Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games - Olympic Day 14 (Cortina)

We are just finishing our two days in Venice after the Olympics as we start on this blog post. Tomorrow is going to be a very long day as we leave Venice at 11:30 AM and fly to London (90-minute flight) followed by an 11.5 hr flight from London to San Francisco arriving at around 6:30 PM on the same day. Steve pays British Airways an exorbanant price for WiFi so that he could complete the entry before arriving in San Francisco. We hope that you enjoy it!

February 20

Today, we have the first two runs of the women's two-woman bobsleigh. We are typically not jingoistic when it comes to the Olympics and if anything, we have a preference of having unexpected teams win medals. Unlike the monobob a couple of days ago when the USA surprisingly took the gold and bronze medals, today we expect close to a sweep of medals by the German team. Why is there a difference? The main one is that in monobob, every team uses exactly the same sleds with exactly the same runners, so it comes down to the skills of the individual drivers. In all other bobsleigh races, each team provides their own equipment and it is basically a technology arms race. This gives the German team a huge advantage, because, as a member of the British team explained to us, Germany spends more money just on bobsleigh research and development than the British team spends on all of their winter sports combined!

Now that we know that the best place to get pictures (without a climb up to the top of the track which neither of us is up for) is on the big 360-degree Kreisel turn at the bottom of the course, we walk over and say buongiorno (good morning) to the OBS (Olympic Broadcast System) cameraman we first "met" during women's skeleton. We know that his requirements for an unobstructed view are what allows us to have an unobstructed view as well. We are just staking out our position next to the cameraman when a couple of women from Florida come up and ask us if this is a good spot to watch the race. We tell them that they have come to the right place! We are here quite early, and several people come up and ask to take pictures of Steve's pin outfit or to take selfies with him. Such is the life of an Olympic celebrity! A couple more come up and ask if they can have a pin which gives Steve an opportunity to keep emptying his pocket with giveaway pins.

The start order in the first run goes in order of world ranking so the current world champion Laura Nolte from Germany goes first, sets a start record and recorded a time of 56.97 seconds, breaking her own track record set last November. Her top speed on the track, close to where we are standing, is slightly less than 80 mph. Second up is Canadian turned American and two-time Olympic champion, Kaillie Armbruster Humphries. Kaillie just turned 40 so no matter how good her brakewoman is, she doesn't have a start time that can compare with Nolte's 5.09 seconds. Kaillie's start is 5.17 seconds. Conventional logic is that a tenth of a second at the start translates to three tenths of a second at the bottom, so Kaillie should finish up about 0.24 seconds behind Nolte. But this doesn't take into account how good a bobsleigh pilot Kaillie is. She sets the track record with a time of 56.92 seconds!

The rest of the first run goes pretty much according to the world rankings. Lisa Buckwitz of Germany is in 3rd place, Kim Kalicki of German is in 4th followed by two Americans, 41-year-old Elana Meyers Taylor and 28-year old and former push athlete turned driver Kaysha Love.

One of the reasons that Steve, in particular, loves the sliding sports is the challenge of getting a decent picture while standing a few feet from a track where athletes are flying by at 80 mph. In the "olden times" when people used film, Steve would have to wait until 2-3 weeks after the Olympics to find out if he even got any pictures with a bobsled in it - with bonus points if the sled was in focus (autofocus was not a thing then either). Now, it is like shooting ducks in a barrel. Steve's Nikon Z6iii has continuous autofocus and can shoot 20 frames a second. If he needs a shorter exposure time to freeze the sled in place, he can just crank up the ISO of the camera; then all he has to do is point the camera where he wants the picture and push the button when he hears the sled coming. Sure, he may have to erase 10 or 11 photos of empty track to get one with a bobsled, but that takes only a few seconds. Here are some of his pictures from the first run:

There is about a 45-minute wait between the end of the first run and the start of the second. We want to keep our position, so we just hang out. Steve trades a few pins and gives away a couple, but there doesn't seem to be much interest today other than from gawkers. Just before the start of the 2nd run, a guy with photo accreditations comes up, stops in front of us and asks if he can take a picture of Steve's pin outfit. Afterwards he asks Steve for his name to get his release to use the photo commercially. Then he goes over and talks to the OBS guy in Italian. It looks like he's asking if it is okay for him to stand here. Steve notices that unlike most of the Olympic photographers who use Canon equipment, this guy has a Nikon camera with a 400mm f2.8 lens - that's a $14,000 lens that, by itself, weights more than 8 lbs. His accent sounds like he is from New York, but when Steve asks him where he is from, he says France. We're not sure if he is putting us on or not. He takes a picture of one of the forerunners while Steve is doing the same. He asks to see Steve's image - and it is exactly the same except that Steve's bobsled is very small in the frame while in the photographer's picture, the sled fills the frame. Apparently, this was proof to him that Steve knew what he was doing and he was quite pleasant to us while he took pictures through most of the 2nd run.

Unfortunately for the American bobsledders, the 2nd run was much more like what we expected. Nolte, Buckwitz and Kalicki go 1-2-3 with Armbruster Humphries 4th and Kaysha Love 5th. Meyers Taylor made a major mistake at the top of the course (where you absolutely cannot make a mistake) and ends up with only the 21st best time in the 2nd run. Here are some of Steve's pictures from the 2nd run:

It is a little past 9 PM when the event gets over. We had a good-sized lunch because we knew that were not going to feel like eating after the event and then try to go straight to bed - and we need to get some sleep because our event tomorrow is the men's 4-man bobsleigh at 10 AM so an early start is required on our last full day in Cortina. We head for our room and munch on a couple of cookies before going to bed.