The Milano Cortina Olympics

Happy Chinese New Year! It’s finally the year of the horse!

I was watching the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympics this Chinese New Year holiday and it has been what I have been looking forward to ALL day EVERY day. From the Team Events to women’s singles, there wasn’t one competition I missed out on, and this time, my overall takeaway and thoughts on this event really just revolves around the cruel reality of competitive sports and the importance of facing everything the way it is.

For example, in the men’s singles skating, everyone (me included) thought that Ilia Malinin would get gold because of his quad jumps and quad axel. But reality will always be extremely unexpected, so the incident happened, and he became 8th. The competitions were always held extremely early in the morning, like at 1 or 2 am, so I would search for the results of the competition when I wake up, and I remembered seeing the results and my mind just going blank. This taught me that you could be the world’s top athlete and still have unexpected incidents happen to you even if you think you have everything prepared. This would be devastating for every athlete, and as an athlete myself (or at least an athlete who skated competitively before), this feeling would be like a sudden crash of hope and all the effort put into the sport being wasted, especially at such a big stage like the Olympics.

Ice Dance results were also extremely close—it was just a 1.43 point difference between USA’s and France’s results, and that ranked them differently. For Ms. Chock and Mr. Bates, they were the World Champions 3 years in a row, and of course, they would participate in the Olympics with the hope of getting gold. This would perhaps also be what other people were expecting, but the truth suggested otherwise, and of course, the pain of getting second and not first with just a tiny difference is devastating. This is a throwback to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics when Alexandra Trusova was also so close to getting gold, and still lost to Anna Scherbakova. Oftentimes, if we look at the athletes objectively on their skills, they are so close to each other, basically on the same level, but it is on the stage of a competition that the difference between them becomes distinct and that is what makes a formal competition so significant.

The results for all the figure skating competitions are out, and Alysa Liu is now world champion and Olympic champion. I think she really shows what it feels like to really enjoy skating from the bottom of one’s heart and to value the process and the sport itself more than the results. She was incredibly relaxed when she was on the ice and did her best performance, and even though she did not know she was champion when she just finished her program, she was cheering and was enjoying the joy from her best performance. To me, that is when you know someone actually likes what they do.

Photo Credit: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)