WINTER OLYMPICS 2026 WRAP-UP—PART II—THE CEREMONIES
I have so many musings on the 2026 Winter Olympics, which wrapped-up last weekend, that I had to break them up into two articles. (If you missed Part I earlier this week, here’s the link: itsnotaboutme.tv/news/olympics-winter-olympics-2026-wrap-up-part-i. And you can also check-out my tweets about the proceedings, @MajorCelebrity.)
Riku Miura, on the left, so worried for her partner, Ryuichi Kihara, who had messed-up a bit during the short program. Photo by Karen Salkin, as is the one at the top of this page.
This one is mostly about the pretty awful Opening and Closing Ceremonies, but first, I must share a few more thoughts on some of the athletes I neglected to mention in my earlier column.
Mr. X and I are sooo happy for the Japanese Pairs skaters, Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara, who went from fifth place after their near-disastrous short program, to win the Gold, as they had been projected to do. I’ve never seen so much relief from anyone in my life!
A weird thing is that the Men’s Champ, Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov, also went from fifth to first! And nothing big was expected from him, at all! It’s basically unheard of to happen in one skating discipline, in any competition, but for it to have occurred twice, (out of a possible four,) in one Olympics was just insane!
Ioulia Chtchetinina riding into the Closing Ceremony on the shoulders of her partner, Michał Woźniak, still smiling. Photo by Karen Salkin.
I’ve never seen Polish Pairs skater, Ioulia Chtchetinina, (who skates with partner Michał Woźniak,) without a genuine smile on her face! I love that. What a beautiful person she is.
Spanish Snowboard Cross competitor Lucas Eguibar Breton needs to change his middle name…and his pants.
I can’t believe that Men’s USA Hockey player, Jack Hughes, who is very young, didn’t even flinch about totally breaking his front tooth in the Gold Medal game!!! I chipped one of my own front teeth just a tiny bit during my Olympian two weeks, so I really feel for this guy! One of us would rather have a gold medal than a real front tooth, and one of us would not. Can you guess which is which?
Now to the Opening Ceremony:
It was weird and confusing.
The Opening Ceremony. Photo by Karen Salkin.
It turns-out that these Olympics took place not just in Milan, (which is what most people were expecting,) but rather in a quartet of cities or areas all over Northern Italy. So I was thrilled for the athletes that no matter which of the four cities they were competing in, they got to walk in at least a semblance of a Parade of Athletes. (That aspect of the Opening Ceremony is going to be really weird in the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics when a couple of the sports will take place in…Oklahoma!!! I’m not joking. But I’ll wait to fully rant about that idiotic situation closer to that date.) But the TV hosts really needed to let us know in which city each group was! It was a mess trying to follow it all.
Actually, the entirety of it was a mess. It turned-out to be the worst Opening Ceremony ever! Even worse than the United States’ lackluster ones!
Here are just a few of my complaints about it:
They had this odd entertainment, but no Olympic Oath! Photo by Karen Salkin.
Where was the f-ing Olympic Oath??? They showed us a tiny solar system, like all kids make in school, and had incredibly odd entertainment, but no oath??? That’s a highlight of it for the athletes, whom I heard get chills reciting it, but they forewent that most important part of the “ceremony.” That part is actually what makes it a ceremony to begin with! The rest is just a show! (Most of which the athletes miss because they don’t enter the arena until most of it is over!) Mr. X jokingly asked if the results are even official when the Olympians have not swore the oath.
On top of that, they never told us who the former athletes who dealt with the Olympic flame and flag were! That’s usually a highlight of the opening night. We figured-out later that one was skier Alberto Tomba, who is still a national hero!
And why would they feature South African-born, but American now, Charlize Theron and American Mariah Carey??? And Chinese Lang Lang??? In an Italian Olympics Opening Ceremony??? Where were the Italian celebs??? Thank God for Andrea Bocelli!!! (More on him in a minute.)
The only real good news was how few people were using their phones, even for photos. I was totally surprised by that. So good for them!
Now let’s get to the very odd Closing Ceremony:
This was the most boring one I can remember. Or maybe I was just burned-out by then.
The outside of the beautiful arena in Verona. Photo by Karen Salkin.
I hate when the producers of these things try to be profound with the entertainment choices. In this case, it was just annoying.
Many of the empty seats even after the athletes entered the arena! Photo by Karen Salkin.
One thing that really surprised me, (but may have explained the strange choice of venue,) is that there were soooo many empty seats! Perhaps that indicated that no one in Italy cared about the Olympics. Although all the competitions were held in the city of Milan or up in the mountains of Cortina and Livigno, the Closing Ceremony was held in a historic arena in…Verona! That seemed a tad crazy. Where did the athletes stay that night? Did they have to move hotels for just twenty-four hours or so? I’ve been going a tad bonkers trying to figure out the logistics of it all.
And they need the athletes to come in first, so they can enjoy all of the action. They really need to do that for all of the Opening Ceremonies from here on out, as well.
The biggest mistake they made was not having Andrea Bocelli, (nor anyone, actually,) sing the most known and loved, and incredibly appropriate to the occasion, Italian operatic song, Time To Say Goodbye! This is Italy for goodness sake! It would have been perfect. And the crescendo on the last note would have just punctuated the Games perfectly. Plus, having Bocelli perform in both the Opening and Closing Ceremonies would have been a full-circle situation for them. It would have been a mic drop! (This is why all the Olympics Organizing Committees need yours truly from here on out!)
The athletes walking into the Closing Ceremony. Photo by Karen Salkin.
We’ll get back to my Olympics coverage in another year and a half, for the summer version, which will be right here in LA. And for the record, I finally realized that I enjoy the Winter ones more than the Summer renditions!
Let’s close with a lasting image of the 2026 Winter Olympics: young USA Hockey hero being so happy despite losing that front tooth! Photo by Karen Salkin.
On a side note about my reviews, I apologize for not finishing my Mini Movie Reviews series by today, in time for this weekend’s Actor Awards, (which is the new name for the former SAG Awards.) But I promise to finish them up by next week, in plenty of time for the March 15th Oscars. In the meantime, you can still read the first two parts of the reviews here: itsnotaboutme.tv/news/movie-reviews-mini-movie-reviews-2026-part-i, and here: itsnotaboutme.tv/news/movie-reviews-mini-movie-reviews-2026-part-ii, so you know what I’ll be thinking during those proceedings. I barely know any of the TV shows that are nominated for the Actors, and I’m sure that my fellow Screen Actors Guild members will once again vote for all the wrong movie choices. The only people whom I’ve seen who deserve to win are Jesse Plemons for the disgusting Bugonia, Paul Mescal for Hamnet, and a major surprise to me—Kate Hudson for Song Sung Blue. But I know that none of them will.
