Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games - Olympic Day 10 (Cortina)

February 16

Today, we have back-to-back curling events starting with women's curling at 9 AM. We were not sure what time to leave for the event and based our 7 AM departure time on how long it took us to make it through security at the sliding center, which seems to be about the same distance from where we are staying. We end up getting to the stadium so early that they haven't opened the doors when we arrive! But this gives Steve a chance to go into the Olympic store and buy a few more pins. In the meantime, Beth is having a nice conversation with a volunteer who is from Melbourne, Australia. Beth tells her that Australia is one of the few places in the world where we would be comfortable living if we had to leave California and that we would see her before the next curling session.

Today, we only have three matches: Sweden vs Switzerland, China vs Canada and Denmark vs Great Britain. The sheet closest to us is empty. The stands are also almost empty:

Sweden is currently leading in the preliminaries with a 4-0 record, while Switzerland is 3-1, Denmark is 3-2, China is 2-2, and Canada and Great Britain are both amazingly 1-3. They were expected to do much better! While we are waiting for things to start, Steve thinks that one of the Swiss coaches looks very familiar:

 The woman in the middle is Mirajam Ott. She is a four-time Olympian (2002, 2006, 2010 and 2014) and won silver medals in both Salt Lake City and Turino, becoming the first curler to win two medals. In 2006, we were staying in the town of Pinerolo, which was also the site of the curling stadium. In those days, it was not unusual to run into Olympians during dinner. One evening at dinner, we noticed that the Swiss team was having dinner at a nearby table. Sean (at Steve's urging) went over to give Mirajam an Olympic pin but was too scared to stay to get one in return. She laughed and waved Sean and Steve back over and gave us their team pin. She is now the assistant coach for the Swiss team.

While both Canada and Great Britain are both 1-3, they immediately show that they are not going to go away easily. Great Britain gets out to a 2-0 lead in the first end and goes on to route Denmark 7-2. China was up 2-0 on Canada after 3 ends (like innings in baseball), but Canada gets 4 points in the 4th end and cruises from there to win 10-5. The only close game was Switzerland vs Sweden. The score was tied 3-3 after 5 ends, but Sweden scored 3 points in the last 5 ends and edges Switzerland 6-4 to stay undefeated. Here are some pictures from these matches:

We were not sure what was going to happen when the event ended at around noon. We really did not want to go all the way out of the venue and have to go back through security again. By the way, the security in Cortina is way more thorough than in Milano. They have checked the focal length of Steve's camera lens every day while no one in Milano ever gave it a thought. Steve kidded with the security guard that in Rio, he was allowed to bring in a 300 mm lens, then in PyeongChang a 200 mm lens was okay and now, it has to be less than 200 mm. At this rate, he'll only be able to use an iPhone in the next Olympics!

Fortunately, the organizers had considered the possibility of people having tickets to successive sessions and had a place where we could stand for the 30 minutes or so that it took for security to make sure that the venue was cleared before allowing the next group in. Unfortunately, there was no one in this group that was interested in trading pins.

When we are allowed back into the venue, we stop outside the arena for lunch and choose the hot Alpine sandwiches after to checking to see that they are composed of speck (a type of ham), mushrooms and cheese. They key feature is that they are warm!

Back inside, we get to see all of the things that they do to get the ice surfaces ready. First, this guy (who we think is the head ice official) comes out:

Curling ice surfaces have tiny bumps all over them called pebbles, so this guy is the pebbler! The key ability of this guy is to be able to shuffle backward across the ice surface at a more or less constant speed so that the density of pebbles is constant. After the pebbler comes a machine that looks like a hand-operated Zamboni. It has a blade in the front that chops off the tops of any pebbles that are above a certain height. Third comes a guy pulling a wooden rack consisting of all eight curling stones of one color. Honestly, we are not sure whether this is for the benefit of the stones or the ice. Finally, a guy comes with something like a large, wide floor mop that is designed to remove any ice residue left after the first three steps.

