The biggest storylines of the 2026 Olympics…
The Olympic Games are like the OG viral story.
Going back to when that might need referred to an outbreak of influenza, the Olympics arrive every two or 4 years to take over our sports activities and pop-culture consciousness.
One minute, it’s not one thing you’re pondering about, the next you’re hanging on every triple toe loop and double cork, deeply versed in curling strategy and half-hour in on scrolling the Instagram of your new favourite athlete.
Well, it’s that time again.
The Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Games — they’re co-hosted by metropolitan Milan and the Alps resort city of Cortina d’Ampezzo in Italy — start this week, with the Opening Ceremony set for Friday at the iconic San Siro stadium.
Team USA, which completed fifth in the medal rely in 2022, has high hopes of bettering that haul this time around.
Here’s The Post’s information to the major plotlines to comply with over the next two weeks as the world’s best vie for winter gold:
Queens of the slope
This was shaping up as the most dramatic story of the Olympics.
Skiing legend Lindsey Vonn seemingly had reemerged as a medal contender in the ladies’s downhill, at the age of 41, following a five-year layoff and a knee substitute.
But catastrophe struck just last week in Vonn’s closing tuneup race when she crashed and suffered a torn ACL.
Vonn has vowed to strive to race anyway.
“I wish I wasn’t in this position, but this is where I am and I will do the best I can,” she said at an emotional news convention Tuesday.
Lindsey Vonn of Team United States in motion during the Audi FIS Alpine Ski World Cup Women’s Downhill Training on Jan. 28, 2026. Getty Images
The cruelly timed injury seems to sprint her podium goals. But the Winter Olympics have seen miracles before.
There’s another comeback in the works for one of America’s ski queens.
Mikaela Shiffrin, 30, is the most completed ladies’s skier in historical past — but her outcomes at the Olympics have never fairly matched that lofty standing.
At the Beijing Games in 2022, she endured a meltdown — a sort of Biles on snow — with a number of DNFs and no medals from six occasions, her agony captured by NBC cameras for the world to see.
Then in 2024, she suffered a career-threatening puncture wound to her stomach.
Now she’s back at the top of the sport, dominating the slalom races, and a redemptive gold medal is within attain.
In Quad we trust
The catchiest nickname in Milan belongs to one of the stone-cold gold-medal favorites.
Ilia Malinin, the 21-year-old American determine skating phenom, is dubbed the Quad God for his potential to land quadruple jumps that others can merely dream of.
There is probably not a ton of rigidity in the males’s singles standings — Malinin’s problem scores principally guarantee he may fall a number of occasions and still win — but the dude is value the price of admission.
Malinin isn’t the only U.S. skater to watch. The American group is replete with inspiring tales.
Maxim Naumov certified for the males’s group one yr after his dad and mom had been killed, along with a number of others from the determine skating group, when their airplane flight collided with an Army helicopter close to Washington, D.C.
The ladies’s group consists of 20-year-old Alysa Liu, who retired from the sport in 2022 only to return two years later and declare last yr’s world championship; the creative 26-year-old Amber Glenn, the nation’s oldest entrant in almost a century; and the 18-year-old ingenue Isabeau Levito. More than enough charisma to go around.
Llia Malinin of the U.S. during observe in Milan. REUTERS
Puck and roll
NHL gamers are back in the Olympics males’s hockey event for the first time since 2014, ramping up the caliber of play and anticipation by a number of orders of magnitude.
That means we may see one thing reminiscent of the 2010 closing, when Sidney Crosby’s Golden Goal lifted Canada over the U.S. in extra time. Can Team USA, led by Rangers head coach Mike Sullivan, prevail this time around?
The U.S.-Canada rivalry, fueled by tensions in the “real world,” is the dominant story in the ladies’s event. The two international locations have cut up all seven Olympics golds with Canada holding a 5-2 edge, but Hilary Knight’s U.S. squad has had the higher hand in latest showdowns.
United States ahead Hilary Knight and Canada ahead Marie-Philip Poulin battle during the second period of the gold medal recreation at ladies’s world hockey championships in Brampton, Ontario on April 16, 2023. AP
You’ll hear discuss about the hockey venue, as effectively. Construction on the Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena was delayed to the level that there have been considerations over it being completed in time. The rink is also smaller than the typical NHL sheet. But calamity appears to have been averted.
Cold conflict continues
Russia is barred from coming into groups in these Olympics due to sanctions associated to the invasion of Ukraine. However, a few Russian athletes have been cleared to take part, not under the flag but as Individual Neutral Athletes.
More intrusions from geopolitics: You may call the U.S.-Denmark preliminary-round males’s hockey recreation the Greenland Bowl. U.S. ICE brokers have been dispatched to Italy in a “security role.”
For cheat’s sake
What about sporting scandals? Oh yeah, we’ve acquired one thing for you.
There was outrage after Canada cooked its lineup in a pre-Olympics meet to deny U.S. skeleton racer Katie Uhlaender the likelihood to qualify for a fifth Games. Not so good, eh?
The funniest scandal belongs to the males’s ski leaping competitors. In secretly filmed video footage, Norway was discovered to have cheated by — get this — manipulating the stitching to make the crotch space of its athletes’ fits larger, which aids in aerodynamics. The coaches behind the scheme had been banned, though the Norwegian jumpers in query are back in the competitors.
Speed thrills
This has been called the strongest U.S. long-track pace skating group in a technology.
The first title to know: Jordan Stolz, a 21-year-old from Wisconsin, is a favourite in the 500-meter, 1,000-meter and 1,500-meter races.
Erin Jackson is back to defend her 500-meter gold. She’s joined by the veteran Brittany Bowe.
Repeat performers
Shoutout to the stalwarts operating it back for Team USA.
Chloe Kim, still just 25, goes for a three-peat in the snowboarding halfpipe. Just strive to stop her.
Cross-country great Jessie Diggins is snowboarding in her closing Olympics at 34, and she’s in the medal combine across a number of occasions.
Elana Meyers Taylor, 41, returns to pilot the ladies’s bobsled and attempt to add to her assortment of 5 medals. Kaillie Humphries, 40, is the defending champion in the monobob. They’re both mothers.
Mountain toppers
There’s one new event for these Olympics.
In ski mountaineering, “skimo” if you’re in the know, athletes climb up the mountain with their skis on then race back down — with F1-style boot-packing pit stops in between.
It’s described as a cross between an cardio event such as cross-country and a conventional pace event.
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