Key events
Cross-country: Back to the 10×10 while the downhill course gets cleared, this is a pretty familiar sight: Klaebo hanging just behind the leaders, very confident of his prowess in a sprint finish. He was ruthless in the previous Games. Sits behind a couple of Frenchmen on a flatter section, then surges back to the front on a climb.
Alpine skiing: Ooof, another big crash now in the women’s downhill. Cande Moreno, the Andorran flagbearer at these games, having also competed in 2022. She’s barely got started on the course, there’s a big downhill jump in the early stages and she crashes there at perhaps the steepest part. This one will require the medics, it looks like a knee injury.
At this stage, the rest of the field are the slower-qualifying skiers, so it looks very likely with 10 racers to go that the podium is already set. USA, Germany, Italy so far.
An email from Scott Wedel: “One of Vonn’s attributes as a ski racer is a willingness to take big risks. At that speed on a choppy surface, a racer doesn’t have precise control so a racer has to decide how much room to give to the flags. Vonn was always one to cut it closer than others. Often it gave her the edge to win races. Sometimes it results in crashes.”
Cross-country: Scratch that, the Norwegians have been broken up. Russian independent Korostelev has gone to the front at around 7km of the first 10. Lapalus for France is in the mix too.
Cross-country: Meanwhile, the men’s 10km + 10km skiathlon is well underway, and you’ll be amazed to learn that three Norwegians are leading it: Stenshagen, Nyenget, and five-time gold medallist Klaebo. Another Norwegian is fifth. What is it about guys named Amundsen and travelling quickly across snow?
Beau Dure emails in. “How pivotal was the decision to allow the Crans-Montana World Cup downhill to proceed nine days ago? They finally called it off after three of the first six skiers didn’t finish, but Vonn was one of those three, and that’s where she picked up the injury. Is this a lesson for World Cup organisers to be a lot more careful?”
Alpine skiing: A second crash in this final, but thankfully Nina Ortlieb is physically fine, just absolutely furious. The Austrian skier leans into a corner and hits a bump, overbalancing into the slope, and is able to at least land her fall safely and slide away the momentum. She skis down the rest of the course under her own recognisance. Jacqueline Wiles before that clipped a couple of flags, coming into fourth for the USA.
So it’s Johnson, Aicher, Goggia on the podium so far, at the halfway mark with 18 skiers done.
Alpine skiing: You can never know, but you wonder how much that wait affected the next skiers. Puchner is way outside the lead time, a second a half. Goggia starts powerfully, and skis herself into the bronze medal spot for now, but is 0.69 seconds down. There are four marker points: she was ahead, then behind, then ahead, then behind. Lost her line and went outside the course guidelines at one stage, which would have cost a bit.
Alpine skiing: Spare a thought for Mirjam Puchner, second at the World Champs last year, and Sofia Goggia, silver at the last Olympics and gold before that. The Austrian and the Italian have been waiting all this time, watching all these scenes, delayed in waiting for their turn. Now they have to try putting this out of their minds, so they can take their one shot at the race they so desperately want to win.
Alpine skiing: What a horrible turn to the story. There was so much excitement and goodwill about Vonn: a gold medallist in this discipline in Vancouver 2010, and then quitting the sport for years due to the injuries, only to come back following a full knee replacement. Qualifying to compete at this tournament at 41 years of age, then injuring her ACL only last month, and somehow stabilising well enough to continue with her plan to compete here. We’ve no idea whether the knee injury had anything to do with the error that saw her overshoot that turn and hit that flag, but she had passed her fitness tests and was apparently ready to go. Now she’s strapped into an evacuation suit, she’s gone very quiet too which is probably the effects of sedation, and she’s being flown away. We’ll report more as we know it.
Lindsey Vonn is being evacuated by helicopter
It’s been over 10 minutes with her lying on the course, in the hands of medics. Now a helicopter medic is being lowered in on a winch. These are awful scenes.
