he landed an all-or-nothing jump — riding backward, then spinning 5 1/2 times with a solid grab of his board between the bindings — to take the lead.

His teammate, Kimata — who won the world championship in this event last year — had a chance to beat him, but instead finished eight points behind.

“I’m not surprised at all,” American snowboard director Rick Bower said. “They have like 20 air bags in Japan, and they’re just pumping out amazing riders and it’s showing.”

Defending champion Su Yiming of China finished third to round out his collection of Olympic medals.

His silver came on home turf four years ago in slopestyle. Su’s hands touched the ground on his second jump, but that jump had an extra 90 degrees of rotation and a tougher grab than 17-year-old Ollie Martin, so he vaulted past the American for the bronze.

“As a defending champion coming back here and having so much pressure, I’m proud of myself to come back and perform,” Su said.

A proud day for Japan, too. Before this, the country had accumulated a single bronze medal in big air, saving most of the celebrations for Hirano and Co. on the halfpipe.

Now, it’s starting to feel like the entire snow park is theirs.

“They have a ton of heart. They put their heads down and perfect things to the most minute detail,” New Zealand’s Lyon Farrell said after finishing eighth.

Ogiwara said he was proud of his teammates, a little disappointed in himself, but optimistic about the future.

The very near future.

“I’m going to win the slopestyle,” he said.

Pells writes for the Associated Press.

MILAN — Ilia Malinin leaned his head back and wagged his tongue. This perhaps wasn’t the start to his Olympic career that he wanted.

The 21-year-old took it easy in the short program of the team figure skating competition Saturday, forgoing his signature quad axel, but even with a watered-down routine, the “Quad God” looked shockingly mortal.

MILAN — Italian police fired tear gas and a water cannon at dozens of protesters who threw firecrackers and tried to access a highway near a Winter Olympics venue Saturday.

The brief confrontation came at the end of a peaceful march by thousands highlighting the environmental impact of the Games and the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Italy.

MILAN — One short week after Lindsey Vonn crashed in Switzerland and tore her left anterior cruciate ligament, she was tearing down the hill in Cortina, Italy, a light knee brace warping the fabric of her racing suit the only sign of anything amiss. When she finished the training run, clocking the third-fastest time for a U.S. woman Friday, she casually fist-bumped a teammate at the finish line.

She made the feat look effortless. Sports medicine experts can say it’s anything but.

“It’s atypical to be able to compete without an ACL, at anything, but especially at a high level like Lindsey Vonn’s going to compete at,” said Clint Soppe, a board certified orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. “So this is very surprising news to me as well.”

MILAN — The U.S. women’s hockey team came into the Milan-Cortina Winter Games ranked No. 1 in the world. And two games into group play, it’s shown that ranking might be something of an understatement.

With Saturday’s 5-0 victory over No. 3 Finland, the unbeaten Americans have outscored their two opponents 10-1 and outshot them 91-25. Their 10 goals are tied for most in the tournament, they have the best goal differential and goalie Aerin Frankel has the first shutout.

But that doesn’t mean the U.S. has nothing to fear in the Olympics. A fast-moving norovirus has already walloped two of the 10 teams in Milan, forcing Finland to postpone its first game and Switzerland to quarantine ahead of its second. Both countries came to Milan as medal contenders.

MILAN — Speedskater Francesca Lollobrigida won host Italy’s first gold medal of the Milan-Cortina Games on Saturday, taking the women’s 3,000 meters in an Olympics-record time.

With fans rising to their feet and roaring for her as she competed on her 35th birthday, Lollobrigida finished in 3 minutes, 54.28 seconds, more than two seconds ahead of runnerup Ragne Wiklund of Norway.

Valerie Maltais of Canada was third.

Francesca Lollobrigida of Italy, left, skates in front of Canada’s Valerie Maltais in the women’s 3,000 meters.

(Christophe Ena / Associated Press)

Lollobrigida is from Frascati, a hill town just outside Rome and well-known for its white wine, and her great aunt was the late Gina Lollobrigida, a star actress of the 1950s and ‘60s.

This was the fourth Olympics for Francesca Lollobrigida and her first gold. She collected two medals at Beijing four years ago: a silver in the 3,000 and a bronze in the mass start.

TESERO, Italy — Frida Karlsson of Sweden won gold at 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics in the 20-kilometer women’s skiathlon at the start of cross-country skiing on energy-draining wet snow.

