26 reasons to watch the Winter Olympics

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Vox loves the Olympics. Absolutely loves them. We briefly debated popping up a limited-run Winter Olympics newsletter this week, but then remembered that we are not in fact a sports site and have no actual sports reporters on staff.

No matter! The Olympics are fun (and, occasionally, inspiring and heartbreaking and anxious and weird) because they touch a wide range of human interests, from geopolitics to climate to celebrity and culture. And in that spirit, I’ve polled my colleagues and poked my head into a few planning sessions to see what Olympics storylines everyone is watching.

In today’s edition, we round up the interesting characters, open questions, and emerging trends that could define the Milan Cortina Games, from the debut of skimo (fascinating! fun!) to the complicated moral calculus of rooting for Team USA right now (nuanced, uncomfortable, in short: a bummer).

The whole shebang officially kicks off this afternoon at 2 pm ET, with a primetime broadcast at 8 pm. You can absolutely bet that I and many others at Vox will be tuning in.

Are we the baddies? I think it’s going to be fascinating to see how American fans react to, well, being global villains. I think it could be particularly interesting around Olympic hockey. Probably the most famous moment of American underdogness — at least since the American Revolution — was the 1980 Olympics hockey win. The Americans and the Canadians are the top rivals in Olympic hockey, and these Games will be intense. We’re not plucky underdogs — the US team probably has the second-best chance at the gold after Canada — and we will not be the crowd favorite. What’s that going to feel like? —Bryan Walsh

Skimo. I’m still rooting for the Winter Olympics to add two of my favorite sports — cross-country running and cyclocross bike racing, both of which are great in the snow — but for now, I’m plenty excited about the new sport we did get: skimo, or ski mountaineering. As the name suggests, it involves summiting a climb (partially with skis, partially without) and then tearing back down it. Athletes have to transition between phases along the way, triathlon-style, and it looks thrilling. —Cameron Peters

Ilia Malinin. Twenty-one-year-old figure skater Ilia Malinin is competing in his first Olympics this year, but he’s already broken a ton of records. In 2022, he became the first (and still only) skater to land a fully rotated quadruple axel in international competition, and in December, he landed a record seven quadruple jumps in a single program. In other words, Malinin is a mind-bogglingly aggressive, physical skater — The Atlantic dubbed him “the man who broke physics” — and his programs will be really fun to watch when they kick off this weekend. —Caitlin Dewey

A figure skater’s tragic backstory. Maxim Naumov is a member of the US Olympic figure skating team whose parents — world champions in skating themselves — were among the 67 people killed when an American Airlines plane and a helicopter collided over the Potomac River in Washington, DC, last January. As much as the plane crash affected DC, it was even more devastating for the figure skating community, which lost 28 parents, skaters, alumni, volunteers, and more. It’s hard not to root for Naumov in the aftermath of such sadness. —Libby Nelson

US immigration agents. The Department of Homeland Security often has a presence at the Olympic Games, providing security services and monitoring criminal activity. But the news that some ICE agents would deploy to Milan has sparked outrage and protests in Italy. Milan’s governor called ICE “a militia that kills” and said “they are not welcome” in his city. —CD

Possible political demonstrations. Hundreds of athletes competing in Milan hail from one of the world’s most politically volatile nations: the United States of America. As Vox’s Alex Abad-Santos has written, American athletes are bound to face questions about representing the nation of Donald Trump. It seems likely that some US Olympians, many of whom are immigrants or the children of immigrants, will speak out against ICE; I will be watching to see who does and what they say. At last year’s Four Nations men’s hockey tournament, pro-MAGA and anti-Trump sentiment colored the US-Canada final, with Trump himself calling the men’s team and raising the tempers of Canadian players and fans with his calls to annex what he was calling “the 51st state.” —Seth Maxon

…and not just from Team USA. There are four Israelis competing at these Games who may face protests or become fulcrums of controversy. And there are Ukrainians, “unaffiliated” athletes from Russia, a couple of Iranians, and even a Venezuelan cross-country skier competing. Whether any of them speak up or are confronted about their nations’ turmoil will be worth watching out for. —SM

