2026 Winter Olympics close with a celebration

MILAN — Arena di Verona, the ancient amphitheater built in the first century, has survived the Roman and Austrian empires, floods, earthquakes and World War II. Bull fights were staged at the arena for the entertainment of Napoleon Bonaparte, who later used the venue as a detention center for Austrian prisoners. The arena has seen gladiator fights and hundreds of alleged heretics burned at the stake.

During the Siege of Verona by Constantine I in 312 A.D., Roman emperor Maxentius used the arena for what he thought would be refuge for his army from approaching enemy troops, only to see Constantine still emerge victorious.

Sunday night, Arena di Verona hosted the closing ceremonies for the Milano Cortina Olympic Games that International Olympic Committee and local organizers pledged would provide the planet’s athletes for 16 days a safe haven from a divided world.

Instead, these Games, like the venue that hosted their finale, proved an imperfect refuge.

“An extraordinary kaleidoscope of sporting achievements and personal journeys, where passions and emotions come together, alongside some of the contradictions of our deeply divided world,” Giovanni Malago, president of Milano Cortina 2026, said in his closing ceremony speech.

To be sure, there were genuine moments of warmth and unity. Ilia Malinin of the U.S., the overwhelming favorite for the men’s figure skating title, only to melt down in the free skate, seeking out gold medalist Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov and telling him, “You deserved this victory!” American halfpiper Chloe Kim embracing South Korean Choi Gaon after the teenager thwarted Kim’s bid to become the first person to win three consecutive snowboard gold medals. U.S figure skater Alysa Liu, the brand-new gold medalist, grabbing Japan’s Ami Nakai, the bronze medalist, and then jumping up and down with her and shouting, “Let’s celebrate!”

Yet while IOC President Kirsty Coventry on Sunday night described these Games “truly magical,” these Olympics were a reflection of the age in which they were held. If anything, instead protecting the world’s athletes, the platform of the Games only made them larger targets.

In the canto to “Inferno,” Dante Alighieri wrote of attending contests at Arena di Verona in the 13th century in which unresolved legal trials were settled by professional fighters, known as champions, hired by litigants to determine the trial’s outcome by physical battle.

Similarly, Olympic athletes seemed to take on the role as surrogates in America’s culture wars. In this regard, Milano Cortina should provide a cautionary tale as the IOC and the Olympic movement turn their attention to the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles.

As much as IOC, U.S. Olympic and Paralymic Committee and LA 28 officials tried to avoid using the “T” word, the specter of President Donald Trump and his policies were a constant through all 16 days of the Games even if he never stepped foot in Italy during the Games, despite much speculation in the Italian media that Trump would attend Sunday’s gold medal hockey final and the closing ceremony.

When Team USA freestyle skier Hunter Hess, like teammate Chris Lillis, expressed “mixed emotions” about representing the U.S. given some of the Trump administration’s policies, Trump referred to the athlete as a “loser.”

Vice President JD Vance, who attended the first weekend of the Games with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, warned American athletes, “You’re there to play a sport, and you’re there to represent your country and hopefully win a medal. You’re not there to pop off about politics.”

Vance cautioned that athletes deciding to speak out should “expect some pushback.”

Vance, in turn was loudly booed when he appeared on the San Siro Stadium video screen during the opening ceremony. The Israeli team was also booed when it entered the stadium during the opening.

Evita Duffy-Alfonso, the daughter of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, in an interview with Newsmax, said that “I don’t know why we don’t start vetting these Olympians before they actually start to represent us overseas for their patriotism.”

Amber Glenn, the first openly queer woman to represent the U.S. in Olympic figure skating, was one of the athletes experiencing the “push back” Vance warned about. In a social media post, Glenn said she had received “a scary amount of hate / threats for simply using my voice WHEN ASKED about how I feel.”

