Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games - Olympic Day 3 (Milan)

February 9

One agreement that we made many years ago is that at each Olympics we have to take time out to see stuff that is not Olympic related. Today is our only day off from attending competitions so we are off to see the Duomo, the huge cathedral in the center of Milan. We were expecting that the subways would be busy with people going to work so we left with plenty of time to spare to get through security before the start of our 10 AM tour. But there were hardly any people on the metro and we arrived in the piazza di Duomo more than an hour ahead of time! The Olympic superstore, located in the piazza doesn't open until 9:30 AAM so we decide to walk all the way around the Duomo and take some pictures of the outside along with a better picture of the Galleria di Emanuella II:

The Duomo is built in an architectural style called Flamboyant Gothic. In 355 CE, there was a church at this site and a basilica was added about 500 years later. When both burned in 1075, 

they were rebuilt as the Duomo. But in 1386, Archbishop Saluzzo started construction of a new cathedral on the same site. It would not be completed until 1965! It was interesting that even though construction stalled for long periods of time and Gothic architecture gave way to Renaissance architecture, they still kept building in the same style. It is hard to express just how huge this cathedral is. It took us a good 15 minutes to walk all the way around! It is the largest cathedral in Italy - St. Peters is bigger, but it is actually in Vatican City, not in Italy.

We get to the elevator that will take us up to the roof for the beginning of the tour, but we are still 45 minutes ahead of time. Beth decides to ask one of the security people if we can go in early. She takes a look at the number of people in line and waves us ahead. After going through security, we get on an elevator that will take us up to the terraces on the roof. But the elevator first drops us at a level even with the top of the perimeter walls. There are a lot of statues up here! These pictures will give you an idea of the different styles:

No idea who these people are, but we have what looks like Greeks, Romans and more traditional Italians. Here are a couple more views from this level:

You can see that every single spire is different. We also see places where some of these spires have been removed, cleaned and replaced. There was some scaffolding up for repairs on the west side of the Duomo and even more on the eastern side. We guess that there are just so many elements up here that there are always some parts that need to be cleaned or repaired.

After we've walked most of the way along one wall, we turn left and start walking up stairs to the terraces. Here is the view:

This is supposed to be the place to get a great view of Milano, but it is quite foggy so we can't see much. Beth's guidebooks say that WW II Italian dictator Benito Mussolini is supposed to have his head up here somewhere, but we can't find it. Going downstairs to the cathedral is a lot harder on our knees, but we finally make it down. On the way down, we collected a few pictures of gargoyles and other strange critters:

At the point where the stairway enters into the cathedral, we see this statue of Gian Giacomo Medici:

of the famous Medici family who were very influential in northern Italy during the 15th century. We think that he is here because of money that his family contributed to the construction of the Duomo in the 15th and 16th century. 

Steve is a sucker for stained glass, so let's do those pictures first:

At first, we were a little confused because these stained-glass windows did not look like those from the 15th and 16th centuries based on what we learned while in Paris in 2024. We looked in the guidebook, and it indicated that all of the windows were replaced with painted glass starting in the 16th century although there is one window that still has stained-glass from the 15th century.

Here are our other pictures from the cathedral:

We hope that a couple of these pictures give you an idea of how big this cathedral is. It is said to have a capacity of 40,000 people! There is one thing that we wanted to show you but could not. In the late 18th century, a small hole was put in the roof of the west end of the cathedral, and a meridian line was laid across the floor. When the sun shines, a ray of light falls on the meridian line when it is solar noon. In the olden days, someone would see the image of the sun cross the meridian line and would signal a nearby tower who would relay the signal to the Sforza Castle where a cannon would be fired to indicate that it was noon. In addition, the place along the meridian where the image of the sun crosses indicates the month. In 1976, Architects and Astronomers exampled the meridian line and calculated that the maximum error on the time of solar noon was 2 seconds! Unfortunately, there was no sun visible today.

We went out onto the piazza and decided that we would walk over to see how long the line to get into the superstore was. It was about double the length of the other day and we decided that we didn't want anything in there bad enough to stand in line for 30 minutes. As we walked back, Steve watched for people who might be interested in trading pins but saw no one.

He was just remarking that it was amazing that he could walk across such a crowded piazza and not have anyone want to trade pins when a guy came up to us and asked Steve if he was willing to be interviewed by Xfinity (Comcast). This is not the first time that this has happened, so he agreed. The interviewer asked Steve about how he came to have so many pins while the director made sure that we were standing in the right place and the camera and sound were ready. Then the interviewer asked Steve three questions. The first one was what has been Steve's favorite Olympic moment in Milano. Steve answered that seeing Francesca Lollobrigida win a gold medal (Italy's first) and set a personal best at the same time was his favorite moment. The second question was if Steve could get a gold medal in anything, what would it be. He thought for a second and said that he'd like to win a gold medal in being a good Olympic ambassador for the US. The last question was what Winter Olympic Sport would you like to do. Steve said bobsled. The interviewer asked if someone looked at Steve, would they think that Steve would be good at bobsled. Steve laughed and said absolutely not. Most of the successful bobsled athletes are shaped like football middle linebackers. After that, Steve was asked to sign a release saying that I would not sue Xfinity and we were on out way.