Alpine skiing: The cause of the crash is becoming clear: she lost control of her line coming into a turn, and got far too close to the marker flag. She caught her right arm in the flag, that arm going between the uprights rather than clipping the outside of it. The flags do pull apart when hit like that, but it was enough to twist her off balance. So she turned sideways in the air, and already going at prodigious speed, landed with both skis lateral to the slope while her body was falling backwards. So there was no good way to slide from there, her skis jammed and she went end over end rather than continuing down the slope.
Alpine skiing: This is horrible. It’s not like the cameras are out there sticking microphones into the situation, but you can clearly hear Vonn’s voice across the slopes crying out in pain. They have a stretcher out for her and a team of medics attending, half a dozen of them out there. Neither of her skis came off when she crashed, that’s the likely cause of the damage.
Lindsey Vonn has crashed during the Women’s Downhill
That was a heavy landing. Not far out of the gates, she took off with ferocity, pushed herself into the course, but after getting a small amount of air from an early jump she has landed horribly, skis going sideways, and is yet to get back up. It looks very bad considering that knee injury. Staff are getting out onto the slope to tend to her. The crowd is silent.
Alpine skiing: A number of these racers have been ahead of Breezy’s time through the early stages, but she must have had a phenomenal second half of the course, they keep losing touch as they go. Lindsey Vonn about to race.
Curling: Korea have beaten Estonia 9-3 in the mixed doubles round robin, and Czechia beat Norway 6-3. They’re the bottom four teams in the standings though.
Alpine skiiing: Emma Aicher of Germany misses out on the lead by four one hundredths of a second! Breezy Johnson gasps in relief, Aicher roars in frustration as she sees the clock. A couple of tiny wobbles coming out of two of the jumps might have been the difference.
Alpine skiing: Laura Pirovano, with home crowd cheers in her ears, comes in second for the time being, a couple of early twitches in her balance costing some time at the top of the course. Not sure if she looks annoyed or happy at the end, she lies down on the snow spent. There’s been a warning over the official radio about the difficulty of the course where patches of shade are being cast by trees across the snow.
Alpine skiiing: Breezy Johnson goes top, for USA. Had a twist in the air off one of the early jumps, had to battle to land it, but then comes through with a sizzling run on the rest of the course, improving on her training run time by a second and a half.
Alpine skiing: It’s a gorgeous day out there, blue sky. We’ve had five skiers so far, Ariane Raedler of Austria is leading on 1:37:20, the Italian Brignone and three Swiss skiers following her. Janine Schmitt and Jasmine Flury both almost stacked, but recovered it, terrifying at that speed. Malorie Blanc went first and had a clean run, 1:38:77.
Alpine skiing: Women’s downhill final. We are away! This event is spectacular. A long, winding track that the skiers take one at a time, racing on the clock rather than on the course. It twists and turns at great steepness, meaning these women are getting up above 120 kilometres an hour. They have to stay within a flagged course, as well. The shots from the cameras following them are giving me goosebumps, with the speed the athletes are travelling. There are multiple sections where they get serious air, not off jumps but just off the slope, and they have to land those jumps at that pace as well.
Snowboard: The men’s PGS qualifiers have just finished too, here’s who made it.
Roland Fischnaller – Italy
Aaron March – Italy
Benjamin Karl – Austria
Arnaud Guadet – Canada
Tervel Zamfirov – Bulgaria
Sangho Lee – Korea
Dario Caviezel – Switzerland
Sangkyum Kim – Korea
Zan Kosir – Slovenia
Mirko Felicetti – Italy
Andreas Prommegger – Austria
Elias Huber – Germany
Radoslav Yankov – Bulgaria
Maurizio Bormolini – Italy
Tim Mastnak – Slovenia
Rok Marguc – Slovenia
Snowboard: Pretty remarkable sub-story in the women’s giant slalom, where qualifying has set the final 16 boarders who will go into quarter finals, head to head. Ester Ledecka, the reigning gold medallist in this event from the last two Olympics (as well as a cheeky skiing gold thrown in there as well) has unsurprisingly finished fastest. That means she’ll be drawn against the 16th qualifier, Claudia Riegler, who has qualified at 52 years of age.
This is her fifth Olympics, but her first was 2002. Later she competed in 2010, 2014, and 2018, and now eight years later is back for another crack. Go on.