We should also mention the purpose of the pebbles. Some people compare curling to the Italian sport of bocce, in that you are trying to get as many of your stones as close to the target as possible. The difference is that you have 2-3 people who are changing the speed and direction of the stone while it is moving. This is where the pebbles come in. If you scrape the pebbles away in front of the stone, it will go faster and further than if you don't sweep. If you sweep to one side of the path, the stone will turn in that direction. In addition, if you try to throw a stone along a path that has already been heavily swept, then you will have a very difficult time getting it to curl (curve).

Our second session is a men's event featuring Norway vs Great Britain, Canada vs Czechia, Germany vs Sweden and China vs Italy. Going into today's matches, Canada is 4-1, Great Britain is 4-2, Norway and Italy are 3-2, Germany is 2-3, Sweden is 1-4 and China and Czechia are 0-5. It is really shocking that Sweden is 1-4 given that their skip, Niklas Edin, is one of the best curlers in the world and competing in his 5th Olympics. He already has gold, silver and bronze medals from his first four Olympics.

You may have heard that there has been controversy in curling. In the first match, the Swedish third, Oskar Eriksson and the Canadian third, Marc Kennedy got into a yelling match over the Canadians allegedly double touching their stones. This means that the person throwing the stone touches the stone again after letting go of the handle. If done with force, this can improve the trajectory of the stone. If lightly touched, it makes no difference (a curling stone weighs 42 lbs). In reality, the stone and the thrower are both sliding along the ice at nearly the same speed so that the time when the thrower's hand is close to the stone is long. The rules say that double touching is illegal and the person throwing the stone should call a penalty on himself and take the stone out of play. Edin had been concerned that curling was not self-regulating this problem and decided to make this point. In the end, calling it out seems to have taken Edin's focus away from actually playing the game which could explain Sweden's position near the bottom of the standings.

As it turned out, three of the four matches were blow-outs. Canada beat Czechia 8-2, China beat Italy 11-4 and Germany beat Edin and Sweden 7-3. All three losing teams conceded before the full 10 ends were completed leaving Norway and Great Britain alone on the ice. The game was down to the 10th end with the score tied 6-6 and Norway having the hammer (last throw - a huge advantage). The Great Britain skip, Bruce Mouat, did all he could to make it hard for the Norwegians to score, but the final throw from the Norwegian skip, Magnus Ramsfjell, was good for one point and a 7-6 win. Here are some pictures from these matches:

Walking back from the curling venue, Steve was starting to feel a little like he was back in Nagano where everyone wanted his autograph or photo. Today, two little kids bowed down in the "we are not worthy" pose after seeing all of pins on Steve's vest and hat. A good number of people also ask for pictures. It is really a weird situation for an introvert! At least a good number of people are getting into pins and want to trade.

We still had leftover pizza from the previous night so we had a quiet night at home and Steve worked on the blog. Tomorrow, we are back at curling for men's curling. Enjoy!

Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games - Olympic Day 9 (Cortina)

February 15

We were supposed to go to see the first two runs of monobob today at 10 AM, but neither of us slept very well so we decided that an early morning event after an evening event was more than our bodies could currently handle. Instead, we got up late. Yesterday, one of the first things we did was go shopping for breakfast stuff, but because it was afternoon, we did not find any croissants or equivalent. So, after we had yogurt, tea and some fruit, we headed out in search for a bakery. We found one about a block from the grocery store and bought several croissants filled with raspberry jam and several more filled with pistachio cream. Then we walked back to our house and ate two of them. Delicious!