The rest of the day was much less eventful. Steve was not feeling great (lack of both sleep and food) so we went back to the hotel so that Steve could lay down for a while and then work on the blog while Beth went to the local laundromat to wash some of our clothes.

Tomorrow, we are off to short-track speed skating. Enjoy! 

Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games - Olympic Day 2 (Milan)

February 8

Sleeping last night was a little better. Good thing, because we don't know how much longer we could keep up this pace without sufficient sleep! We've got a fairly low-key today with women's ice hockey - Sweden vs France at 4:40 PM at the same Rho stadium we've gone to twice already.

We got up late and ate breakfast on the late side, so Steve works on his blog until about 1:30 PM. We go out to lunch at a fast-food place that was advertised in the Vesta metro station (our "home" station). Beth has a prosciutto and cheese focaccia sandwich and Steve has a silk chicken sandwich because he wanted to find out what silk chicken was. It turned out it had a sort of boiled texture, but also had some browning, but not to the same level as grilling would have. We also had two kinds of appetizers that looked like small hockey pucks - one spinach and quinoa and the other potato and cheese - really good and gave us some badly needed veggies.

Once on the metro, we found ourselves standing next to two tall women wearing NBC jackets. They asked about Steve's pins, which started a conversation. They were both colligate athletes who are runners (go-fors!) for the network. They had the day off today and their boss gave them tickets to ice hockey! One of them asked if we knew that Lindsey Vonn had crashed in the women's downhill. We said that to us, it was a little crazy that someone would try to ski the highest speed Olympic alpine event with a completely torn ACL in her knee. The other woman mentioned that she had torn her ACL playing basketball. What she found strange is that it hurt like hell for about 10 minutes and then didn't hurt anymore. She said that she actually didn't realize that she had torn her ACL until later. But she did mention that her knee was completely unstable afterwards. One of them said something about figure skating and Beth asked if Tara Lipinski (former Olympic gold medal winner in women's figure skating and now a color commentator for NBC) had really brought nine suitcases full of clothes to Milan. She laughed and said that yes, and so did her co-commentator Johnny Weir. She said they know for sure because most of those suitcases are currently stored in their office! If you get a chance to watch NBC's figure skating coverage, you will know why Beth asked the question. They are both fashionistas!

We have to change metro lines twice on our way to the Rho Ice Hockey arena. At one of the stations, we have to go outside of one building and into another. When we do, we see that part of the walkway is clear. When we get closer, we find that the station is built on top of a medieval building and archeologists are doing a dig to reveal the ancient walls:

We have heard that the current nasty version of norovirus is making its way through the women's hockey teams. Finland's game against Canada was postponed when Finland had only 10 healthy players (a normal team has 20) and the next day Finland played the US still with only 10 players. (We guess that when the organizers realized that multiple teams had illness issues they realized they couldn't postpone all the games in the time they had to work with.) We also heard that the Swiss team is impacted so we half-expected that one team would only have a few players. Fortunately, both teams seemed to be at full strength.

The bad news for France (0 Wins, 2 Losses) is that Sweden (2 Wins, 0 Losses) is absolutely at full strength. This means that the French goalkeeper, Alice Philbert is going to be very busy! After one period, Sweden is already ahead 3-0. We are not sure if the French buckled down or if the Swedes took it easy, but the final score was only 4-0 with Philbert making 44 saves. Here are some pictures of the action:

It was around 8 PM when we got back to the Navigli neighborhood. A little late for those of us trying to go to be on the early side so we decided to skip dinner and go right to gelato! Tomorrow is our only day in Italy with no events so we are heading for a tour of the Duomo. Enjoy!

Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games - Olympic Day 1 (Milan)

February 7

Last night, we were just getting to sleep when our 2 AM "wake up" period occurred so it was a long time before we actually got to sleep. Experts say that you adapt to about 1 hr. of time difference per day. If this is so, we should start to feel normal just about when we switch from Milano to Cortino!

After barely making it to breakfast in time, Steve spent the late morning and early afternoon blogging while Beth read one of the six books that she brought to read on this trip. Then it was time to head back to the Rho area, this time for women's 3000 meter long-track speed skating. 

