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Hello from idyllic Cortina, the place the primary day of Olympic motion started two days forward of the opening ceremony with a fan favourite: curling. Kira Dixon from our companions over at NBC Sports was there.
We’re coming to you from our energetic newsroom in Milan, the place individuals gathered to look at the curling matches with — you guessed it — pizza.
More on the newest from Lindsey Vonn and a rundown of what our correspondents are most wanting ahead to.
We slid into motion with combined doubles in curling at Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium. It was Britain vs. Norway, Canada vs. Czechia, Sweden vs. South Korea and Switzerland vs. Estonia.
Some of the primary cheers weren’t only for the group “skips” — curling for captains — however for the lights. About 10 minutes into the competitors, the stadium skilled a partial energy outage. After a short pause, the lights got here again on to applause.
Sweden took the primary win of the 2026 Winter Olympics, 10-3 in opposition to South Korea within the sixth finish — additionally known as a spherical — ending the match early. Canada began with a snug lead in opposition to Czechia and received 10-5.
Britain and Norway had been probably the most carefully matched, however Britain in the end pulled via with an 8-6 win.
Estonia pulled off an unbelievable comeback to tie 7-7 with Switzerland, forcing an extra finish. Team Switzerland’s Yannick Schwaller and Briar Schwaller-Hürlimann sealed the take care of a 9-7 rating within the ninth finish.
The ladies’s downhill coaching classes Friday and Saturday — often routine affairs — is perhaps a number of the most carefully watched follow runs ever. American Lindsey Vonn is more likely to be testing her torn ACL a few week after she crashed at a race in Switzerland.
“As long as there’s a chance,” Vonn mentioned, “I will try.”
Dr. John Torres, a medical contributor for NBC News, was a bit shocked. “From a medical perspective, that’s a very tough uphill battle she’s got in front of her,” he mentioned. “That ACL is extremely important to keeping that knee stable, and keeping that knee stable is extremely important to her sport.”
Over her profession, Vonn has torn a number of knee ligaments and sustained a number of fractures. She retired in 2019, at the least partly due to accidents. In 2024, she underwent a partial proper knee alternative and introduced her comeback later that yr. On Friday, simply earlier than the 2026 Games, she tore the ACL in her left knee.
“It’s not the first time that someone would have tried to race at a high, high level without an ACL,” Chris Knight, Vonn’s head coach, informed NBC News.
Knight mentioned the largest issue is how Vonn feels bodily, and thus far, the indicators have been encouraging. “It’s very stable. There’s no pain, no swelling, as she’s mentioned,” he mentioned.
A brace would assist stabilize her knee. But because the harm occurred so lately, it’s nonetheless within the “acute phase, where her knee hasn’t recovered,” Torres mentioned, that means she’d most definitely be snowboarding with some quantity of ache.
It wouldn’t shock Torres, although, if Vonn gritted her tooth and competed anyway. “These super-fine-tuned athletes; they know their body better than most of us,” he mentioned. “She knows, and her staff knows, what she can and can’t do.”
“She’s prepared her whole life for these events,” he added. “It’s hard to give it up.”
The gold medal run for the ladies’s downhill is Sunday.
More than 230 athletes are set to characterize Team USA in Italy. Here’s what makes a few of them so particular.
Nick Baumgartner, a 44-year-old snowboard cross racer from Michigan, is heading to his fifth Olympics in Milan Cortina, defying a youth-dominated sport via relentless work, smarter coaching and hard-earned persistence. After many years of grinding, aspect jobs and near-misses, he lastly received Olympic gold in 2022.
Rory Guilday, a defender on the U.S. ladies’s hockey group, earned an Olympic roster spot a yr after being lower. Her journey contains having overcome childhood chemotherapy for an optic nerve tumor that price her a lot of the imaginative and prescient in her proper eye, a problem that reshaped her perspective and resilience. Now, in Milan, Guilday is about to make her Olympic debut along with her household within the stands, grateful for each likelihood to play.
There’s a lot to see, and eat, in the course of the subsequent 2½ weeks right here in Italy. Here’s what a number of the NBC News reporters and correspondents are most wanting ahead to.
Sam Brock: The ladies’s moguls group has 4 athletes who may all find yourself on the rostrum for each moguls and twin moguls — making it a powerhouse of complementary expertise that ought to actually flip this right into a memorable video games for the U.S. in freestyle snowboarding.
Also, American Alex Hall — who moved to Switzerland as a baby and hung out snowboarding within the mountains in Livigno, Italy — is an extremely compelling draw based mostly each on his model and the truth that he has an opportunity to develop into the primary athlete to win two gold medals in Slopestyle snowboarding because the occasion debuted greater than a decade in the past. And he has an Italian passport from his mother, who’s initially from Bologna!
Greg Rosenstein: Besides the seemingly infinite quantities of pasta, pizza and cappuccinos over the subsequent few weeks, I’m most excited to see how Lindsey Vonn fares. Winning one other gold medal was arduous sufficient with out the harm. Now the 41-year-old is making an attempt to do it mere days after a grotesque fall. If she will be able to pull it off, it is going to be the story of the Milan Cortina Games.
Rohan Nadkarni: I’m keen to seek out out if the sandwiches in Italy can evaluate to an Italian sub from Publix, and I can also’t wait to look at some brief monitor speedskating, which has been described to me as “NASCAR on ice.” One athlete particularly I’ll have my eye on in that occasion is Kristen Santos-Griswold, who was robbed of a medal in Beijing and is giving it one other go on the ice in Milan.
Claudio Lavagna: Well, I grew up in Milan, however haven’t lived right here in 25 years. So one factor I’m wanting ahead to is my favourite native dish: ossobuco alla Milanese (that’s bone marrow with saffron rice). The finest!
Here’s what to look ahead to tomorrow. In addition to curling, we’ve ladies’s hockey (together with the primary recreation for the U.S.) and males’s snowboarding. All occasions can be found to stream on Peacock.
Here’s the complete schedule (all instances Eastern):
Thursday, Feb. 5
That’s it for now! We’ll be again tomorrow.
This web page was created programmatically, to learn the article in its unique location you’ll be able to go to the hyperlink bellow:
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