Top-ranked Jessie Diggins of the U.S. fell in the early stages of the race and struggled throughout to fight her way forward as the Swedes held onto an early advantage.

Karlsson clocked 53 minutes, 45.2 seconds, ahead of fellow Swede Ebba Andersson by 51 seconds and Heidi Weng of Norway who pushed hard before the finish, ending 1 minute and 26.7 seconds behind.

Frida Karlsson of Sweden celebrates after winning gold in 20-kilometer skiathlon.

(Matthias Schrader / Associated Press)

The 26-year-old Swedish winner appeared unfazed by the snow conditions and performed a flawless ski exchange in the twin-style race, losing chasers early and lapping many at the back. Confident in her finish Karlsson grabbed a large Swedish flag before crossing the line, hugging her teammate seconds later, cheered on by a large group of traveling fans.

“That was when the moment hit me. I was like, OK this is for real,” Karlsson , who previously won bronze medal in the relay at the Beijing Games four years ago, said after Saturday’s race. “I just had so much fun out there today and I am really proud of my whole team.”

At Milan Cortina, both men and women are competing over an equalized 20-kilometer distance for the first time at the Olympics. Competitors cover half the distance in classic technique before a gear switch mid‑race to finish in freestyle.

The cloud-covered race on a Dolomite mountain course familiar to World Cup competitors was on soft snow conditions in a relatively warm 41 degrees.

“It was tough conditions out there with very wet snow,” Andersson said. “So you have to be tough with your head and just try to keep up the pace even though you are really tired.”

Jessie Diggins fell on a bend in the classic stage of the race, and finished in eighth after a late surge, 2 minutes, 21.1 seconds behind the leader. Diggins, racing in her final season, tumbled together with Norway’s Karoline Simpson-Larsen but said she was happy with the way performed in the second stage of the race.

“There’s a lot of the things outside of my control. It just didn’t work out for me today, but that’s OK,” Diggins said. “I was very proud of my heart and my grit and the amount of energy and commitment that I brought to, not just today, but every single day in the lead up to this.”

BORMIO, Italy — Swiss racer Franjo von Allmen captured the Olympic downhill Saturday to win the first gold medal at the Milan Cortina Games.

On a picture-perfect day in Bormio, von Allmen powered through the challenging Stelvio course in 1 minute, 51.61 seconds. His time was good enough to withstand the charge of Italy’s Giovanni Franzoni, who finished with the silver medal. Franzoni’s teammate, the 36-year-old Dominik Paris, had a fast run to take bronze and knock Marco Odermatt of Switzerland off the podium.

Von Allmen keeps the Olympic downhill title in the Swiss family. Beat Feuz won the event at 2022 Beijing Games before retiring.

The 24-year-old von Allmen sometimes flies under the radar of Odermatt, who’s won four straight overall World Cup titles. They’re fast friends and friendly rivals. They share course information but hold a little back, too. Turns out, von Allmen had the better inside track on the demanding hill.

It’s been quite a run for von Allmen, who won the downhill at the world championships in Austria last winter.

The stands were packed with flag-waving fans. Some of the biggest cheers were reserved for Franzoni and then, the next racer to go, Paris.

Gold medalist Franjo von Allmen of Switzerland, center, celebrates with silver medalist Giovanni Franzoni of Italy, left, and bronze medalist Dominik Paris of Italy after the men’s downhill.

(Antonio Calanni / Associated Press)

This is a breakout season for the 24-year-old Franzoni, who’s from Manerba del Garda, located about 200 kilometers south of Bormio. More specifically, it’s been a breakout 22 or so days. He won a World Cup super-G in Wengen, Switzerland, on Jan. 16 and followed that up with a downhill victory in Kitzbühel, Austria, the following week.

The 27th racer to take the course, Kyle Negomir found a fast line and vaulted into 10th place for the top American finish.

MILAN — The legends assemble. Olympic champions, world champions — the icons of U.S. figure skating — sit together for major competitions and watch the current generation of skaters carry the sport to new heights. Kristi Yamaguchi, Michelle Kwan, Scott Hamilton, Dorothy Hamill and Brian Boitano to name a few, and they, just like the thousands of fans who haven’t competed under the championship spotlight, get nervous too.

That is, until Ilia Malinin skates.

“What he’s doing is just legendary,” said Boitano, the 1988 Olympic champion. “It will change the generation and the curve and the history and the future of our sport.”

