Just under a month until the opening of the 25th Winter Olympiad, with the opening ceremonies to take place on February 6th in Milan's 75,000 seat San Siro football stadium, home of the AC Milan and Inter Milan football clubs. Closing ceremonies will be 16 days later on February 22nd at the 1,996 year old Verona Arena, constructed by the Roman Empire during the reigns of Octavian and Claudius Caesar.

They Olympics will feature the Olympic premiere of ski mountaineering ("skimo") as a winter event. Other notable changes taking place in this Olympiad:

- Mixed team parallel slalom skiing has been dropped.

- Women will be racing the same distances as men in cross-country skiing.

- Freestyle skiing will include men's and women's dual moguls, where competitors will ski down the course simultaneously with an opponent whom they are pitted against.

- The return of NHL hockey players to the Olympic men's hockey tournament. Professional NHL players were not allowed to compete in hockey during the previous two Olympiads, Beijing and PyeongChang.

- The alpine combined event will switch from an individual event to a two-person team event. The event's combination of both downhill and slalom skiing had seen a large decrease in participation as training for both the downhill skiing events and the slalom events has become more and more specialized to each skill. The alpine combined event will have medals for both men's teams and women's teams.

- Men's and women's doubles luge events will take the place of open doubles luge events for the first time since the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France. Open doubles allowed for doubles teams comprised of a man and woman in addition to teams comprised of two women or two men.

- Women's ski jumping will now include a large hill event in addition to women's normal hill, which they had previously included as a medal event. Men's ski jumping will continue to include normal hill, large hill, and will include the new men's super team event, which pits two-man teams against other two-man teams, unlike the traditional four-man team event, which will still be held as a mixed-team event for ski jumping.

- The skeleton, which was brought back into the Olympics for the 2002 Salt Lake City games after having been discontinued for 54 years, has been expanded to include a mixed-team medal in addition to the men's individual and women's individual events.

2024 Paris Summer Olympics

2022 Beijing Winter Olympics

2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics

2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics

2016 Rio Summer Olympics

2012 London Summer Olympics

2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics

2008 Beijing Summer Olympics

I'm not sure what the delay will be for NBC's televised coverage of the events since Milan is 6 hours ahead of the Eastern timezone in the US, but I believe all of the events are going to be available to watch On Demand via NBC's Peacock streaming channel.

Here's NBC's complete 2026 Winter Olympics Schedule, with all event times listed according to local time in Milan.

I'm not 100% positive of it, but I don't think there are any Olympians for the Team USA in the winter games this go-around with direct ties to Kentucky or Kentucky schools. There are a couple who have ties to Greater Cincinnati, though:

- Quinn Dehlinger is a freestyle skier who grew up in Anderson Township on the east side of Cincinnati who grew up skiing at Perfect North Slopes in Larenceburg, IN. He was recruited at 11 years old after being noticed at one of Perfect North's big air competitions and moved to Lake Placid to start training a year later. He's living and training in Park City, Utah since 2020.

- Nick Goepper is another freestyle skier who grew up in Lawrenceburg, IN and started skiing at Perfect North Slopes at 5 years old. He moved out to Oregon when he was 15 for training, and has competed in the men's Freeski Slopestyle events in the last 3 winter Olympiads, winning bronze in the 2014 Sochi games, silver in the 2018 PyeongChang games, and winning another silver in the 2022 Beijing games.

See Also: Olympians/Olympic Medalists From Kentucky High Schools

On 1/7/2026 at 10:06 AM, Colonels_Wear_Blue said:

2024 Paris Summer Olympics

2022 Beijing Winter Olympics

2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics

2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics

2016 Rio Summer Olympics

2012 London Summer Olympics

2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics

2008 Beijing Winter Olympics

2008 Beijing was the summer games.   2006 Winter games were in Torino, Italy.

I love all of the go fast on ice competitions (luge, bobsled, skeleton, downhill, ice racing especially the short races) and the go slow sport (curling) as well as ski jumping.

I hate how ski jumping is judged. It shouldn't be "judged" it should just be measured...longest jump wins, no points for form or penalty for jumping too far.

9 hours ago, Jumper_Dad said:

I love all of the go fast on ice competitions (luge, bobsled, skeleton, downhill, ice racing especially the short races) and the go slow sport (curling) as well as ski jumping.

Me too. Was in Lake Placid a couple years ago and was going to ride a bobsled, but the track was being worked on and wouldn't be available for two more weeks. They did have an alpine coaster that followed the same route as the 1932 Olympic bobsled track and you could still see much of the remains of that track as you rode over it. It was a pretty cool experience.

11 hours ago, Tranquility Base said:

2008 Beijing was the summer games.   2006 Winter games were in Torino, Italy.

Ahh, good catch. That was a typo, on my part. The link was actually to the 2008 Beijing Summer Games.

I will likely tune in for a lot of this. We are tentatively planning to attend the 2028 Olympics in LA, as long as we can secure the tickets. 

I'm loving the curling games. Love the strategy and appreciate the craft. As a slightly overweight, 6'nothing guy...I feel like I could give it a go. 

 

The winter olympics don't hold a candle to the summer olympics in my opinion. But with that said, I've still watched them just about every day for at least an hour or two, sometimes four or five hours on my off days.

 

Norway currently leads the medal count (shocker) with 37 total medals, including 17 gold medals, 10 silver medals, and 10 bronze medals. USA is second place for the medal count with 28 total medals (10 gold, 12 silver, 6 bronze) and Italy is third with 26 total medals (9 gold, 5 silver, 12 bronze). Those three countries are also the respective leaders in gold medal counts. Norway's 17 medals set an Olympic record for most gold medals won by a single country in a single Winter Olympics...they broke their previous record of 16, set in 2022.

USA Gold Medals:
Breezy Johnson - Women's Alpine Skiing: Downhill
Mikaela Shiffrin - Women's Alpine Skiing: Slalom
USA Team - Men's Figure Skating: Team Event
Alysa Liu - Women's Figure Skating: Singles
Elizabeth Lemley - Women's Freestyle Skiing: Moguls
Alex Ferreira - Men's Freestyle Skiing: Halfpipe
Jordan Stolz - Men's Speedskating: 1000 Meters (Olympic Record)
Jordan Stolz - Men's Speedskating: 500 Meters (Olympic Record)
USA Team - Women's Ice Hockey
Elana Meyers Taylor - Women's Bobsleigh: Monobob

USA WINS MEN'S ICE HOCKEY GOLD IN OVERTIME!

Canada frankly dominated the game after the first period, but the USA held on to get to overtime, and less than two minutes in, they get the winner.  First gold in men's hockey since the Miracle on Ice, 46 years ago TO THE DAY.

59 minutes ago, DragonFire said:

USA WINS MEN'S ICE HOCKEY GOLD IN OVERTIME!

Canada frankly dominated the game after the first period, but the USA held on to get to overtime, and less than two minutes in, they get the winner.  First gold in men's hockey since the Miracle on Ice, 46 years ago TO THE DAY.

That one was really cool to watch. Had to break out my USA sweatshirt for today's gym trip.