Despite being a few cards short of a full deck, Steve knew it was going to be a good day when at the first metro stop, a group of four people in blue snowsuits got on the train and one immediately came up and asked if he would like to trade pins. He was wearing a China team pin but instead showed Steve a couple of pins that he would like to trade. Steve did not immediately recognize the NOC logo and asked what it was. He replied "Kazakhstan". It was only then that Steve noticed that the blue outfits had Qazaqstan (which is how the people in that nation spell it) on them. Of course Steve would be happy to trade! The Kazak selected a Valentine's Day pin from Salt Lake City 2002. This made Steve smile because Valentine's Day always occurs during the Winter Olympics and he is always sure to have at least one on his vest at all times!

Speed skating is the Dutch national sport, so it was no surprise when we got to our seats and saw this:

Dutch people wear orange because their royal family is from the House of Orange. By the time the event started, we guessed that perhaps half of the stands were full of orange-clad Dutchmen (and a good percentage of those not wearing orange might have been Dutch also). There was about an hour before the event started and there was a brass band performing that looked familiar:

When the introduction named them as the Royal Kleintje Pils, we weren't surprised. This is the same band that we have seen at every Winter Olympics we've attended since Nagano in 1998 (their bio says that they were also in Calgary in 1988 but we didn't take note of them there). We do remember them trying to teach the Japanese how to do the wave (you haven't lived until you see a man carrying a tuba running along trying to start the wave)!

Today's event is the 3000-meter race which covers 12.5 laps of the 400-meter track. Racers go two at a time and have to cross-over from inside to outside lane several times so that both skaters skate the same distance. American Greta Myers:

skated in the first pair and was making her Olympic debut. She was not supposed to be in this race, but yesterday, world record holder Martina Sablikova from Czechia had to withdraw due to an illness. This was a serious bummer to us because Sablikova, age 38, had only come back this year to try to win another Olympic medal (and likely say her professional good-byes) and this was her best event. But this is great for Greta. This might be a good place to point out that probably 95% of all of the Olympic athletes never win anything. Going to the Olympics after years of hard work is the reward, so while Greta did not win her pairing and finished last, she was thrilled to be able to compete on the world's biggest stage.

The 3000 meter is a long enough race that there is a significant amount of strategy. Racers have to decide whether to go out fast and try to hang on at the end or start slowly and try to increase their speed gradually during the whole race. Each skater has at least one coach on the backstretch giving them split times to help the skaters judge their effort level. There is also a big advantage to being able to grab a short boost by drafting behind the other skater during the cross-over from inside to outside lane:

There is a lot of technology that goes into getting the images for broadcasting the event. We counted four types. There are the now common cameras on cables and a special camera on a high-speed track around the outside of the oval (also commonly used in track and field - see upper left of the second picture):

But there were two types we were previously unaware of. The first is a robot that covers the inside of the oval in each corner and the second is a small drone that follows some distance behind the pair toward the end of the race:

After the first five pairs, there is a break to resurface the ice so that the later skaters (who should be the fastest) aren't disadvantaged. Then it was time for the medal contenders to skate. In honor of Steve's trade with the Kazaks, we have a picture of their best skater, Nadezhda Morozova:

She set a personal best time of 4:01.200 minutes in the 7th pair. Next up was Valerie Maltais from Canada and Francesca Lollobrigida from Italy:

Both of these racers were probably considered slightly past their primes, Francesca's 35th birthday is today (and is coming off the birth of her first child in May 2023) and Valerie is a few months older. If the Francesca's name sounds vaguely familiar, it should (if you are over the age of 60!). The famous actress Gina Lollobrigida is her great aunt. We have watched all of the long-track world cup races this year on TV so it was not a surprise when Francesca roared out of the start (she is a go fast and hold on kind of skater). Here she is drafting on Maltais:

Usually, Francesca burns out at the end of the race but today was one of those rare times when an athlete produces an effort that they don't even know that they are capable of. She finished in a time of 3:54.28, nearly 7 seconds ahead of Morozova.  The Italian fans went crazy! Even more incredible, that time was Francesca's personal fastest time ever and a new Olympic record on what is probably considered a very slow ice surface (at least compared to the high-altitude ovals in Calgary and Salt Lake City where most records are set). The Dutch fans, always great sports, recognized a great performance when they saw one and were on their feet as well. The Dutch fans also knew that they had two skaters, both ranked top five in the world, in the last two pairs. As Francesca sat in the warmup area with her head in her hands, first Marijke Groenewoud from the Netherlands and Ragne Wiklund from Norway and then Isabelle Weidemann from Canada and reigning world champion Joy Beune from the Netherlands tried to catch her and failed. The final results were Francesca Lollobrigida, gold, Ragne Wiklund, silver, and Valerie Maltais, bronze. After the victory, Francesca looked like she could hardly believe what had happened:

The Dutch fans on the metro going back to the hotel were a little down, but they have many more events in both long-track and short-track in which their athletes are considered the favorites for medals. We grab a quick dinner at a local Greek place down the street and go back to the hotel in the hope of finally getting a decent night's sleep.

Tomorrow, we have women's ice hockey. Enjoy!