There are three main categories of sport in the Winter Games: knives on feet, sticks on feet, and big giant slide go fast. From there, it’s basically a Mad Libs word puzzle of ways to die. Maybe you put knives on your feet, and then you get a partner and throw their knife feet over your head. Maybe you get inside a rickety death cage to go up a man-made, 180-foot ice hill so that you can ski down it fast enough and fly in the air high enough to do a couple of backflips in the air. Or maybe you simply stack your body on top of your best friend’s like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and zoom down a big, giant slide feet first with basically no visibility until you hit the bottom or throw up (whichever comes first). Or maybe—just maybe—you and your literal brothers put on big pads, lace up your knives on your feet, and slam into each other with sticks in (twist!) your hands, fighting over one teeny-tiny rubber rock. And also curling and, new to this year’s Games: ice stairs. If Tina the Italian stoat mascot could have personally imported that slide from Boston that almost sent that cop into a coma to use as the bobsled track, I believe she would have.
Anyway, those are just the sports. The best thing about the Winter Olympics is the vibes—distinctly unhinged, kind of tolerant of cheating, completely unpredictable, often beautiful, and containing just a whiff of Jackass energy. Between everyone running around on those aforementioned ice stairs and overcoming childhood trauma through the power of self-actualization, sisterhood, and glittery dresses, the second half of the Winter Olympics was kind of like Frozen, but with less singing and even more adult male blonds cinematically crashing out in the woods.
What the second week of the games lacked in cheating scandals and credible accusations of penis inflation (first week of Milan Cortina, you will truly always be famous), it more than made up for by balancing the existential dread of possibly dying with heretofore unseen whimsy. For every marriage proposal in the women’s hockey final matchup, there was also a (rumored! alleged!) breakup. For every U.S. hockey brother who sees ghostly visions, there was another brother who might be dating Canadian pop princess Tate McRae. And of course, for every gold medalist figure skater creatively expressing himself in a panda suit, there was a Norwegian slalom skier simply … removing his skis, giving one feral scream, and taking to the woods mid-event to lie down in a snowbank and stare into the ether after missing a gate and watching his likely Olympic gold slip through his hands.
These are the Winter Games, after all. The stakes are high, and the crash-outs are swift—mostly because all that ice is so damn slippery and no one’s allowed to just walk on it in a sensible snow boot. They have to glide, slide, or fly into the various existential crises that winter sports can bring. But at least, bare minimum, they will look cool doing it. And so we shall attempt the same as we mourn the loss of our beloved, chaos-filled, pleasantly deranged, compulsively consumable Winter Olympics. There were times when I thought those curlers would never stop curling, those little stoat plushies would never stop being handed out—but alas, here we are, finally at the end of all the jumps and bumps, the slips and slides, naming our final winners and losers of the 2026 Winter Games.
More on the Winter Olympics
Winner: Cheaters!
Let’s just go ahead and get this out of the way: Every scandal-ridden, dubiously competitive Olympian from the first half of the Winter Games ultimately did an amazing job. Despite giving their curling stone an extra little tappy-tap-tap over the hog line—and definitely not abiding by the honor-bound spirit of curling and instead yelling “fuck you” a bunch after being caught Michelangelo handed by an (alleged) covert Swedish sting operation—the Canadian men’s curling team ultimately took home the gold for the first time since the 2014 Sochi Games. And then that Norwegian guy Sturla Holm Lægreid—who skied some laps, shot a gun, won a bronze medal in the men’s individual biathlon, and then spontaneously confessed to cheating on his girlfriend—yeah, he won four additional medals for a total of three silvers and two bronzes, making him one of the most decorated Olympians departing Milan Cortina. (You have to wonder whether the anonymous girlfriend would have taken him back for a gold—or at least I hope he’ll always wonder, the cheat!)
Oh, and you remember that other biathlete? The French one, Julia Simon, who stole her teammate’s credit card information? (God, I’ll miss biathletes.) Yeah, she won three gold medals and a silver. Certainly enough metal to melt down, sell off, and pay her criminal fine for stealing credit card info, if she wanted to! It’s like they say at the Winter Olympics: Crime pays.
Losers: Canada (Still)
But while the Canadian curlers may have won, the ice giveth, and the ice taketh away. Between one of the Heated Rivalry boys being from Canada and Bad Bunny shouting it out by name at the Super Bowl, Canada was so up—but then it went up against the United States in the men’s and women’s hockey finals and lost 2-1 in overtime in both games via some truly epic, wonderfully deflating gold medal goals. But it wasn’t the losing itself that brought the Canadian Olympic hockey teams to their padded knees. It was the somehow required bit of international relations wherein, after being defeated by their biggest rivals, each member of both Canadian teams—as silver medal winners but ultimately as losers—had to stand in a single-file line and receive a conciliatory Tina plushy, the otherwise beloved mascot of the Milan Cortina Olympics, who is not a ferret, but a fearsome stoat.
In a game that literally some of U.S. hockey player Jack Hughes’s teeth, no one was in more physical danger than the Tina plushy handed to Canadian center Nathan MacKinnon. I never, ever want this tradition to end.
