The Milano Cortina Olympics 2026 came and went with more creativity and significant landmarks with team United States gaining 12 gold medals in total and athletes giving support to one another.
The Olympics took place in Verona, Italy, with 87 teams and several athletes trying to compete for the gold medal, The Olympics stated.
According to Rebecca Tauber of The Athletic, “The IOC (International Olympic Committee) has handed out 116 sets of gold, silver and bronze medals, with 18 of those golds and 41 overall going to the Winter Games’ near-perpetual winner, Norway.”
The Olympics truly shows the ups and downs of athletes with intense performances or unexpected fallings, but with the help of other teammates, they provide moral support.
Tauber stated that South Korea’s Goan Choi fell in her recital, but Chloe Kim gave her reassurance by saying “You can do this, don’t worry about what just happened, you got this, shake it off.”
Kim is a professional athlete in snowboarding who has won 3 continuous gold medals in the past; however, this year, she earned silver but only truly cared for her friend Choi, Tauber noted.
Breezy Johnson, who also participated in the 2026 Olympics and is an alpine ski racer, experienced a tragic moment that many athletes face while playing sports, and that experience could potentially ruin their career.
Andrew McGuinness, a writer for The NBC Olympics, stated that “Breezy Johnson didn’t have the opportunity to even compete in the Olympics in 2022; Johnson badly injured her knee weeks before the Beijing Winter Games, preventing her from going down the slopes.”
In her recent Olympics performance, however, she won gold in women’s downhill with the best time, McGuinness noted. After her achievement of facing the hardship of her knee damage and achieving gold in the downhill portion, her fiancée, Connor Watkins, proposed in a heartfelt way.
With the ice rink and snow park athletes use to perform on, Alysa Liu, who retired at 16 after her performance at the 2022 Olympics in Beijing, skated her way back into the 2026 Olympics.
This year, Liu became the first woman after 24 years to win first place in women’s figure skating.
“Liu, 20, becomes the first American Olympic champion in women’s figure skating since Sarah Hughes in 2002, and the first USA medallist since Sasha Cohen in 2006,” says Emma Smith, a journalist at Milano ice skating arena for BBC.
She achieved first place with a score of 226.79, “beating Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto – who Liu beat to the world’s title last year,” Smith commented.
The Milano Cortina Olympics truly shows that no athlete is seen or left alone and that success requires teamwork. With the support of others and their team, it makes the journey achievable and easier!
For more information on the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026, you can visit the Olympics page on more details about standings, other events, medal tables, and more!