If Milan’s goal in bidding to host the Games was establish itself as one of the world’s great cities, then its mission was accomplished. From Milan’s Duomo to the backdrop of the Alps and the Dolomites, these Games delivered the most beautiful Winter Olympic landscape since the Vancouver Games in 2010

But Italy, especially Milan, proved an imperfect, even indifferent host. The Games volunteers were energetic, passionate and enthusiastic, if quite often ill-informed and ultimately unhelpful. But a visitor could walk the streets of the Milan neighborhoods or ride the miles and miles of its subways and trams and see no indication that Olympic Games were being held in the city. The Milanese seemed to tolerate the Olympics more than they embraced them.

Ultimately, it was foreign fans who gave these Games their energy and personality, from Canadians, Czechs, Swedes and Finns at the hockey venues, the Dutch painting the Tortona district and speed skating venue orange and turning them into essentially suburbs of Amsterdam or Eindhoven. American and Japanese fans gave the figure skating competition the feeling of a Taylor Swift concert on ice.

“An unbelievable feeling was just when I was skating,” Liu said. “When I was skating, hearing the cheers, I felt so connected with this audience. I want to be out there again.”

Milano Cortina organizers held the Games over 8,495 square miles of northern Italy, with four competition clusters and six Olympic Villages, creating the largest Games footprint in Olympic history, providing the template for future Winter Games. The plan that reflected both the IOC’s emphasis on using existing facilities and the realities of climate change received mixed reviews.

“Moving around the venues took quite a lot of time,” said Hidehito To, chef de mission of Japan’s Olympic delegation. “I went to Livigno about four times, but then I had to come back to Milan. It took about eight or nine hours.

“We knew this was going to happen, but it was hard.

“I am not quite sure what will happen for the French Alps 2030 (Olympic Winter Games). I hope there are going to be improvements and we can have a compact Games.”

Coventry, the first woman and first African to serve as IOC, also received mixed reviews in her first Games in charge.

In the days leading up to the Games, she admitted she had yet to establish communication with the Trump administration. In her final press conference Friday, Coventry appeared unprepared, repeating “I’m not aware” to a series of questions including when asked about a statement by the German president disapproving of his country’s bid for the 2036 Games, siting the insensitive nature of hosting the Olympics on the 100th anniversary of the 1936 Berlin Games, the so called Hitler’s Olympics, and the involvement of FIFA President Gianni Infantino, an IOC member, in Trump’s Board of Peace in apparent violation of the neutrality clause in the Olympic Charter.

Norway, for the third consecutive Winter Games, dominated the medal table, with 41 medals and a record 18 gold medals. A third of those gold medals were provided by Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, who pulled of a historic six-for-six gold medal sweep of his cross county ski races.

Klaebo’s six gold medals broke the record for most Olympic titles in a single Winter Games of five set by U.S. speed skater Eric Heiden at the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid.

“It’s hard to compare people, but what Johannes does in his best days is the best that we’ve seen,” said Martin Loewstroem, Klaebo’s Norway teammate.

“What is the most impressive about him is how complete he is. He wins all parts of the (cross-country) programme. If you compare to athletics, there aren’t that many people who win 100m and 10,000m, and he competes races over two-and-a-half to three minutes, and (50km that takes) two hours.”

The U.S. finished second to Norway in both total medals (33) and gold medals (12) in its best showing at the Winter Olympics since the 1952 Games in Oslo. The dozen gold medals broke the U.S. record of 10 golds at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Team USA swept the ice hockey titles, the American men winning their first gold medal since the “Miracle On Ice” in 1980. Speed skater Jordan Stolz won a pair of gold medals and Liu became the first U.S. woman to win the figure skating gold medal in 24 years.

Four years ago, just days after the Beijing Olympics, Liu, then 16, retired from the sport, disillusioned, stunning the skating world. She returned in the summer of 2024, winning the 2025 World Championship just months later, and then lifting these Games as much with the joy she exuded in her program as her skating brilliance.

“This is the true Olympic spirit: competing, embracing, lifting each other up, whatever the result,” Coventry said Sunday, thanking the Games’ athletes. “You showed us what excellence, respect, and friendship look like in a world that sometimes forgets these values.”