The final 16
Ester Ledecka – Czechia
Zuzana Maderova – Czechia
Tsubaki Miki – Japan
Lucia Dalmasso – Italy
Aleksandra Krol-Walas – Poland
Elisa Caffont – Italy
Ramona Theresia Hofmeister – Germany
Michelle Dekker – Netherlands
Sabine Payer – Austria
Malena Zamfirova – Bulgaria
Julie Zogg – Switzerland
Aurelie Moisan – Canada
Jasmin Corati – Italy
Kaylie Buck – Canada
Cheyenee Loch – Germany
Claudia Riegler – Austria
Here’s Bryan on the opening ceremony and the crowd disapproval of one of America’s widely loathed regime. “Information asymmetry” is quite the phrase.
If you didn’t catch Day 1 in pictures, do yourself a favour. There are some tremendous snappers out on the slopes. (Not the fish.)
If you want to get more summaries than I can give you, get hold of The Briefing, which is our daily Olympic mailer.
What to look out for today
Times are all in local time in Milan and Cortina. For Sydney it is +10 hours, for London it is -1 hour, for New York it is -6 hours and San Francisco it is -9 hours.
Snowboard: The women’s and men’s giant slalom elimination runs are on now. Then from at about 1pm the women’s quarter finals, 2:12pm the women’s semis, at 2:19pm the men’s semis, and at 2:26pm the women’s final, with 2:36pm the men’s final. Later, at 7:30 pm, we’ll have the women’s Big Air qualifiers. Get on up.
Curling – 10:05am, 2:35pm, 7:05pm: The first mixed doubles matches are the ones underway now, Czechia v Norway and Estonia v Korea, then later on it will be Canada v Sweden and Great Britain v Switzerland. The Brits are already through, mind you, unbeaten from seven games played so far. They just have today’s match and one against Italy to go, which will happen in the latest round tonight, as well as Sweden v USA, Switzerland v Norway, and Canada v Korea.
Alpine skiiing – 11:30am: A 36-entrant field for the women’s final, but much of the attention will be on American veteran Lindsey Vonn, racing on a damaged ACL – a knee ligament, which you would think you need to ski. Apparently not.
Cross-country – 12:30pm: This is the men’s 10×10 skiathlon event, the one where they switch ski styles halfway through.
Biathlon – 2:05pm: Two women, two men, six kilometres each, plus both styles of shooting, which means standing and lying down for a rest. That’s the relay.
Speed skating – 4pm: The men’s 5000 metres final, when they go round and round and round and round and round and round…
Ice hockey – 4:40pm and 9:10pm: Group games for the women between France and Sweden in the early match, and Czechia against Finland in the latter.
Luge – 6:34pm: This will be the fourth and final luge run for the men, which will decide the winner. They had two runs yesterday, Germany’s Max Langenhan is the current leader.
Figure skating – 7:30pm, 8:45pm, 9:55pm: This will be a flurry of creativity. It’s the final stretch of the team event, where national teams combine scores across a team doing all four skating events. We’ve already had the ice dance, so today it will be the pairs first, then the women solo, then the men.
Preamble
Hello, friends and rivals, Italy enthusiasts and snow bunnies. We’re about to embark on the second day of the Winter Olympics 2026, and it’s an exercise in contrast, with the first few medals already lodged in the tally from some ski, skate, and snowboard events, and about eight million curling matches yet to play before reaching the business end there.
What’s up for grabs today? These are the medal events.
Alpine skiing: the Women’s Downhill event, after the men’s yesterday.
Cross-country skiiing: Men’s 10km+10km skiathlon
Biathlon: Mixed replay 4x6km
Snowboard: Women’s Parallel Giant Slalom
Snowboard: Men’s Parallel Giant Slalom
Speed Skating: Men’s 5000m
Luge: Men’s Singles
Figure Skating: Team Event – Men’s Single Skating
It’s going to be a busy one, building up from a relatively quiet start to a big finish. Right now we’ve got the women’s giant slalom boarding qualification runs going, and a couple of curling matches in the mixed doubles round robin.
