Fire in the cauldron, anger in the streets and urinated messages in the snow – the 25th edition of the Winter Olympics were declared open in Milan on Friday night against a familiar blend of rage and excitement.
It remains to be seen how those factors will mesh across the next 17 days, but any desire to separate sport from politics can already be chalked up to wishful thinking on the part of International Olympic Committee.
Indeed, look no further than the pavements and roads of this city, where protesters of different vexations preceded the ceremony at the San Siro by articulating their fury. Some were unhappy about the cost of a Games in a country with other needs; other groups were simply furious about the presence of US immigration officials for these Games.
One kind of ice is certainly welcome at the Winter Olympics; the other has been roundly rejected by the locals.
Their sentiment has been echoed by at least one British skier, with Team GB’s Gus Kenworthy posting a particularly graphic image on social media this week. Written in what he claimed to be urine, the words ‘f*** ice’ were carved into the snow.
The 34-year-old, born in the UK and based in Colorado, furthered that message to his 1.2million followers with an instruction to rally US senators against a group that ‘continues to operate with unchecked power in our communities’. That they are here as part of the US delegation’s security detail lent an extra edge to Kenworthy’s contribution.
US Vice President JD Vance and Second Lady Usha Vance pictured at the opening ceremony
Demonstrators had taken to the streets of Milan on Friday to protest against the event
The Games were officially declared open during a glitzy ceremony at San Siro
The IOC later confirmed to Daily Mail Sport that Kenworthy would face no sanction. Whether JD Vance, the US vice president and an attendee at the San Siro, took heed of the unrest is anyone’s guess.
For the Milano Cortina Games, that has been one element of the mood music. Because, as ever with this international jamboree, there have been multiple issues in the background – everything from the cost to the environmental impact and the travel challenges between Milan and the peaks of the Dolomites have had an airing. On Thursday, the power went out at the curling and, goodness, there was too much snow in Cortina for the skiers.
But therein lies the great magic trick of an Olympic Games – there is always a whiff of chaos at the outset and there is always an array of wild, wonderful and unfamiliar sporting tales that step up and soothe. To deflect. To distract. To make us happy about the madness of it all.
Has there ever been a stranger Olympic story than ‘penis-gate’ and the questions of how a ski jumper finds a performance edge? Or one as daft as the Spanish figure skater, Tomas-Llorenc Guarino Sabate, who dresses as minion and performs to music from Despicable Me. On Friday night, he received final confirmation from Universal Studios that they had dropped their copyright complaint against him.
His progress will catch the eye. As will Lindsey Vonn, 41 years old and skiing with ruptured knee ligaments barely a week after being airlifted off a mountain. She competes in the downhill on Sunday and believes she can contend for a second gold medal, 16 years after her first. What a magnificent sporting adventure that would be.
British hopes exist on a similar pendulum here but, for now, they are floating at high altitude.
They have targeted between four and eight medals, with five their existing record. In Zoe Atkin, Matt Weston, Marcus Wyatt, Charlotte Bankes, Mia Brookes, Kirsty Muir and Bruce Mouat’s curling rink, they have athletes with plausible shots at gold.
Given it’s the Winter Olympics, they might also fall flat on their backsides – Team GB only got two medals in Beijing, so there is recent proof that targeted funding is no guarantee of anything on snow and ice. An outcome to the appeal around Weston and Wyatt’s non-compliant skeleton helmets will be learned on Saturday, but they are expected to be serious contenders either way.
It is remarkable that such an oversight can occur on the eve of an Olympics. Just as the Kamila Valieva saga of those Games demonstrated that even 15-year-old skaters can exist at the heart of a scandal.
With any luck, there will be no repeat of a doping episode that defied belief. The fact there are only 13 Russians permitted to take part might at least improve the odds.
Time will tell on that and much else. Let the slipping and sliding commence.
