Top 10 Moments From the 2026 Winter Olympics

No skater has ever won both the women's singles and the team event gold at the same Olympics — until Alysa Liu at Milano Cortina 2026. In the individual competition, she became the first woman to land a quad jump (quad Lutz) in the Olympic free skate and earned a 15-point margin of victory. Her victory lap — playing to the Milan crowd in a mix of English, Italian, and Mandarin — summarized everything about her: American-born, Chinese-heritage, globally minded, uniquely herself.

Having won halfpipe gold for China at Beijing 2022 on home snow, Eileen Gu repeated the feat at Cortina — becoming the first freestyle skier to win consecutive Olympic gold medals in halfpipe. Her winning run included a 1260 — 3.5 rotations — on her third hit, a score that broke the Olympic record by 4 points. At 22, she is already considered the greatest freestyle skier of all time. She also won silver in big air, adding to her record-breaking Olympic medal collection.

Held at San Siro stadium in Milan, the 2026 opening ceremony was a three-hour spectacle of Italian cultural pride: fashion, opera, Renaissance art, cycling history, and the Alpine landscape woven into a sequence that made every Italian watching feel a national identity articulated. A tribute to Bruce Lee — projected via AI-rendered hologram — received a standing ovation and subsequently drove millions to his Wikipedia page. The torch was lit by Lindsey Vonn and Valentino Rossi.

Seven years after her tearful retirement from alpine skiing, Lindsey Vonn returned to the Olympic stage not as a competitor but as a symbol. Carrying the Olympic torch into San Siro alongside Valentino Rossi, she was greeted by a roar usually reserved for World Cup victories. Vonn spent the games as the lead color commentator for NBC — her analytical insights and clear love for the sport made her the broadcast's defining voice.

Norway dominated the cross-country skiing events as only Norway can, winning 7 of 12 gold medals in the discipline and finishing the Games with their highest-ever total of 14 gold medals overall. Johannes Høsflot Klæbo won his third consecutive Olympic 50km title in conditions that drove most competitors to exhaustion, arriving at the finish line with enough energy to wave to the crowd. Sports commentators spent the Games asking: is Norwegian cross-country dominance a sporting dynasty or simply the natural order of things?

The most-watched event of the 2026 Games: the men's ice hockey gold medal game between the United States and Canada drew 45 million viewers in North America alone. The U.S. won 3–2 in overtime on a goal from a 22-year-old making his Olympic debut, ending Canada's six-game Olympic gold medal streak dating back to 2010. The celebration in the U.S. locker room — broadcast live on all networks — became one of 2026's defining sports moments.

The team figure skating event — still a relatively new Olympic discipline — reached new heights at Milano Cortina. With Alysa Liu and Ilia Malinin both competing for Team USA across multiple segments, and Japan fielding Yuzuru Hanyu's student Kao Miura in the men's singles, the competition produced the highest team event scores in Olympic history. The U.S. gold was a foregone conclusion within 24 hours; the drama came from Japan's extraordinary silver medal performance.

The men's individual large hill ski jumping final at Predazzo delivered one of the Games' great sporting dramas: the German favorite led going into the final round by 8 points before a massive wind surge during his jump cost him 12 points and the gold. The Austrian in second position — jumping in better conditions — landed a 136-metre jump that shattered the Olympic record and stole gold by 0.6 points. The German's composure in defeat was widely praised.

The Dolomites backdrop of Cortina d'Ampezzo — host of the alpine and biathlon events — produced the most photographed Olympic venue since the 1994 Lillehammer Games. The snow conditions were perfect, the mountain light extraordinary, and the Italian villages surrounding the courses added a visual grandeur that made every broadcast look like a tourism commercial. Multiple photographers called their images from Cortina the finest of their careers.