Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games - Olympic Day 12 (Cortina)

Our apologies. It is now February 22nd and we are in Venice getting ready to watch the closing ceremonies. Despite our best efforts to keep up with the blog, our schedule just didn't let us post in real-time. We hope that you will still find it interesting.

February 18

We made a command decision today. This morning, Steve went out to try to find someone who knew how to get from Cortina to Anterselva for biathlon on February 21st. He asked two different transportation volunteers and a person at the Cortina information center and got three different answers. We came to the conclusion that if it was this sketchy to get to Anterselva, there was a good chance that we would get stranded once we got there. So instead of Biathlon on Saturday, we are going to see the first two runs of the men's 4-man bobsleigh instead. While it is unlikely that our biathlon tickets will sell, seeing bobsleigh has the advantage of starting at 10 AM which means that we have the whole afternoon to pack instead of seeing Biathlon at 2:30 PM and then having to spend at least an hour to get back to Cortina.

Today, we are seeing curling for the 3rd day in a row - and that means seeing the stands full of people from Great Britain. Actually, to be specific, the stands are full of people from Scotland, the home of curling. We are sitting next to the wife, two children and it looks like parents of Team GB 3rd Grant Hardie. This is a good place to point out that it is not just the athletes that have to dedicate years of their lives in the pursuit of making the Olympics. Their whole families have to make these sacrifices as well, which is why so many of them are at the Olympics.

Today, we have Canada and Italy directly in front of us, Czechia vs China next to them, Switzerland vs Norway on the 3rd sheet and Great Britain vs USA on the far sheet:

Going into today's matches, Switzerland is 7-0, Canada is 6-1, Italy and Norway are 4-3, Great Britain and the USA are 4-4, China is 2-5 and Czechia is 1-6. All of the Team GB people around us are on pins and needles because they are currently middle-of-the-pack and only the top 4 teams make it to the semifinals.

While the stadium is not full, there are a lot of Italian fans present:

It seems like everyone else is happy to root against the Canadians, who have somehow become the villains due to the double-touch controversy. This must be shocking to Canada as they have a well-earned reputation for being a kind and tolerant people. To make matters worse, Canada called out Italy for inadvertently kicking a stone while sweeping one of their own and the stone was removed. The Italian fans, most of whom know nothing about curling, were incensed, thinking that those terrible Canadians had somehow cheated them. It did not get better for the Italians as the Canadians just kept making shots and both the Italian skip and his 3rd lost their cool. One threw a shoe-cover into the coach's bench and the other kicked a stone into the bumpers at the end the ice surface that it flipped over. Canada ended up winning 8-3 after Italy conceded after the 7th end.

The other matches were routs as well. Czechia beat China 10-5 in 9 ends, Switzerland beat Norway 10-4 in 8 ends and Great Britain, much to the relief of the people around us, beat the USA 9-2 in 6 ends. These were great results for Great Britain because they moved ahead of both the USA and Norway and now have a much better chance of making the semifinals. On the other hand, this was a really bad result for the USA who now have little chance of qualifying for the semifinals. Here are some pictures from today's event:

It is about 5:30 PM when we get back to the Olympic plaza and we're hungry. This has been our problem since we arrived in Italy. We tend to eat dinner around 6 PM, but Italians eat much later. In fact, most restaurants don't even open until 7 PM. This leaves us with pizzerias and trattorias, or we can eat aperitivos at bars. The bars are usually packed so we are happy to find a pizzeria. Beth is able to get a plate of raviolis and Steve has a pizza with a kind of Italian sausage and mushrooms. 

We attempted to have gelato for dessert, but the only gelatteria that we could find told us that they only sell ice cream in the summer! Outrageous! This is quite a letdown after having four gelatterias on the little street in Milano where our hotel was located - and we managed to try each one of them multiple times!

Disappointed, we head back to the room to work on the blog and catch up with the Olympic highlights. One note about watching the Olympics on Italian TV - they are just like NBC in the US. We see endless highlights of Lollobrigida winning one of her gold medals while some sports are hardly covered at all. Fortunately, the International Olympic Committee website has very good result pages - we can even follow results in real-time making it much easier to have an idea of what is going on around the Games.

Tomorrow, we are back for our final curling event: the men's semifinals. Enjoy!