WINTER OLYMPICS 2026 WRAP-UP—PART I

I don’t think I’ve ever done as much crying and being choked-up about things that don’t involve me! But that’s what these latest Winter Olympics did to me. I was a blubbering mess for a big chunk of the past two and a half weeks!

The TV coverage took place literally around the clock! And I recorded and watched it all! I never even had to use Peacock to see any of it. I went with mainly USA Network and added in some NBC, (who basically just repeated all the competitions I had already seen live. But they did have some extra features, like interviews with the victorious athletes and stories on Italy.) I also recorded the little bit of CNBC that was broadcast, but I basically just fast-forwarded through their pieces of the action because it was all Hockey and Curling, the two Winter Olympics sports I really don’t care about at all.

As many of you know, (at least I hope you do,) I tweeted over a dozen of my thoughts along the way. I had planned on many more, even as the shows were going on, but I just couldn’t tear myself from watching to tweet. I was also always several hours behind the action, (because Italy is nine hours ahead of Los Angeles, and I couldn’t force myself to stay up overnight and then sleep during the day, to watch live,) so, even with only a few hours sleep a night, I was totally time-constrained the entire time. I don’t like repeating myself, so if you missed any of those tweets, my handle is @MajorCelebrity on X.com, (really still Twitter in my mind.)

First some overall impressions:

I loved seeing all that beauty out there! And I do not mean the cute male athletes, such as Johannes Klaebo and Alex Hall—I’m referring to the Dolomite Mountains and other surrounding scenery. (Though I did sit up a bit straighter every time those dudes showed-up!)

But I’m sort-of disappointed that the TV peeps never gave us a tour of the cities and Olympics facilities, such as the Athlete’s Village. That was strange. I thought we’d at least see that sort of stuff on NBC’s Late Night show, but instead, they did stupid little features, like the full-of-herself host, Maria Taylor, and Adam Rippon, (who was otherwise a highlight of their coverage,) giving citations to people who weren’t smiling! Or Mary Carillo doing a long segment that was unabashedly an ad for a cruise ship company! Shame on them.

I know this is a tad weird for me, but Ski Mountaineering became my new favorite sport. It’s the strangest! But I got fave athletes in it pretty quickly. I’m soooo happy for all three medal winners, (well, actually six because they competed in duos of each gender,) especially the Spanish guy, Oriol Cardona Coll, and girl, Ana Alonso Rodriguez. He’s the best in the world to begin with, and here’s what Ana is going through: In October, she was riding her bike in a training session, and was hit by a car. She suffered a torn ACL and MCL, separated her shoulder and broke a bone in her ankle!!! She had to forego surgery on any of her injuries because then she could not have competed in the Olympics. So she didn’t even train for one hundred days, and wound-up winning two bronze medals here! What a woman! (However, I suffered a broken nail during her event, and could barely continue watching!!!)

I was scratching my head about why so few stuffed animals got thrown on the ice for each skater. And then I realized—they’re most likely just way too expensive during the Olympics to throw away!!! Am I right or am I right?

I’ve officially turned into my mother—I desperately want to give tissues to all the athletes whose noses are running in the cold! (To the credit of the ice skaters, they blow their noses before they start their routines.)

Now on to the athletes:

Cross-country skier Johannes Klaebo has become my favorite athlete! I’ve coined the name “JoBo” for him. Good, eh?  He set records at this Olympics and he’s also gorgeous. And more than all of that is that he especially adores his…grandpa! Gramps is his coach! And best bud. I cried for over an hour when I saw a story on those two. I’m not exaggerating.

The pure joy that Alysa Liu always has is even more wonderful than her skating. But her very unattractive animal-striped hair and yellow teeth, the front two of which have silver “jewelry” on them, have got to go already!!! I used to think that she’ll look back later in life and regret that she looked so awful in her shining moment, (as we all do,) but I now think that Alysa is the most mentally-stable person and will get a kick out of her former bad looks instead of ruing them.

