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Veteran sportswriter Richard Deitsch takes an international view of the Olympics.
The Olympics have always been a star-making vehicle. If you find gold in the right event, you can go from today’s unknown to tomorrow’s pitchwoman.
But Lindsay Vonn is a unique figure at the Milano-Cortina Olympic Games. She is already a very famous person — an Olympic champion with 2.8 million Instagram followers — who enters Sunday’s competition with the possibility of achieving sports immortality.
A week after rupturing the ACL in her left knee, Vonn, at age 41, goes for Olympic gold at 5:30 a.m. ET at the Olympia delle Tofane downhill course. It is preposterous that she is even competing in 2026. Vonn had a partial titanium replacement inserted in her right knee in 2024 and then returned to ski racing last season after nearly six years of retirement.
Her World Cup downhill crash in Switzerland last week should have been the end of her medal comeback but there she was on Friday and Saturday in Cortina d’Ampezzo, putting in successful training runs. Vonn finished in third position on Saturday, 0.37 seconds behind leader and teammate Breezy Johnson, and declared herself ready to go. The edge is there too — she spent some time on Saturday going off on a USA Today opinion writer.
American Lindsey Vonn completes her second straight successful downhill training run and will compete for gold at the Milano-Cortina Olympics on Sunday, little more than a week after rupturing the ACL of her left knee.
Just competing on Saturday given her injury is an incredible achievement. If Vonn were to hit the podium on Sunday? Well, that’s sports story-of-the-year potential. A gold medal? That would make her an Olympic immortal.
There are others to watch: Italy’s Sofia Goggia, who won gold in the downhill at the 2018 Olympics and silver in Beijing in 2022, lit the cauldron in Cortina to conclude Friday’s opening ceremony. She will be the crowd favourite along with countrywoman Federica Brignone, who had the fastest training time on Friday and returns from a double leg break. Keep an eye on Germany’s Kira Weidle-Winkelmann and Emma Aicher too. But Vonn is Sunday’s big global story.
The coolest thing I saw Saturday
One of the best parts of the Olympics is discovering world-class athletes. That was the case for me early Saturday morning as I watched Frida Karlsson of Sweden take gold in the 20-kilometre women’s skiathlon at the gorgeous Tesero Cross-Country Skiing Stadium.
In a grueling event on the Dolomite mountain course, featuring nearly an hour of skiing in wet and humid snow, Karlsson, a three-time world champion, dominated the race. She was so far ahead of silver medallist Ebba Anderson, also of Sweden, that she was able to ski toward the crowd and grab a giant Sweden flag before she completed the race in 53 minutes 45 seconds. Anderson was 51 seconds behind. Like Michael Jordan, Karlsson often skis with her tongue out, which produces some memorable photos. The NBC Sports analyst Kikkan Randall, a 2018 silver medallist, said that the Sweden women’s cross-country group might be the best national team at the Games.
Watching Francesca Lollobridiga, an Italian speedskater with a Hollywood name and famous lineage, was also bellissima.
She won Italy’s first gold medal, setting an Olympic record in the women’s 3,000-metre speed skating final. “It’s like a dream of a dream,” she told NBC. The speedskater is the grand niece of the Italian screen star Gina Lollobrigida — and she won a gold medal on her 35th birthday.
Who will star on Sunday (other than the Super Bowl and the women’s downhill)?
Looks like we’re going to have a generational shift in men’s luge. Germany’s Max Langenhan (age 26) leads after two rounds followed by Australia’s Jonas Mueller (age 28). The 36-year-old German icon Felix Loch, a three-time Olympic luge champ with more than 100 World Cup podiums on his resume, sits in eighth place — and likely out of gold medal contention. The 38-year-old Australian slider Wolfgang Kindl, who won two silver medals in Beijing, is in seventh. The fourth and final run is scheduled for 12:34 p.m. ET.
There’s another global athlete you should make time to watch: Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo of Norway. He’s already won five gold medals in his gilded cross-country career and will be a medal contender in six events in Italy. His 2026 program begins with the men’s 10km + 10km skiathlon (6:30 a.m. ET start).
Numbers to know
22 – Gold medals in luge won by Germany since 1992 out of 30 events.
14 – Olympic hockey goals for Team USA captain Hilary Knight, tying her for the all-time U.S. record for goals at the tournament alongside Natalie Darwitz and Katie King-Crowley.
1 – Alpine skier in history (Italy’s Dominik Paris) to win their first Olympic medal in their fifth Games. It was Paris’s 10th Olympic race overall and, at 36, he is the second-oldest Alpine medallist ever. (Hat tip: Olympedia and Nick Zacardi of NBC Sports).
What we’re reading around the web
► FIS aims to quash penis-enlargement sideshow, but science makes sense. By Ossian Shine of Reuters
► An Olympic event that bars women is in danger of fizzling out. By Rick Maese of The Washington Post
► After appearing in Epstein Files, L.A. Olympics chief lies low at Milan Games. By Tariq Panja and Shawn Hubler of the New York Times.
► House of ice on a warming planet: Italy’s turn for the Olympics winter mirage. By Andy Bull of the Guardian.
► The man who broke physics. By Sally Jenkins of The Atlantic.
► Who’ll Win in Italy? SI picks every medal at the Milan Cortina Olympics. By Brian Cazeneuve of Sports Illustrated