Are We Sick of Snoop? And 6 Other Olympic Subplots to Watch |
It’s possible, though unlikely, that you spent all of Wednesday afternoon watching curling coverage on Peacock (Mixed-doubles preliminaries kicked off — swept off? — with a power outage.) But for the rest of us, the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics kick off in earnest this Friday. The Winter Olympics are smaller than the summer version by design, and the more modest scale tends to benefit them: Even though they’re one of the biggest sporting events on the planet, they feel more charming, even affably weird. It is just impossible not to enjoy watching luge, or even saying the word “luge.”
But, as with any Olympics, you’re probably waiting until the Games get going to actually pay attention. So to catch you up, here are six major storylines to know about as we head into a fortnight of the good kind of ice.
The real test for America’s image on the sporting stage will arrive at the World Cup this summer and the Los Angeles Summer Olympics in 2028. Until then, this is the biggest spotlight that American athletics — and the inherent imperialism that always comes with them — will be under since the beginning of President Trump’s second term. That glare is unlikely to be welcoming. The mayor of Milan has said that ICE — which is expected to provide security to the U.S. delegation at the Olympics (something that has been happening at every Olympics for years but obviously takes on a different context now) — is not welcome in his city, and protesters have already taken to the streets there. But that’s far from the only issue. The president........