Malinin is the only person to land a quadruple axel in international competition. He first did it when he was 17; he’s now 21. He was the first person to land seven quadruple jumps in one program. So far ahead of his competition, Malinin could fall multiple times and still win individual gold at the Milan-Cortina Olympic Games.

Lindsey Vonn wrapped up her second successful training run in a row Saturday and appears ready to go for gold in the Milan Cortina Olympics downhill at the age of 41, little more than a week after rupturing the ACL of her left knee.

The American crossed in third position, 0.37 seconds behind leader and teammate Breezy Johnson, and pumped her fist after seeing the result.

“All good,” Vonn told The Associated Press.

Vonn is preparing to race the downhill on Sunday with a large brace covering her injured knee. She had a partial titanium replacement inserted in her right knee in 2024 and then returned to ski racing last season after nearly six years of retirement. She crashed during the final World Cup downhill before the Olympics, raising the possibility that she would end not just her season but her career.

Instead, she has been steadfast in saying she would ski at the Olympics if at all possible and, after a training run was canceled Thursday, hit the Olympia delle Tofana downhill course on Friday and Saturday with the other racers. She placed 11th in Thursday’s training, though the times mean nothing since the athletes do not always go all in.

Vonn holds the record of 12 World Cup wins in Cortina.

CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy — Lindsey Vonn’s mental coach didn’t need to be at her side after her most recent crash. All the way from Sacramento, and watching the race on TV, he knew what her disposition would be.

“I knew the minute she crashed that she would race [in the Olympics] if there was any opportunity to race,” said Armando Gonzalez, who has worked closely with the ski-racing legend since 2020.

“She’d go out there and be the last gladiator standing if it were up to her.”

The Olympics are back, wearing their warm Winter Games gear. Although there will be a couple of weeks of sports competitions to come, none is possible without an opening ceremony, a combination of solemn official protocol with a fantastic representation of the host country’s culture and character, evoking the Olympic spirit itself. There are few opportunities to mount an entertainment of this scale — not even a Super Bowl halftime show can compare.

This year we are in Italy, for the bi-metropolitan Milan-Cortina Games, held in the city’s San Siro Stadium and in the north where the mountains are. The ceremonies, too, were split geographically, with Olympic cauldrons in both cities, with the athletes’ parade further shared with Livigno and Predazzo, national delegations divided according to where their events would be held.

MILAN — Spread across more than 265 miles in four different cities from the snowy Dolomites to the sunny — for now — streets of Milan, the Milan-Cortina Olympics delivered one message.

Unity.

The most widespread Olympic Games in history showcased Italy’s idyllic snow-capped mountains, cutting-edge city life and celebrated winter legacy in the opening ceremony of the Milan-Cortina Games on Friday. The unique setup that required four ceremonies in Milan, Livigno, Predazzo and Cortina d’Ampezzo used movie magic on video screens, a golden ring and Italian icon Andrea Bocelli to bridge the distance between host cities Milan and Cortina and unite the Olympics behind the athletes who will compete across seven sports zones in the next 16 days.

Late in the opening ceremony at San Siro Stadium in Milan, the United State entered the arena to big cheers and a warm reception from the crowd. But when Vice President JD Vance, sitting in the presidential suite with his wife, Usha, was shown on the big screen briefly, there were boos.

The boos were audible on NBC’s broadcast when Vance was shown briefly.

The 232 athletes competing for the U.S. is the most ever for the Americans in a Winter Olympics.

Flagbearer Erin Jackson of the U.S. walks with her teammates during the opening ceremony at the 2026 Winter Olympics.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

Olympic athletes have been parading into San Siro Stadium in Milan and being feted in simultaneous celebrations in Cortina.

The president of Italy, Sergio Mattarella, was greeted warmly early in the ceremony as he entered San Siro Stadium. It provided the broadcast an opportunity to briefly show Vice President JD Vance, who was sitting in the same box as Mattarella. The Italian flag was presented shortly thereafter:

Laura Pausini performs during the Opening ceremony at the 2026 Winter Olympics at San Siro Stadium in Milan.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

The opening ceremony for the Milan-Cortina Olympics is underway with all the usual artistic flair associated with such an event.

Already, Mariah Carey has made an appearance, performing the song “Volare (Nel Blu Dipinto di Blu).”

MILAN — Mike Tirico was baptized on the day of Super Bowl I.

Sunday, the NBC play-by-play announcer will be baptized by fire.

