It’s hard for the Winter Olympic Games to compete with the Summer Games. Dozens of skiing and skating variations can’t really compare to the sheer variety of the summer events, even if it’s incredibly rad to send athletes down an ice tube at seventy miles per hour and call the sport "Skeleton."
But aside from the lows of the 2026 Olympics in Milano Cortina so far—including that awkwardly segmented opening ceremony and Lindsey Vonn’s terrifying fall—we’ve seen some amazing wins as well. Team USA’s Breezy Johnson took home the gold in the downhill skiing event. Ilia Malinin kicked off the ice-skating season with a challenging team win, and a certain curling baby is taking social media by storm.
There’s still plenty of events ahead, and many more medals to give out. Here’s the best moments from the first week of Olympic games in Milan-Cortina so far.
Though Kim couldn't tie Shaun White's three gold medals in the women's halfpipe event on Thursday, the snowboarder took home second place. She lost to seventeen-year-old Choi Ga-on from South Korea, who rebounded from a nasty fall in the first run to take the gold in round 3. Still, it was all grace and sportsmanship from Kim, who's been a mentor to Choi Ga-on leading up the Games.
In an emotional post-race interview, Norwegian biathlete Sturla Holm Lægreid surprised audiences with a confession: he cheated on his girlfriend. Normally, athletes discuss the race or how they're feeling about winning a medal—Lægreid just won the bronze in the men's 20 km event. Instead, Lægreid turned that post-race adrenaline around to reach out to "the love of [his] life."
"I told her a week ago, and it’s been the worst week of my life," Lægreid said. "I had a gold medal in life, and there’s probably a lot of people out there who look at me differently now, but I only have eyes for her. Sports has taken a bit of a back seat these past couple of days. Yeah, I wish I could share this with her."
Naturally, Lægreid's ex-girlfriend didn't appreciate the spotlight. But hey, you got to give it up to Lægreid for bringing a lot of attention to the biathlon.
Audiences almost never saw the Italian figure skater's Minions-themed routine. Though he was dressed in a unitard that looked just the animated characters's yellow bodies and blue overalls, last-minute issues over the rights to the song almost kept him from competing in the free skate event. Luckily, Pharrell Williams and Universal Music Group stepped in and immediately cleared it. So, Guarino finally took to the ice to skate a crowd-pleaser that was ... certainly something to behold.
US skier Breezy Johnson made it down the mountain in Italy in just one minute and thirty-six seconds, which is somehow not the Olympic record. It was a day full of mixed emotions following Lindsey Vonn’s dangerous crash, but the 30-year-old from Wyoming brought home the first medal of Milan-Cortina for Team USA. “Lindsey has accomplished so much and will live in a different echelon than I do,” Johnson said at the press conference, “but I think that to have your name alongside her is really something special.”
