Games Briefing 🏅 | This is The Athletic’s daily newsletter for the Milan Cortina Olympics. Sign up here to receive the Games Briefing directly in your inbox.
MILAN — Well, we’re finished up at the Olympics. The cauldrons are out, the airport lines are long and folks are still reflecting on what we witnessed, especially hockey fans in the United States and Canada after that banger of a game on Sunday.
It’s our last edition of Games Briefing. Thank you so much for rocking with us the past few weeks! For one final time of these Winter Games, let’s dive into the news, and hear your favorite moments from Milan:
🏒 Unpacking that final hockey gold
🏫 Future for NCAA pipelines
📷 20 cool images and 10 wild moments
👋 Your Olympic reflections
Additionally, we have a special look at every gold medalist from the 2026 Games, with photos of each winner and a brief weave through what we saw.
Day After: What it all means
One of the things we love about the U.S.-Canada men’s hockey final, like all great where-were-you-when sports moments, is that it offers so many open windows:
📷 There are the visuals — the “Jack-o-lantern” face of Jack Hughes with shattered teeth celebrating his winning goal, the celebratory tribute to Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau with their family and a jersey on the ice.
🧠 There are the prompts for reflection — on Canada weathering this loss and learning from it, on Sidney Crosby’s final Olympics, on the U.S. stamping a new era in international play after the long tail of the “Miracle on Ice” team from 1980.
📰 There’s the return to the United States, including some logistical questions about a potential visit by the players to the State of the Union address and the White House by President Donald Trump, delivered with the help of Kash Patel, the FBI director, in the locker room after the game.
😮💨 And there’s just the WOWZERS of it all. “I was watching the ridiculous pace, and I was oooh-ing and ahh-ing on every opportunity, every pass, every puck going toward the net,” said Chris Pronger, the two-time Olympic gold medalist who was watching from home. The U.S.-Canada rivalry needed this, he said.
And of course, we heard a lot from you, too. “It was two teams giving everything they had,” said JJ from Delaware. “No look at me antics, no hot dogging, no look how macho I am bull—, just two teams trying their best to win for the country they love.”
Sean K. called Olympic hockey the best hockey on the planet: “Seeing the USA finally break through on the men’s side to complete the sweep of Canada is something I will remember as much as watching the Miracle team of 1980.”
Around the Games
🥇 Steve Buckley was at the men’s hockey gold medal game and talked with American and Canadian fans about how they were getting on with one another. He called it “absolutely, positively the coolest crowd ever to attend a hockey game.”
🎒 These Games went reasonably well for the U.S. But given the state of Olympic sports within the NCAA, are future results in a bit of a shaky spot?
🖼️ We looked at so many photos to bring you 20 cool images from around the Games.
🤪 We also considered 10 of the wildest moments.
⛰️ And the best things our staff experienced in Italy.
Gabriela Bhaskar / The New York Times
🍝 And for one last pasta pic, The New York Times looks at the dish of pizzoccheri, and how one chef hopes its prominence during the Games can spotlight the valley it comes from.
Reminder: All of The Athletic’s Olympics coverage is free to read in our app.
Your Favorite Moments: Emotions FTW
Thanks to those of you who submitted your big moments of these Olympics and why. If I had to pick one thing that stood out as a big theme, it seems like you were quite drawn to the resilience of these athletes.
“We saw the best in the world fail and walk away with their heads high,” Laura Singer said. “It sends a message to people, especially young athletes, that it’s OK to mess up, that one performance doesn’t define you, even the best in the world mess up sometimes, but that doesn’t take away from the joy of the sport.”
So much insight from so many of you:
Christy Brant from Denver talked about Elana Meyers Taylor, the most decorated Black athlete in Winter Games history, and her teammate, Kaillie Armbruster Humphries: “The two U.S. women bobsledders competing in their late 30s, early 40s with small children! They embody the Olympic spirit with their dedication and grit.” Brittany Ghiroli agrees.
Rafael B., a high school junior from Seattle, talked about getting a friend to turn around her opinion of curling after she teased him about watching it at first. “She slowly gained interest throughout the week, especially after (the U.S. mixed team of Corey Thiesse and Korey Dropkin) secured silver! Then, on Friday morning, I awoke to 20 texts from her, sent between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m., all reactions to that morning’s men’s and women’s round robin games. She even encouraged me to wake up and watch it too! This moment, converting my friend from curling-ignorant to super fan, would not have been possible without the Olympics.”
And of course, there was Alysa Liu’s free skate, one of the most moving moments of the Games. Many of you wrote us about that. “As a woman in my 20s, it was empowering to see the joy and confidence she brought to the rink,” Emma S. from North Carolina said.
“It was cinematic and poetic, and another great chapter in the rivalry,” Taylor D. from Illinois said of the U.S.-Canada women’s hockey final.
“My 7-year-old daughter and I really enjoyed locating each country on our globe as each delegation entered during the opening ceremony,” said Cody from Arkansas.
“I brought my laptop to work and watched Peacock all day on mute and loved every minute,” said Mary Ann Riordan from Weston, Mass., who said she enjoyed the big moments and also the smaller sports. “It’s like asking who’s the favorite child! The biggest moment was Lindsey Vonn’s fall after her huge comeback. She worked so hard for so long and it ended in 13 seconds. That’s sports: skill and fate.”
Julia from New York called out the sportsmanship: “It was uplifting to see them work through disappointment and elation and not forget that there were so many others trying to achieve what they did (or didn’t) and that in the end it was the guts to try that mattered.”
Thanks for sharing some of your memories with us. We’ve been collecting ours, too, throughout our time in Italy.
📸 On the Scene
John Walton / PA Images via Getty Images
At London Gatwick Airport, Team GB athletes got a great homecoming from their loved ones. That includes Zoe Atkin, the freestyle skier who won bronze in the freeski halfpipe.
“The Olympics can be a lot, big emotions, a lot of things going on, so to step back and focus on my skiing and make sure I’m locked in before I came here was a good centering,” she said during that competition.
Now, she and the rest of the athletes can focus on decompressing and taking in the love sent to them from home.
That’s a wrap! Again, thank you so much for following our coverage the past month, and for your emails of encouragement, questions and suggestions.
We’re deeply proud of our team of more than 20 journalists in Italy, most of whom cover lots of other sports year-round, and the dozens more around the newsroom who brought our coverage to life every day. Ultimately, what makes us happiest is striving to deliver journalism that you want to read and watch and hear, that makes you feel smarter and more connected to the sports you love. We hope our report measured up for you on that front.
As always, you can reach us at ogarcia@theathletic.com and zpierce@theathletic.com, and we hope you’ll follow our other newsletters.
In all sincerity, grazie e arrivederci!