Winner: DOG IN THE SNOW
In this, the debilitating week of Punch the monkey, the world needed an unadulterated, emotionally stabilizing, adorable animal win—and we got one at the women’s cross-country skiing team qualification on Wednesday. As the final women sped down the mountain and across the finish line, what appeared to be a full-ass wolf—but was, in fact, a half-ass wolf in the form of a Czechoslovakian wolf dog—came gracefully barreling across the finish line right behind them, triggering the most adorable photo finish possible …
And quite a lot of confusion for the skiers who’d just finished their runs to find that what appeared to be a wolf was now literally sniffing their butts. That not-entirely-wolf was Nagzul, a local pet whose owners were just trying to take the train to go watch some unhinged biathletes when they started getting texts from their friends that their dog was in the Olympics. This wasn’t technically a finals race, so there were no medals, per se. And all the medal contenders had finished minutes earlier, so Nazgul wasn’t exactly leading the pack. But given that he got a late start, didn’t even have skis, and still finished the cross-country ski event … it kind of feels like that half-wolf dog just won a full gold medal. Apparently, Nazgul had never even so much as tried to escape his kennel before, but the Winter Games—they call to us all.
Loser: The Skin-to-Skis Transition
Now, we love these Winter Olympics—their whimsy, their scandals, the way they make grown men hold plushies in their giant Wreck-It Ralph hockey hands. But I think we can all admit that we’re reaching a little with “ski mountaineering,” affectionately (???) known as skimo. It’s fun inventing new ways to hurtle down a mountain (see: dual moguls, as impressive as it is chaotic and contrived). But the extent to which we’re just finding new ways to … exhaust people on mountains, including by testing how quickly they can remove their skis … have we perhaps jumped the shark? And is there any way we could jump over these ice stairs instead?
In skimo, the first new Winter Olympics sport since 1998, Olympians ski-sprint up a mountain (on their tippy-toes because the skis are really light and their heels aren't attached), maneuver through some random diamond formations, remove their itsy-bitsy skis and clip them to their itsy-bitsy backpacks to run up a series of steps, and then put their skis back on (just all in a jumble at the top of the steps like a bunch of women attempting to try on wrap dresses under their clothes at a Diane Von Furstenberg sample sale) to move on to the “skin-to-skis transition,” where they whip off the slidy piece of “skin” from the bottom of their skis (and stuff it in a little kangaroo pouch in their uniform) and then finally descend this fucking mountain. To which I say—OK?! Skimo is definitely weird like dual moguls and busy like the biathlon, but it lacks the whimsy of our weirdest winter games. And I’ll be honest—no one ever seems at risk of anything more than losing their breath. Less changing shoes and more jumping, please! Maybe add knives? Let’s do something by 2030.
Winners: Alt, Gay, and From New Jersey—the Woke Women’s U.S. Figure Skating Team
We’ll simply never have a figure skating team this cool again. Them said it best in its profile of the U.S. figure skating team—who had already won a team gold at Milan Cortina—when it published one of the only headlines to do the “Blade Angels” justice: “Alt, Gay, and From New Jersey.” Indeed, Alysa Liu, Amber Glenn, and Isabeau Levito are, respectively, alt … gay … and from New Jersey.
While each has become a star in her own right, Liu cemented her place in history as possibly the first figure skater to get out on the ice and truly not give a fuck about anything but following her figure skating bliss. In a sport that has historically demanded intense discipline and by-the-book behavior, Liu won the gold medal in women’s figure skating—the first American to do so in 24 years—with a smile on her face, a piercing in her frenulum, a flip in her ponytail, and a Donna Summer song in her heart.
Famously, Liu retired from skating at 16 as an already wildly successful prodigy because she was exhausted with the sport and wanted to experience a normal life. She fell back in love with figure skating on her own terms, returned to it two years later, set her own training schedule guided by her intuition, told the world, “No one is going to starve me,” shrugged off her overbearing dad (no offense, boomer), cut her own bangs, put horizontal halo streaks in her hair, and hit the ice to do what she wanted to: perform. And also: open Magic the Gathering cards with her teammates during the closing ceremony, and support her fellow skaters, and quite literally jump for joy on the Olympic podium. It was, as the kids might call it: zoomer-core strugglejoymaxxing for the IDGAF woke agenda. I don’t have to understand it—I just love to see it.
Plus, there are now American Girl Dolls for Alysa, Amber, and Isabeau—which is to say that there are alt, gay, and New Jerseyan American Girl Dolls. Does this mean that any doll can get their frenulum pierced at the American Girl Doll hospital now?
