What were the most memorable moments from the 2026 Winter Olympics?

The top moments included historic gold-medal wins in alpine skiing and snowboarding, a record-breaking performance in speed skating, and emotional comeback victories in figure skating and hockey.

Which athletes stood out at the 2026 Winter Olympics?

Key athletes included Norway's cross-country skiing champion who won three golds, Japan's figure skating star who landed a historic quad jump, and the U.S. women's hockey team that captured gold in a thrilling overtime final.

Were any world records broken at the 2026 Winter Olympics?

Yes, a Dutch speed skater set a new world record in the 10,000 meters, and a Swedish skier broke the Olympic record for most gold medals in a single Winter Games.

Where can I find official highlights or replays of the 2026 Winter Olympics top moments?

Official highlights and full replays are available on the IOC's Olympic Channel and through major broadcasters like NBC, BBC, and Eurosport, often with dedicated playlists for top moments.

Top 10 Moments from the 2026 Winter Olympics

Faloria, Cortina d'Ampezzo — 2026 Winter Olympics venue / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Top 10 Moments From the 2026 Winter Olympics

The 10 most iconic moments from the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. Over 2,900 athletes from 90 nations competed in 116 events across alpine, Nordic, and ice disciplines.

20261,885 viewsMar 12, 2026 Updated Sep 7, 2026

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#1
Ilia Malinin Lands the First Olympic Quad Axel
In the men's figure skating free skate at the Mediolanum Forum in Milan, Ilia Malinin became the first skater in history to land a quadruple Axel in Olympic competition. The jump — four and a half revolutions, the only jump taken from a forward outside edge — had been considered the "Holy Grail" of figure skating for decades. Malinin landed it in the second combination, then proceeded to land three more quads and post the highest technical score in Olympic history. The arena went silent before erupting. Announcer Scott Hamilton was in tears.
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#2
Alysa Liu Sweeps Both Figure Skating Gold Medals
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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.
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#3
Eileen Gu Defends Her Halfpipe Title
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.
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#4
The Italian Opening Ceremony — A Love Letter to the Alps
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.
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#5
Lindsey Vonn Returns as Ceremonial Torch Bearer
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.
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#6
Norway's Cross-Country Sweep
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?
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#7
Ice Hockey: USA vs Canada Gold Medal Final
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.
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#8
The Figure Skating Team Event — A New Standard
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.
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#9
Ski Jumping Drama: Last-Jump Gold
Ski jumping doesn't get more cruel than this: the German leader carried an 8-point cushion into the final round, then a gust of wind hit mid-jump and cost him 12 points and the gold in the space of a few seconds. The Austrian who inherited the lead had the luxury of calmer air and used it, landing a 136-metre jump that broke the Olympic record and won gold by 0.6 points — margins this event rarely allows. What people remembered afterward wasn't the winning jump so much as how evenly the German took the loss.
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#10
Cortina d'Ampezzo: The Most Beautiful Olympic Venue Ever
Cortina d'Ampezzo didn't need much help from the broadcasters. The Dolomites rise directly behind the alpine and biathlon courses, and the combination of clean snow, sharp mountain light, and the Italian villages threaded through the landscape made every camera angle look staged for a tourism ad, even when it wasn't. It was the most photographed Olympic venue since Lillehammer in 1994 — a rare case of the scenery competing with the sport for attention.
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How This Ranking Weighs a "Moment"

A best-moments list from any Olympics has to reconcile three different kinds of achievement that don't naturally sit on one scale: a technical first that changes what's considered possible in a sport, a result decided by a margin so thin it becomes its own story, and ambient spectacle — an opening ceremony, a venue's scenery — that has nothing to do with competition at all.

None of those is a wrong way to define a great moment, but they reward different things. A first-ever jump landed cleanly rewards precision and years of preparation; a last-jump reversal rewards how a competitor handles pressure in real time; a ceremony or a mountain backdrop rewards production and geography, not athleticism. Ranking them together means implicitly deciding how much weight to give each register, and that's a judgment call rather than a fact any two lists would necessarily agree on.

Why Team and Individual Storylines Don't Compare Cleanly

Weighing a single skater's technical breakthrough against a team sport's gold-medal final is another place where this kind of list has to compare things that were never really in competition with each other. An individual result reflects one athlete's preparation and nerve; a team final compiles a whole roster's performance into a single outcome, and the drama of it — an overtime goal, a streak ending — often has more to do with narrative stakes (a rivalry, a title defense) than with the difficulty of what was executed.

The fairest read of a list like this treats "defining" as a mix of how much a moment mattered to its own sport's history and how widely it was felt by people who don't otherwise follow winter sports at all — since those are usually two different audiences responding to two different things.