Winter weather. Many Winter Olympic events hinge on ideal outdoor snow and ice conditions that are becoming harder to achieve as the planet warms up. The IOC said they are now considering moving the Winter Games earlier in the year to chase the cold weather. On the other hand, some of the early ski sessions for the current Games were canceled due to too much snow. —Umair Irfan

Milo and Tina. I don’t think any Olympic mascots will ever top Paris’s anthropomorphic hats, but keep an eye out for the scarf-wearing, short-haired weasels that organizers have called the Games’ “first openly Gen Z” representatives. The open Gen Z-ness relates to their backstories (Milo and Tina are reportedly teenagers) and their design origins (Italy invited primary and secondary school students to submit mascot proposals). —CD

Alysa Liu. Not only is 20-year-old figure skater Alysa Liu competing on the biggest stage in the world after a nearly two-year hiatus from the sport, but Liu told her coaches that she wanted to design her own costumes and skate to her choice of music. So far, that’s involved a lot of Lady Gaga, a smiley piercing, and halo-striped hair. I can’t wait to see what she and the rest of the US figure skating team accomplish. —Sydney Bergen

Macklin Celebrini. The term “generational talent” gets tossed around a lot when hockey watchers talk about the 19-year-old forward from Vancouver. He’s made a stagnant, struggling team (my team, the San Jose Sharks) competitive once again. Celebrini is set to become the youngest player to represent Canada in a Winter Olympics featuring players from the National Hockey League — where he’ll play alongside NHL icons like Sidney Crosby, Nathan MacKinnon, and Connor McDavid. Celebrini has been a fascinating player to watch when an entire team relies on him, so I can’t imagine what he can accomplish when he’s playing alongside his sport’s biggest stars. —Christian Paz

Lindsey Vonn. The 41-year-old American skier completely ruptured her ACL in a fall last week, but has insisted that she’ll compete in her fifth Winter Games despite the (severe and debilitating!) injury. If she competes as planned, Vonn will be the oldest female Alpine skier in Olympic history. As a person around Vonn’s age, and as the owner of a fully reconstructed ACL, I am both vaguely horrified for Vonn and very invested in her competition. —CD

Chloe Kim. The American snowboarding superstar suffered a shoulder injury in early January that has prevented her from training in the weeks that have followed. Thankfully, she has recovered enough to still compete. But is she still in top form and able to contend for gold as expected? I hope so! Either way, I’m sure NBC and Peacock are already preparing their scripts about how much adversity she’s overcome to get back on the podium. —SM

Laila Edwards. The 22-year-old senior at the University of Wisconsin made history in Italy by just being there: Edwards is the first Black woman to play for the US women’s Olympic hockey team. And thanks to a successful GoFundMe campaign — which included a donation from the Kelce brothers, who are from her hometown of Cleveland Heights, Ohio — Edwards’s parents and other family members have made the trip to Milan as well. —Esther Gim

Eileen Gu. A breakout star at the 2022 Olympics is back to compete in freestyle skiing. At the last Games, she ignited debate in both the US and China as an American who chose to compete for China, her mother’s home country. But the controversy hardly hurt her success; she’s become a huge celebrity in China with millions of dollars in endorsement deals, and she won three medals, including two golds, in Beijing. She’s only 22 years old and is gearing up for even more success, and stardom, in Milan. —SM

Giorgia Meloni. Italy’s first woman prime minister already occupies an odd place on the world stage: She’s a right-wing populist who enjoys a close relationship with President Donald Trump and his administration… but she’s also, obviously, a European leader who’s had to grapple with Trump’s attacks on the continent. The Olympics, Italy’s first since 2006, will put her in the global spotlight once again. (That, and a comically Italian scandal wherein a partisan art restorer snuck Meloni’s face into a church fresco.) —CD

Cultural initiatives. Alongside the athletic events, Italy is hosting a nationwide Cultural Olympiad with exhibitions, theater and music performances, artist installations, festivals, and workshops. Los Angeles should be watching closely, as local officials are concerned that the city is way behind on planning and fundraising for arts programming for the 2028 Games. Can LA showcase itself as an entertainment mecca and a capital of cultural diversity, as it did when it last hosted the Games in 1984? The clock is ticking. —Avishay Artsy