Not only will Tirico call the Super Bowl for the first time, but he will stay on the Levi’s Stadium field after the game to remotely host Sunday night’s coverage of the Winter Olympics.

MILAN — After heavy snowfall days earlier, the weekend forecast for Cortina d’Ampezzo, site of women’s Alpine skiing for the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, called for a chance of rain, a severe ice warning and daytime temperatures well above freezing followed by an overnight chill in the 20s.

And that could be a big problem, says Jonathan Belles, a meteorologist at the Weather Co. and a self-described Olympic geek, because any snow that melts in the day, then freezes again at night, is no longer snow. It’s ice or slush.

And since no one wants to ski on ice or slush, artificial snow will be used. That’s an even bigger problem.

MILAN — Alysa Liu brushed her bangs out of her eyes. She glanced down, blinked hard and collected herself. For a program as personal as this, she deserved a moment to herself before saluting the crowd at Milano Ice Skating Arena.

Liu, skating in the team competition Friday, was proud to present her short program, set to Laufey’s “Promise.” The haunting piano ballad has been one of her favorite songs since it was released in 2023, and for Liu’s return to the Olympic stage, her choice of the song and control over the choreography symbolizes how far she’s come since she was a 16-year-old prodigy in Beijing who just skated as she was told.

“I have creative ideas that I got to satisfy and show here today,” Liu said with a content smile after she finished second in the women’s short program with 74.90 points that earned nine points for the U.S. team total.

2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics

Alysa Liu 2.0: How retirement, perspective helped the U.S. star reach new heights

Gold medal contender Alysa Liu had to step away from figure skating to understand how she could make the sport her own and find fulfillment and purpose.

Feb. 5, 2026

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — A week after rupturing the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee, Lindsey Vonn opened her chase for Olympic gold at the age of 41 with an aggressive and successful downhill training run on Friday — two days before the race.

Vonn got tight with her line midway down and only narrowly cleared a gate but she led at the final checkpoints, then stood up out of her tuck before the finish and placed 11th as skiers got their first official turns on the Olympia delle Tofane course ahead of the big race.

“She was smart. She didn’t go all in,” said Aksel Lund Svindal, a former Olympic downhill champion from Norway and now one of Vonn’s personal coaches. “She made a mistake on the bottom, but the rest looked like just good skiing, but no big risk. And to me it looked symmetrical.”

At the finish, Vonn traded fist pumps and a hug with teammate Breezy Johnson, who came down ninth, just before her, after a nearly hour-long delay because of fog.

“Yep,” Vonn told The Associated Press when asked if the run went well. She did not stop to talk further with reporters, leaving for more rehab on her knee.

Vonn is skiing at the Milan-Cortina Games with a large brace covering her knee. She has been clear since her crash last week in Switzerland that she would go forward despite an injury that many athletes would consider a season- or even a career-ender.

“Nothing makes me happier! No one would have believed I would be here,” Vonn wrote on social media before her run. “But I made it!! I’m here, I’m smiling and no matter what, I know how lucky I am. I’m not going to waste this chance. Let’s go get it!!”

Vonn finished 1.39 seconds behind American teammate Jacqueline Wiles, who posted the fastest time and is also a medal threat with two career podium results in Cortina.

Considering her injury and what she showed in training, can Vonn contend for a medal?

“I think she can because there was reserves today,” Svindal said. “You’ve seen earlier this season when she skis well she can win and from what I saw today I think she can. It’s going to be hard but I think she could possibly bring that on Sunday.”

MILAN — The Olympic village rises above the security fences that surround it, a collection of structures both temporary and permanent where the athletes will reside over the next two-plus weeks at the Milan-Cortina Games.

Out on the sidewalk and behind barriers, lookie-loos crane their necks for a peek at the competitors, while pin traders mill through the churning crowd in hopes of making a souvenir swap.

But what’s it like inside the village, where the medal hopefuls work out, mingle and relax before some of the biggest moments of their young lives?

MILAN — History didn’t begin in Italy, but it made a number of significant advances there. The foundations for representative government, the 365-day Julian calendar, modern sanitation, newspapers, roads and the postal system were established in Rome.

Centuries later, the rest of the world is still doing as the Romans do.

But if Rome is Italy’s past, Milan is its present and future.

MILAN — An unprecedented four-site, dual-cauldron Winter Olympics opening ceremony replete with references to Italian icons and culture — plus American pop diva Mariah Carey — was scheduled to officially start the Milan Cortina Games on Friday as the sports spectacle returns to a nation that last hosted the event 20 years ago.

