Olympics 2026 Thread

[Deset Gled]

This is a general Milano Cortina Olympics thread.

Anyone else watching? What sports do you follow? Do you enjoy the artistic figure skating, X-games style feats, hardcore racing, or are you just a fan off the rare double i in "skiing"? Things are just getting started and I haven't seen any major upsets yet, but there's plenty of time for drama.

This is a sports thread, so please assume you will read about outcomes and scores.

Personally, I love watching curling. Mixed doubles is going on now, and the USA team has been all over the place. A solid start with 4 wins in a row, followed by 2 rough loses. I just watched a real nail biter against Estonia where we eked out the win in the last end.

I'm taking a break from the international games to watch the Superbowl tonight, but then it'll be back to the Olympics. On a related note, I watch very little sports in general. It's annoying to have the few events I pay attention to overlap.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

We watch some of the X-games-style events (snowboarding, freestyle skiing, etc), downhill, catch a little biathlon. Maybe some figure skating and speed skating, though my interest in the former has dropped significantly over the years along with other sports that are scored based on aesthetics not measurable performance.

Happy to watch Olympics today instead of American sportsball.

 

[GreyLord]

I'm watching...somewhat. BBC doesn't cover the entirety of the games this time around apparently and a Discovery+
account is required for the full thing. I prefer highlight reels (not that 20 minute thing, like an hour or two hours).

It seems in order to watch all you want you will need to subscribe to something. I think unless you get it free in the US over the air you need to subscribe to Peacock or NBC or something similar.

I think they are gong to lose viewership with this strategy...but I'm old and not young...maybe this way appeals to young viewers.

Edit: If you can get it (in some mysterious way) I hear the CBC offers the entire thing for free with an account (Canadian Broadccasting).

 

[payn]

I like to watch curling but I dont follow closely.

 

[Deset Gled]

It seems in order to watch all you want you will need to subscribe to something. I think unless you get it free in the US over the air you need to subscribe to Peacock or NBC or something similar.

I think they are gong to lose viewership with this strategy...but I'm old and not young...maybe this way appeals to young viewers.

I'm watching via YouTube TV.

On the one hand, you are correct that the will lose some viewers to keeping material paywalled. OTOH, even since the 90s, you only got the prime time highlights via broadcast. Everything else you had to watch on cable. And even considering that, I think we might have more better coverage now via streaming than I remember ever having via cable.

 

[Nikosandros]

Despite the fact that Italy is apparently quite good at curling, I'm not interested in it. Mostly, I'll follow the skiing,

Here, RAI (the state television) covers most (all?) of it, so even if you don't have Eurosports (currently available with HBOMax), you can watch the Olympics for free.

 

[GreyLord]

Despite the fact that Italy is apparently quite good at curling, I'm not interested in it. Mostly, I'll follow the skiing,

Here, RAI (the state television) covers most (all?) of it, so even if you don't have Eurosports (currently available with HBOMax), you can watch the Olympics for free.

It appears Lindsey Vonn (sp?) had quite a bad spill and probably is done with the games now.

 

[Morrus]

I just don't understand curling. But it has a big following, so what do I know?

 

[Scribe]

I love the Speed Skating.

 

[payn]

I just don't understand curling. But it has a big following, so what do I know?

Well, im from the frozen north near neighbor of Canada. We got lots of ice half the year here and not much to do. So, its become a favorite winter pastime. I think I like it because it feels more like a skill game than athleticism, so I like watching the competition.