I’m still crushed for the best figure skater in the world, Ilia Malinin.  In case you don’t know, with the Gold Medal all but around his neck, he fell all through his final competition skate, and ended-up in…eighth place!!! It was a disaster. He and Alysa could be the new faces of the “thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.” I didn’t see or hear any mentions of this anywhere, but did anyone else notice that the Men’s Free Skate occurred on…Friday the 13th? No fooling that I feel that may have contributed to his situation. And I swear—I knew his catastrophic program was coming. But this young kid was incredibly classy right after his scores came up, even though his head must have been spinning. In the wrong direction! He went right over to the shock winner and embraced him, and then even had the wherewithal to speak with the backstage NBC interviewer. (And, by the way, no sooner had I told Mr. X that this would not have happened to Ilia if the U.S. Figure Skating organization had sent him to compete at the previous Olympics in Beijing, an experience he had truly earned but was cheated out of by that Selection Committee, this wouldn’t have happened here because he would have been used to the Olympics pressure, Ilia was overheard saying the very same thing to his coaches in the Kiss & Cry area! Everyone in sports needs to start listening to me!)

The best post-medal interview I’ve ever seen was by U.S. women’s hockey player Kendall Coyne Schofield.

Danish Speed Skating Champion Jutta Leerdam is beautiful, but I have two important words for her: waterproof mascara!

I really admire Cross Country Skier Jessie Diggins for winning a medal with bruised ribs! It reminded me of when I broke a rib on the edge of my tub when getting out of a bath, but still managed to go to a major restaurant convention the next day! Twins. So, good for both of us. (I did go to the event, of course, but I hope you know I’m kidding about the comparison!)

I love young American Speed Skating Champion Jordan Stolz. He has a great voice and even better attitude. And he’s intelligent, not full of himself, and talks like a grown-up. I’d love to hear him as a commentator in a dozen years. Lovely fellow, as my mother would say.

How do Su Yiming from China, Gabriel Landeskog from Sweden, and three full Norwegian guys—Marcus Kleveland, Atle Lie McGrath, and Lucas Pinheiro Braathen—have zero accents??? It boggles my mind.

And let’s not forget the commentators:

NBC and USA must read my tweets because shortly after I wrote a few complaining about certain things, they seemed to fix them a bit. The fix I was most happy about was that they started mixing their sound better on the Figure Skating competitions! Before my tweet to them, we viewers couldn’t make-out what the commentators were saying amongst the skaters’ loud music. Even on Mr. X and my great sound system! It got so much better from then on. As a matter of fact, the entire sound system for all those channels became so good after that that I could not tell which broadcasting teams were actually on-site, and which were doing their work from the Connecticut studio! The team that fooled me the most was Short Track’s Ted Robinson and Katherine Reutter-Adamek. So good for them. (I figured-out the others from what they were saying, though. I’m actually a very good detective.)

There were waaaay too many mispronunciations from many of the commenters for me to report here, but this was the one that rankled my normal-speaking mind the most: Studio host Carolyn Manno constantly said “KEnnada” for “CAnada!” She’s been doing it for years, and it’s super annoying. It seems like she thinks that mispronunciation is cute. I even tweeted out a picture of a Ken doll and can of Coke to her, for her to practice the words on! But it didn’t seem to work. She must have been absent that day. (The pic is still up there if you’re curious.)

On a side note about her, does Carolyn Manno’s USA Network wardrobe person hate her? And why does she insist on standing like an undertaker?

And, while not a mispronunciation, Tara Lipinski kept saying “foot” for the correct “feet!” As in, “He jumped twelve foot,” instead of the of course correct “twelve feet.” How does she not know that “foot” is “singular” and refers to only one foot, while “feet” is the plural?! Another one who must have been absent that day. (But good for her—the day after I tweeted it, she suddenly changed it in her vocabulary, after still making one mistake at first.)

But while we’re on the TV personnel: I wish that all the hosts and commentators would sound like Mike Tirico and Dan Hicks—they’re the only ones whose voices cuts through all the noise!

And lastly, Parting Thought for Part I:

The Olympics were so nice that I thought I’d write about them twice!!! So this is the first part, with the second being published a bit later on this week, so keep an eye out for it, please. (And in the meantime, you can still check-out my previous tweets, @MajorCelebrity, to get the full Karen’s Olympics experience!)