This is the most spread-out Olympics — Summer or Winter — in history, with competition venues dotting an area of about 8,500 square miles (more than 22,000 square kilometers), roughly the size of the entire state of New Jersey.

The main hub Friday is in Milan at San Siro soccer stadium, which is home to Serie A titans AC Milan and Inter Milan, opened a century ago and is due to be razed and replaced in the next few years. There also will be three other places where athletes can march, some carrying their country’s flag: Cortina d’Ampezzo in the heart of the Dolomite mountains; Livigno in the Alps; Predazzo in the autonomous province of Trento.

That allows up-in-the-mountains sports such as Alpine skiing, bobsled, curling and snowboarding to be represented in the Parade of Nations without needing to make the several-hours-long trek to Milan, the country’s financial capital, and back.

For good measure, the Feb. 22 closing ceremony will be held in yet another locale, Verona, where Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” was set.

Another symbol of how far-flung things are this time: Instead of the usual one cauldron that is lit and burns throughout the Olympics, there will be two, both intended as an homage to Leonardo da Vinci’s geometric studies. One is in Milan, 2½ miles from San Siro, and the other is going to be 250 miles (400 kilometers) away in Cortina.

The people given the honor of lighting both was a closely guarded secret, as is usually the case at any Olympics. At the Turin Winter Games in 2006, it was Italian cross-country skier Stefania Belmondo.

MILAN — Alysa Liu wore a hollow smile on the ice. She had achieved a dream, skating at the Beijing Olympics at just 16, but in a mostly empty arena, few were there to see the moment.

Perhaps that was what Liu secretly wanted.

“It’s not that I didn’t want to be seen,” Liu said. “It’s just I had nothing to show.”

The 20-year-old now proudly presents Alysa Liu 2.0.

Four years after shocking the sport by retiring as a teenage phenom, the Oakland native could win two gold medals at the Milan-Cortina Olympics. She is a title contender in her individual event that begins Feb. 17 as the United States tries to end a 20-year Olympic medal drought in women’s singles figure skating, and she will skate Friday in the women’s short program of a team competition the United States is favored to win.

MILAN — Laila Edwards finally got out from under the spotlight and onto the ice for the U.S. women’s hockey team Thursday. It was a simple act, but one that made history.

Yet for Edwards, it was just another day at the office.

“It didn’t feel different at all,” she said. “It’s still hockey at the end of the day. Even though it’s the highest level, it’s still hockey.”

MARKHAM, Canada — Suburban Toronto is more than 2,000 miles from Mexico City, but in many ways it might as well be in another universe. On the dreary fall day the first snow fell in Toronto, for example, it was 78 degrees and sunny in the Mexican capital.

Yet on the northeast edge of Canada’s largest city, hidden behind the library and a seniors club deep inside the Thornhill Community Centre, Mexico’s Olympic figure skating team has found a home.

“Team” is a bit of a misnomer since Mexico will send just one skater, Donovan Carrillo, to next month’s Milan Cortina Winter Games. Carrillo was also the only Mexican — and one of just three Latin Americans — to skate in the 2022 Olympics in Beijing.

MILAN —  Longtime pals Dan Presburger and Brad Frank are sort of Olympic weightlifters.

They’re teachers from the San Fernando Valley who go to all the Olympics and lug a bunch of weights — suitcases containing tens of thousands of commemorative pins.

Presburger, who retired last Friday after 35 years of teaching at El Camino Real High, brought about 15,000 pins to Italy for the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, requiring three hefty suitcases. He’ll spend the next three weeks trading them with anyone and everyone he meets on the street. He’s constantly scanning the horizon for the next swap.

Think of Mike Buckley as a kind of double agent.

Not the sinister kind, who give away state secrets for money or revenge; Buckley is privy to much lower-level intelligence. But that doesn’t mean it’s not just as valuable to the people involved.

Buckley is the Kings’ goaltender coach and his chief pupil is Darcy Kuemper, who will be playing for Team Canada in the Milan Cortina Olympic hockey tournament. Buckley will be in Milan coaching for Team USA. And if the competition goes to form, Canada and the U.S. will meet in the final.

You can see where this is going.

Casey Wasserman, the head of the LA28 Olympic committee, is facing growing calls to resign after the latest release of Jeffrey Epstein documents revealed racy emails between him and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.