Steve worked on his blog for the rest of the morning while Beth read. For lunch we had homemade sandwiches with salami, cheese and lettuce (courtesy of the local grocery). There was bright sun all day so later in the afternoon, Steve went out to take pictures of the town and the mountains. Here are some of his pictures:

Pretty great, don't you think? Here is a brief geography lesson about the Dolomites. The name Dolomite is a mineral similar to the two calcium carbonate rocks calcite and aragonite which are often produced by marine critters. The only difference is that dolomite contains some magnesium in addition to calcium giving it a different crystal structure. Where the magnesium came from is unclear, but what is clear is the about 230 million years ago, this area was under an ocean and layers of dead diatoms and shellfish piled up for millions of years. These thousands of feet of dolomite might have ended up buried forever except that about 100 million years ago, the African continent ran into the European continent and caused the huge amount of uplift that led to the formation of the Alps. At the same time, the dolomite layers were rotated around 90 degrees. You can see in at least one of the pictures that the rock looks like it has a bunch of vertical layers. Those layers used to be parallel to the bottom of the ocean where they formed!

Since we ate lunch in the house, we decided to go out for dinner. Beth needed to get something at the grocery store. Steve stood outside and traded pins with an Italian guy who used to live in California. His English was very good so Steve asked if there was a pizzeria in town that he would recommend. He said that his favorite place had been converted to an Olympic store for the length of the Games, but he did tell us that there was another place close to the Olympic flame that had good pizzas. Before we got there, we got some nice pictures of the Olympic plaza at night:

The Olympic flame looks much better at night! We also liked the fake ice sculpture of a woman with a gucci bag and a pair of skis. This seems to sum up Cortina. We've never seen so many high-end retail stores in a ski town. We find the pizzeria and are taken to a table after only a couple of minutes. We find ourselves seated next to a group of Canadian women. They are watching the Canada-France men's ice hockey on their phones while they eat. They see Steve's pins and hand us a Canadian flag pin and a key chain. We gain further points with them when we mention that although we are American, we are rooting for Canada because Macklin Celebrini plays for the Sharks. They tell us that San Jose is going to win the Stanley Cup in the next three or four years. We said that if this is true, then Edmonton should have won the Stanley Cup with Conor McDavid, who is the best men's hockey player in the world.

Our pizzas arrive quickly and we are settling down to eat when an Asian woman and her child sit down at the next table. Steve originally thought that they might be American because the two of them were speaking in English. The child is racing a toy truck and train on the table which reminds us very much of our son Sean at a similar age. Beth noticed that the woman has not closed her menu and that she was wondering why no one had come to take her order. Beth tells her that she needs to close the menu. She thanks Beth, closes the menu and immediately a server comes over to take her order. Beth tells Steve to give her child a pin. Steve asks the mother if it is okay and she says yes. When the pin turns out to be a USA rings pin, she asks us where we are from. It turns out that she is from Korea, but that her husband works for the International Olympic Committee and they live in Switzerland. When Steve hears this, he takes the 2018 PyeongChang (Korea) mascot pin from his vest and give it to the boy. Beth tells the mother about Sean being in a Chinese language immersion program and how great it is that he is learned other languages so early. She agreed but says that in Switzerland it can be a problem because her son sometimes comes home from school and speaks to her in French even though she doesn't speak French. When we get up to leave, she asks would Steve mind giving her his contact information. She puts her number into Steve's WhatsApp and tells Steve that she thinks her husband would like to give Steve some pins in exchange for the ones Steve gave to her son. This is when we learned that her name was Yoon. Whether Steve gets any pins or not, it was the kind of great Olympic experience that we often have because Steve is covered in pins.

Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games - Olympic Day 7-8 (Milan to Cortina)

February 13

It was a beautiful day in Milano - nearly 60F with bright sunshine. Unfortunately, we both felt like hell. Actually, Steve was started to feel a little better and went out a couple of times to get something to eat. Beth slept nearly the whole day. Needless to say, we did not make it to our men's ice hockey game. But since we leave for Cortina early tomorrow morning, we did not want to push our health any more than we already have.

February 14

We arrived in Milano in the rain and we are leaving in the rain. Fortunately, it is more drizzle than hard rain when our Uber picks us up at the hotel around 7:30 AM for the 15-minute drive to the Stazione Centrale di Milano (Milan Central train station). The station is really busy for a Saturday:

We stand around the security checkpoint waiting for a track number for our train to Venice then head to the platform. As usual, there is not enough space for both of our big suitcases, so Beth has to store her suitcase in the neighboring car. Otherwise, our 2 hr trip was uneventful except for almost not getting off the train at the right station because we did not realize that Venice has two train stations.