Draw: Ilia Malinin’s Side Quests to Feel Anything Other Than Supreme Loss
After a tragic series of falls, the expected winner of the men’s free skate, Ilia Malinin, finished in eighth place. Since then, the Quad God has done everything possible to enjoy his remaining time (and not for nothing, his gold medal in the team event) at the Olympics. He’s hung out with Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg—a classic trio. He’s queened out with his fellow USA team members. It seems like, in the wake of unexpected Olympic embarrassment, he learned to have a little fun and proved that every time there is a diva down, it’s just an opportunity for that diva to get back up …
Sometimes, unfortunately, they get back up in a genuinely heinous pair of jeans. Ilia opted to perform in the exhibition gala with the top medalists, which was, characteristically, fantastic. And he also did it in a pair of jeans that can be described only as … an oligarch’s son on his international high school field trip to the Johnny Rockets in Times Square? Something Ilya’s brother would wear in a flashback on Heated Rivalry? The worst guy you’ve ever seen on Hinge, one you have to report for something, even if it is just those jeans? We already ask so much of our Olympians, but could we please, please just get this young man—who is from Fairfax, Virginia—a stylist in the next four years? A one-episode reboot of Queer Eye? A trip to Abercrombie? Anything?
Loser: The U.S. Men’s Hockey Team, Somehow
Even the majestic, high-flying, backflipping, hog-lining Winter Olympics aren’t safe from the most frustrating truths of the real world. Misogyny doesn’t just seep through the cracks of everyday interactions; it’s built into the scaffolding of our most foundational institutions. That sharp reminder that can be a kick in the teeth for some (women, mostly) and merely something to laugh at for others (the United States president; the U.S men’s hockey team). Everything about the U.S. men’s hockey team’s aforementioned besting of Canada started out so promising. Along the way, we got to learn that there were several sets of brothers on the team, and at least one of them, Quinn Hughes, seemed to be … haunted? He’s known for appearing as though he’s staring out into a plane of existence that … no one else can see except Haley Joel Osment? His generally Victorian gothic child disposition is well known in the hockey world, but new to the larger Olympic-viewing public, which made it all the funnier to see him transition into a tipsy ball of emotions following their win, after which he proclaimed “we are gold medal,” consumed an estimated 20 beers, and drunk-spammed his Instagram stories during a press conference.
He was, of course, able to celebrate so thoroughly in part because his little brother, Jack—now missing multiple teeth thanks to a stick to the face—scored the golden goal before becoming the subject of a sports photo for the history books.
We were all having such a great time! You could feel the patriotism in the gaping tooth hole that Jack Hughes himself could likely no longer feel at all.
Unfortunately, someone then thought, “You know what would take this party up a notch? FBI director Kash Patel, notoriously cool guy.” Now, there’s a little more precedent for the president of the United States congratulating an Olympic team on their gold medal win than there is for the director of the FBI shotgunning beers with them in their locker room. But in an actually completely precedented but still disappointing moment, things turned when President Trump invited the boys to the White House (via military transport with “Kash”), and then sing-songed, “I must tell you, we’re going to have to bring the women’s team, you do know that?” To which the entire men’s hockey team—the one that had just accomplished the exact same thing as the women’s team, with the exact same final score, against the exact same rival—gave a resoundingly hearty laugh. Suddenly, Quinn Hughes seeing ghosts, Jack Hughes firing a puck through a gap as big as the one in his front teeth, and Team USA so sweetly honoring its fallen brother Johnny Gaudreau felt far, far away.
But it doesn’t matter that Trump told the men’s team he’d be inviting the women’s team only because he would “probably would be impeached” if he didn’t. Because who actually wants to celebrate their Olympic gold medal at the State of the Union? Not winners—winners need to get back in the fucking rink.
Following the publication of the video of the men’s hockey team laughing along with President Trump, the women’s hockey team did receive their invitation to Washington, D.C.—which they politely declined, saying that while they are “sincerely grateful,” the women’s team won’t be able to attend “due to the timing and previously scheduled academic and professional commitments.” Which is to say: They’re busy. More importantly—they’ve got conflicting invites. Because Flava Flav, official fairy godfather of women’s Olympic sports, issued his own invitation for “a real celebration and invite,” offering to host the team in Las Vegas. And as of now, it seems like they’ve RSVP’d yes, hopefully with a hearty laugh of their own.
Winner: Women! Literally!
What made Trump’s comment even more ridiculous is the fact that eight out of 12 Team USA gold medals were earned by women; 63.6 percent of the U.S.’s total medals were won by women. Those are accomplishments no amount of joking can take away. Because, as we saw from six-time Olympic medalist and the most decorated freestyle skier in Olympic history, Eileen Gu, earlier this week: laughing to discredit someone else’s accomplishments—bad! Laughing in the face of someone attempting to discredit yours—ADVANCED-LEVEL MOVE! When a reporter asked Gu whether she saw her two silver medals in Milan Cortina as “two gold medals lost,” she quite literally burst into laughter, explaining—very carefully—that winning an Olympic medal is a life-changing experience, and each new medal is equally hard for her. “I’m showcasing my best skiing, I’m doing things that quite literally have never done before … so I think that is more than good enough.”
We’re not going to act like it’s anything less than astounding to be an Olympic medalist. We—and by we, I mean the U.S. women’s hockey team, who became some of my dearest friends about a week ago—are going to Las Vegas with Flava Flav. We’re ordering steak, we’re seeing Cirque du Soleil, we’re wearing gold medals, and we’re laughing—the good kind of laughing. The kind that comes around only every four years, when you remember that the Winter Olympics are a two-week roller coaster that takes teeth, gives heart attacks, and makes heroes—even when those heroes insist on wearing terrible jeans.