Wasserman, in Italy for the 2026 Winter Olympics, has not responded to demands from several L.A. politicians who say that the controversy doesn’t align with the values of the Games and that he needs to step down.

He issued a statement over the weekend apologizing for the emails but hasn’t directly addressed reporters in the U.S. or Italy, where Olympics officials are facing questions about Wasserman after his name surfaced in the files released by the U.S. Department of Justice in the Epstein case.

MILAN — Finland women’s hockey team’s preliminary round-opening game against Canada on Thursday has been postponed because of a stomach virus depleting Finland’s roster.

The game was rescheduled to Feb. 12.

The decision to postpone the game was announced shortly after Finland completed its early afternoon practice with just eight skaters and two goalies. The remaining 13 players are either in quarantine or isolation due to a norovirus that began affecting the team on Tuesday night.

The postponement provides Finland two extra days to rest before playing the U.S. on Saturday. Had their game against Canada not been postponed, Finnish officials were considering the possibility of a forfeiture.

“While all stakeholders recognize the disappointment of not playing the game as originally scheduled, this was a responsible and necessary decision that reflects the spirit of the Olympic Games and the integrity of the competition,” Olympic officials announced.

“All stakeholders thank teams, partners and fans for their cooperation and understanding, and look forward to the rescheduled game being played under safe and appropriate conditions.”

If Hilary Knight is the GOAT of women’s ice hockey, then Caroline Harvey is the kid.

That isn’t just a reference to her age, 23, which makes her the seventh-youngest player on the U.S. Olympic team. The term is also used for baby goats. And with Knight, the oldest player on the U.S. team, expected to retire from Olympic competition after the Milan Cortina Games, that makes Harvey the GOAT in waiting.

“Hilary is a great role model,” Harvey said. “She did blaze that trail. It’s been exciting to see what she did, the legacy she left.”

MILAN — Vice President JD Vance arrived in Milan with his family Thursday, telling U.S. athletes competing in the Milan-Cortina Winter Games that the competition “is one of the few things that unites the entire country.”

It’s the first stop for Vance on a trip combining diplomacy and sports. He is leading President Donald Trump’s delegation to the 2026 Winter Olympics and later stopping in Armenia and Azerbaijan in a show of support for a peace agreement brokered by the White House last year.

Vance, who plans to watch the U.S. women’s hockey team take on Czechia in a preliminary game on Thursday, told athletes the trip is a highlight of his time in office. “The whole country — Democrat, Republican, independent — we’re all rooting for you and we’re cheering for you,” Vance said.

The weeklong trip may be one of only a few international trips Vance makes this year. Trump and his Cabinet members are taking a tighter focus on domestic issues — and domestic travel — heading into the November midterm elections, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles said last month.

At the opening ceremony for the games on Friday, the vice president will lead a U.S. delegation that includes his wife, second lady Usha Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and U.S. Ambassador to Italy Tilman Fertitta. Former Olympic gold medalists will also be in the delegation, including hockey player sisters Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson and Monique Lamoureux-Morando; speedskater Apolo Ohno and figure skater Evan Lysacek.

Vance said his wife “is not a sports fan” but “obsessively makes us watch the Olympics” every two years, citing that as evidence of the way the competition “really brings the country together. Everybody is rooting for you guys and everybody’s cheering for you.”

Vance is following in the footsteps of former vice presidents Joe Biden who attended the Winter Olympics in Vancouver in 2010 and Mike Pence who traveled to Pyeongchang, Korea, in 2018. Former Vice President Kamala Harris did not attend the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing because the Biden administration did not send any diplomatic officials as a boycott over human rights concerns.

MILAN — Two reigning world champions will lead the United States into the team figure skating competition as Alysa Liu and Madison Chock and Evan Bates were selected to perform the women’s short program and the rhythm dance, respectively, in the Olympic team competition that begins Friday.

U.S. Figure Skating announced its Day 1 skaters Thursday, also naming Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea to skate the pairs short program.

The United States is favored to win the team medal, which would be the country’s second consecutive team Olympic title. Three-time world champions Chock and Bates were on the winning team in Beijing 2022.

Liu, then 16, competed individually in Beijing, but was not selected for the team event. After retiring from the sport in 2022, Liu staged a remarkable comeback to win the 2025 world championship and come into the Milan-Cortina Games as one of the favorites in the women’s event.