Greening the Games. Remember during the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris when organizers were getting heat for how they approached “greening” the competition? At the time, organizers focused on nudging behavioral choices, such as defaulting toward climate-friendly foods (read: no meat) or no AC, which wasn’t popular. So I was excited to hear that this year’s Winter Olympics focused its energy on the actual construction of the Milano Cortina Olympic Village instead. According to the architects behind the project, the village employs a modular design made with low-carbon construction methods and prefabricated facade panels. It might be a model for future Games. —Izzie Ramirez

“The battle of millimeters.” Last month, a cheating scandal rocked the ski-jumping world when three staff members on the Norwegian team were suspended for modifying the crotches of the outfits of two jumpers, including the reigning Olympic champion. In sports like ski jumping, small changes like extra stitching can have big aerodynamic impacts — part of what one ski jumping enthusiast described to The Athletic as “the battle of millimeters.” We’ll see what that means for Norway’s athletes in these Olympics. —Cameron Peters

Olympic muffins. The best TikToks from the Olympic Village have nothing to do with sport: They’re the clips of globe-trotting, carb-loading, world-class athletes reviewing mid-range cafeteria food. Chocolate muffins stole the show in Paris. (Can confirm: These muffins are good.) And while the Milan Cortina Games have yet to produce a breakout foodstuff, the torta della nonna looks like a contender. —CD

The Minions guy. Spanish figure skater Tomàs-Llorenç Guarino Sabaté is not expected to medal at this year’s Games, but he’s already a winner in one regard: He triumphed over film production company Universal Pictures in a petty, comical dispute the internet dubbed #Minionsgate. Sabaté, who skates to music from the Minions movies, was briefly blocked from using his signature soundtrack over copyright concerns, which the Olympics have taken much more seriously since a 2022 lawsuit. —CD

AI music on ice. Figure skating is trying to stay relevant by encouraging figure skaters to make contemporary music choices: classical music out, pop bangers in. But it’s led to a music licensing nightmare in the sport, as Minion Guy found out the hard way. Some skaters are turning to an ethically dubious solution: AI music, which avoids expensive fees and prolonged negotiations. As AI slop hits Spotify playlists and Billboard charts, will things get sloppy on the ice too? We’ll be watching, er, listening to see. —Peter Balonon-Rosen

New sports tech. Gymnastics judges for the 2024 Paris Games got a leg up from a novel tool: an AI system that could automatically capture, model, and evaluate athletes’ movements against standard parameters. AI tools will also be in use at the Milan Cortina Games, where they’ll do things like capture the height, length, and air time of figure skaters’ jumps. A number of teams have also enthusiastically embraced AI-informed training… though only time will tell if that gives them the edge that some have claimed. —CD

NHL stars. Men’s hockey will be a particularly splashy event this year: It’s the first year in more than a decade that the National Hockey League has allowed its players to participate in the Games. And following the breakout success of the Canadian gay sports romance series Heated Rivalry, there’ll be a new audience of fans and casual viewers that will be tuning in. (Thank you, Shane Hollander!) —Christian Paz

The rise of sports betting. This year’s Olympics arguably mark the first event since prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket became a mainstream phenomenon. Already, Polymarket users have traded millions of dollars’ worth of bets on individual competitions and overall medal counts. Notably, the Milan Cortina Games come just as these platforms face a wave of new scrutiny related to sports cheating scandals. —CD

Health and wellness. It’s increasingly hard to believe that, a mere five years ago, the Tokyo Olympics mandated masking, social distancing, and other Covid protocols. Now, most Olympic athletes don’t even mask routinely during travel. Personally, I’d be so stressed about illness. Imagine how awful it would be to get sick while sharing a tiny dorm room with your teammates or not feeling 100 percent healthy during the biggest moment of your career. Organizers already had to push the women’s hockey game between Canada and Finland because of a norovirus outbreak. —Lauren Katz