Do the names Marit Bjørgen, Ingmar Stenmark, Alberto Tomba, Ketil-Andre Aamodt, and Katarina Witt evoke in you the same sense of awe and wonder as Emil Zatopek, Nadia Comaneci, Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, and Katie Ledecky?
Do they quicken the pulse and move the soul? Does it conjure images of grit, glory and gold across eras and geographies?
If the answer to these questions is yes, then let’s head down that slope together. If you have no idea what we’re talking about, put on your snow goggles and stay put.
As the 25th edition of the Winter Olympics – or Milan Cortina 2026 – draws to a close today, it’s time to tune into the ultimate sporting song of ice and fire.
Full circle
First, an event from this fortnight defines the Olympic dream.
Benjamin Karl, 40, stood at the top of the hill in the men’s parallel giant slalom final. In front of the Austrian is a 635-meter track filled with 32 gates through which he will need to make 30 turns while hurtling on his skateboard at a speed of more than 70 kilometers per hour.
The 2022 Beijing Olympic gold medalist, and Karl’s opponent in the final, was 37-year-old South Korean Kim Sang-keum, one of the surprises of the 2026 Games. Kim first stunned world and local champion Roland Fischnaller of Italy in the quarter-finals and then managed to beat one of the favorites, Bulgaria’s Tervel Zamfirov, in the semi-finals. The stage was set for upset.
But Karl, who will likely retire after the Games, had special plans for his final trip.
As the lights turned from red to green, it was Kim who descended the buildings fastest, rushing through the first few gates with a tenth of a second lead. That’s when Carl made his move. Instead of big horizontal loops in the snow, he stuck to an exciting racing line that seemed to turn curves into straight lines. Suddenly he started chasing Kim at every gate. Building a comfortable gap as they enter the final 100 metres; He even found time to spread his arms wide as he crossed the finish line.
Karl secured the historic back-to-back gold medal with a poster image for Milano Cortina 2026: he stripped off his shirt, did a massive weightlifting exercise, and tumbled shirtless into the snow. It was a tribute to Austrian alpine skiing legend Hermann Mayer, who celebrated victories in a similar way.
“The Herminator” won two gold medals at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano. Watching Mayer’s heroics on television, 13-year-old Karl ignited a spark that would forge a bond between generations in a way that only the Olympics could.
Legacy in ice
When French educator Pierre de Coubertin planned the first modern Olympic Games for April 1896 in Athens, winter sports were a victim of scheduling.
Naturally, the Scandinavians who excelled in winter sports were unhappy, but there was little that could be done. Therefore, in 1901, inspired by Swedish sports official Victor Black, these countries decided to start their own Scandinavian Games involving Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland. These games, which featured skiing, snowboarding, ice skating and curling as the main draws, were held between 1901 and 1926.
At the same time, demand for winter sports was growing within the IOC. Figure skating was introduced at the 1908 London Olympics, although the competition was held in October, three months after the rest of the Games. Sweden refused to include winter sports at Stockholm 2012, and although Germany was open to the idea, the World Championship 1 led to the cancellation of what would have been Berlin 1916.
The 1920 Olympics in Antwerp featured figure skating and ice hockey, but the issue was mired in a mix of logistics and politics. Finally, a historic agreement was reached two years before the 1924 Paris Games that the host nation would hold a separate event – the International Winter Sports Week – in the shadow of Mont Blanc in Chamois in January of that year, roughly five months before the Summer Games.
The event was such a success that the International Olympic Committee pushed to rename it, eventually convincing the Scandinavian countries that Chamois 1924 was not in fact International Winter Sports Week, but rather, retroactively, the first Winter Olympics.
The rings, flames, torch and emblem first arrived in St. Moritz in 1928. Finally, the Winter Olympics were born, whose medals were equivalent to the Summer Games.
The Winter Games were held alongside the Summer Olympics until 1992, when the 1994 Lillehammer Games, hosted by Norway, began a new four-year cycle in which the two Olympic competitions fall on alternating even years.
Faster, higher, stronger
The real power of the Winter Olympics comes from the scale of the competition: the daring of alpine skiing, the finesse of snowboarding, the precision of curling, the speed of an ice hockey puck, and the rapid synchronization of skis hurtling across an ice hole.
It comes from the competition and camaraderie that these sports inspire, from the pantheon of gold medal-winning champions mentioned at the top of this piece, and the stories of countless others who relentlessly chase the Olympic dream.
The Jamaican bobsled team, celebrated in the 1993 movie Cool Runnings, was cheered by rabid fans at Calgary 1988 for making it to the Olympics even though they came from a tropical island where there were no skis and no snow.
And never forget Indian lugger Shiva Keshavan, who not only introduced a new sport to the national consciousness, but against all odds qualified for six Olympic Games, from Nagano 1998 as a 16-year-old to PyeongChang 2018 as a shining beacon of winter sports in the country.
Summer or winter, the Olympic spirit lives on.
(The opinions expressed are personal)