Of the four figure skating disciplines — women’s, men’s, pairs and ice dance — countries can split the short and long programs between different athletes in only two. The three-day team competition begins Friday and ends Sunday before the individual events begin Monday with ice dance. Because of the short turnaround between the individual rhythm dance competition Monday and the individual men’s short program Tuesday, it is likely that the United States could elect to use two different men’s skaters and two different ice dance pairs in the team competition.

“Team event is extremely important to us as well,” said Bates, who is competing in his fifth Olympics and fourth with his wife and longtime partner, Chock. “Of course, the individual event, growing up, that was what we all dreamt of because the team event didn’t exist. With that said, though, I think having the opportunity to compete as a team is so special, and this team in particular is so deep, so talented. It has a great opportunity, I think, for the gold medal. So that’s what we’re focused on. ... Anytime you get an opportunity to skate on Olympic ice, you should say yes.”

The men’s short program for the team event is Saturday. The United States has reigning gold medalist Ilia Malinin leading the men’s team with two-time U.S. silver medalist Andrew Torgashev and U.S. bronze medalist Maxim Naumov.

ROME — Italy has foiled a series of cyberattacks targeting some of its foreign ministry offices, including one in Washington, as well as Winter Olympics websites and hotels in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said.

Talking to reporters during a trip to the U.S. capital, Tajani said the attempted attacks were “of Russian origin,” but didn’t provide additional details.

“We prevented a series of cyberattacks against foreign ministry sites, starting with Washington, and also involving some Winter Olympics sites, including hotels in Cortina,” Tajani said, just two days from Friday’s opening ceremony at Milan’s San Siro stadium.

The Winter Olympics got underway Wednesday with the first curling matches in Cortina.

Italy’s Interior minister Matteo Piantedosi told parliament on Wednesday that 6,000 security officers are being deployed across the Games sites — which stretch from Milan to the Dolomites — including bomb disposal experts, snipers and anti-terrorism units.

MILAN — Amber Glenn achieved a lifelong goal, sealing her Olympic bid by winning her third consecutive U.S. championship last month. Her first celebration came with her opponents.

“We all deserve it,” Glenn said with her arms wrapped around national silver medalist Alysa Liu and bronze medalist Isabeau Levito.

The spirit of collaboration has brought U.S. figure skating into a new golden age. The 16-athlete team the United States sent to Milan may be the country’s strongest Olympic team in decades. With three reigning world champions and three current Grand Prix final champions, the United States is poised for one of its best Olympic Games in figure skating.

MILAN — Days before the Milan-Cortina Olympics were set to open, a group of LA28 officials faced the International Olympic Committee to signal a new phase of their own Games process.

Two-and-a-half years before the opening ceremony at the Coliseum and SoFi Stadium, LA28 chief executive officer Reynold Hoover said LA28 is transitioning from “planning to proving.”

“We are validating our plans and training today,” Hoover told IOC members at the committee’s 145th session, “so that when the world arrives in L.A., we will be ready.”

Hoover presented with U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee chair Gene Sykes and LA28 chairman Casey Wasserman.

Thursday’s live TV and streaming broadcasts unless noted (subject to change). All events stream live on Peacock or NBCOlympics.com with a streaming or cable login. All times Pacific.

ALPINE SKIING

2:30 a.m. — Men’s downhill, training | Peacock

CURLING

Mixed doubles (round robin)

1:05 a.m. — Norway vs. U.S. | Peacock

1:05 a.m. — Britain vs. Estonia | Peacock

1:05 a.m. — South Korea vs. Italy | Peacock

1:05 a.m. — Sweden vs. Czechia | Peacock

5:35 a.m. — U.S. vs. Switzerland | USA

MILAN — Many of the officials supporting the nearly 250 U.S. athletes competing in this month’s Winter Olympics arrived in Italy last weekend to a greeting they may not have expected: Hundreds of demonstrators packed a square in central Milan to protest the reported plan to deploy U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents during the Games.

The first events in the 18-day competition, which will be shared by Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo in the Italian Alps, begin Thursday and the opening ceremony is scheduled for Friday. Against that background, International Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry called the agents’ involvement “distracting” and “sad.”

“This is a militia that kills. They are not welcome in Milan,” Mayor Giuseppe Sala said on local radio ahead of the protests, which took place beneath the neoclassical Porta Garibaldi arch in the Piazza XXV Aprile, named for the date of Italy’s liberation from Nazi fascism in World War II.