We are still not sure we've gotten off in the right place but are reassured when we find that our train to Ponte nelle Alpi - Polpet. Unlike the bullet train we took from Milano, this train is more like the train we took from Malpensa airport to Milano. We look for luggage racks and don't find any. But we do find spaces for bicycles, and we figure "Who is going to be riding a bicycle in the winter?" and put our suitcases there. At the next stop, a guy who works for the Doordash equivalent in Italy called Deliveroo gets on. Fortunately, his bike folds in half and he is happy to put it next to the exit. During the 2 hr trip, we start at sea level and gradually go up hill:

 

By the time we reach Ponte nelle Alpi (right picture), you can start to see the real Dolomite mountains. Outside the train station, there is a line to get on a shuttle bus to Cortina. When we asked to store our suitcases, the driver finds that he can't open the luggage areas on the side of the bus. Fortunately, the bus is not totally full, so we stuff our suitcases into the seat in front of us. This worked until the first high-speed corner when Beth's suitcase fell out into the aisle. Steve spent the rest of the 2 hr trip grabbing or holding Beth's suitcase on every left-hand turn!

We arrive in Cortina at about 2:30 PM. Considering that we left Milano at 8:30 AM, you can see why so many people are complaining about how far all of the venues are from each other and why it is so easy to buy more tickets to events in and around Cortina. This is why we broke our trip into two pieces. Beth messages our Airbnb host and are pleased to find that he will allow us to check in ahead of the scheduled 4 PM check-in. Here is what $500/night gets you in Cortina:

The sofa acts as a single bed with a single trundle bed underneath. The bathroom is behind the door on the right on the left picture and there is a big screen TV on the wall next to the desk that you can just see on the left. We estimate the total size at around 215 sq ft. On the plus side, we are one block from the main street in town, and we avoid having a 1 hr each way bus ride to Cortina if we booked a cheaper place further down the valley.

We've got a little time before our 6 PM women's skeleton event starts so we buy some breakfast items at the local store (they seem to sell everything: food, wine, beauty items, books, etc.) and then walk around a bit. We find the Olympic flame next to the main church in town:

The vibe in the town reminds us somewhat of Lillehammer where everyone was walking around on the main street. Fortunately, it is about 60F warmer than in Lillehammer. Even better, Steve made more pin trades in 15 minutes than he had in the previous week! As you can see, there is "wintery mix" falling so we will save pictures of the area until the weather is better. We can promise you that the wait will be worth it!

The final two runs of the women's skeleton start at 6 PM with temperatures in the high 20'sF. This means after 10 days in Italy, we finally get to put on our cold weather gear. There is a river that goes through town and the Eugenio Monti sliding centre is on one side and the curling arena is on the other side. Eugenio Monti won two silver medals in bobsled the last time the Olympics came to Cortina in 1956 and a bronze in Innsbruck in 1964. He is most famous for realizing that the British team of Nash and Dixon had broken a bolt on the bobsled in the first run in Innsbruck and lent them the bolt from his sled. This allowed the British pair to win the gold medal. For this act of sportsmanship, Monti was the first athlete to be awarded the Pierre de Coubertin World Trophy.

Steve typically climbs high up on the course to take pictures because most of the crowd doesn't want to put in this amount of effort, but after seeing how hard a time Beth has climbing up even above the lowest part of the course, he decides to take pictures in the big 360-degree turn at the bottom called the Kreisel where the sliders start going back uphill to the finish area. There are a lot of people down here, so Steve is quite far from the track, but here are a couple of pictures:

Coming into tonight's event, the leader after two runs is Janine Flock from Austria followed by three German sliders: Susanne Kreher, Jacqueline Pfeifer and Hannah Neise and Tabitha Stoecker from Great Britain. No offense meant to the Germans, but we are rooting for Flock because German sliding athletes are like Kenyan or Ethiopian distance runners; sometimes it is nice to have someone else win. But it will be tough: Kreher is only 0.04 seconds behind and Pfeifer is only 0.13 seconds behind.

Flock is ridiculously consistent; after three runs, there is only 0.04 seconds difference between her fastest and slowest runs and she is able to gain time against all of her competitors. There is a 40-minute break between the 3rd and 4th runs so that they can apply water to the track and give it time to freeze. Most of the people who were standing closest to the track head to the beer tent, so Steve takes advantage of the situation and moves into a position right next to one of the Olympic cameramen. He figured that the camera guy knew a good spot when he saw one!

Nearby, there are a group of Brazilians doing what Brazilians do:

A lot of the European sliding powers tend to look down on entries of so-called exotic athletes, even to the point of calling them Olympic tourists instead of athletes. But we don't see it that way. Creating ways for teams from other countries to qualify for Olympic events broadens interest in the sport worldwide and that can only be good for the sports.

While we are waiting, we have a nice conversation with a couple from North Carolina who are attending their first Olympics. They were much more adventurous than we have been. They rented a car, booked a room in a fairly centrally located place so that they can attend events in almost all of the venues away from Milano. They are also season ticket holders for the Carolina Hurricane NHL team, so we also commiserate on the difficulty of winning the Stanley Cup championship. They are right where the Sharks were for many years - always a contender but could never quite win.

While we were standing there, Steve traded pins with an Austrian boy and what looked like his little brother. When the Austrian figured out that Steve collected team pins, he came back several times with pins from Latvia and South Korea in order to get a couple more of the pins on Steve's vest.

Steve has always enjoyed trying to get good pictures at the sliding venues. It is a challenge because the sliders are going so fast. Skeleton is actually harder than bobsled because you can't hear the skeleton athletes coming while the bobsleds rumble the track far in advance of their arrival. In the age of film, about three weeks after the Olympics, he would find out whether any of his shots came out and it was always a thrill to get a picture with the whole sled in the frame and reasonably in focus. Now we have autofocus, the ability to shoot up to 20 frames per second and (if the light levels are too low) you can just increase the ISO of the camera to make up for it. Getting good shots is like shooting ducks in a barrel.

In the last round, the sliders go in order from worst to first so at the beginning, Steve is looking for sliders with the coolest outfits. Here are a couple of those pictures:

As you can see, a lot of effort goes into the helmet designs because that is what shows up the best when you are sliding headfirst at more than 70 mph. You probably have also heard that a Ukrainian skeleton athlete was kicked out of the Olympics for having a helmet memorializing all of the Ukrainian athletes who have been killed in the Russia-Ukraine war. The decision to throw him out was tough on both sides, particularly for the new IOC president, who according to reports, made a trip from Milano to Cortina to speak personally with the athlete and his father to try to find an acceptable compromise. The IOC let him wear the helmet in the practice runs and were willing to let him display the helmet in the mixed zone where athletes are interviewed by the press after each run, but they were not willing to let him wear it during competition runs. For more than 100 years, the IOC has tried very hard to keep politics and world conflict out of the Olympics because their view is that sport is the place to bring the world together in peaceful competition, not to push it apart. In the end, maybe both sides won a little. The athlete got much more publicity for the Ukrainian cause than he would have gotten if he had just competed without controversy and the IOC stayed off the slippery slope of allowing geopolitics into the Olympics.

The last few runs were a little anticlimactic. First the British slider and then the three German athletes failed to produce runs that would pass Flock unless she made a major mistake. When it was her turn, she did produce her slowest run of the competition, but that was only 0.06 seconds slower than her first run and was still nearly 0.10 seconds faster than anyone else. Here are pictures of the three medal winners starting with Pfeiffer on the left:

It has been a long day so we just head back to our room after the event and go to sleep. Despite still being a little under the weather, it has been a great day in Cortina. We are really looking forward to the week ahead!