Italian renaissance: does ‘home-ice’ give Winter Olympic hosts a competitive advantage?
With 13 medals through the first five days – surpassing their total at Turin 2006 – the Italians are the surprise stars of these Games.What’s different this time?From Milan to Cortina and beyond, the star of the first Olympic weekend in Italy was … Italy.The electric celebrations started Saturday in Bormio, close to the Swiss border, with a silver and bronze in the men’s downhill.They echoed a few hours later in Milan, where Francesca Lollobrigida set an Olympic record in women’s 3,000m speed skating for the host country’s first gold.On Sunday, the celebrations rolled all over in diverse sports through dispersed venues: snowboard bronze in Livigno, biathlon silver in Antholz, luge bronze in Cortina among them.
In Milan, figure skater Matteo Rizzo sank to his knees after finishing his free skate and sobbed tears of joy on the ice,He leaped over the wall to join his compatriots in celebrating their bronze, the country’s first-ever medal in the team event,In two days, Italy already had more medals (nine) than they had garnered in Sochi 2014 (eight) and far more than in Vancouver 2010 (five),The host country was nearly halfway to its record Winter Olympic tally of 20 medals in Lillehammer 1994,Monday passed without a medal, but Italy added to their total on Tuesday, taking medals in sports ranging from the genteel (mixed doubles curling, bronze) to the frenetic (mixed short-track speedskating relay, gold).
On Wednesday, they doubled up in doubles luge (men’s and women’s) to move their gold-medal count up to four.Thursday brought more gold in the women’s super-G and the women’s 5000m speed skating.Silver, men’s downhill: Giovanni FranzoniBronze, men’s downhill: Dominik ParisGold, women’s 3000m speed skating: Francesca LollobrigidaBronze, women’s downhill: Sofia GoggiaBronze, women’s parallel giant slalom snowboard: Lucia DalmassoSilver, mixed biathlon relay: TeamBronze, men’s 5000m speed skating: Riccardo LorelloBronze, men’s luge: Dominik Fischnaller Bronze, figure skating team event: TeamGold, mixed short-track speed skating relay: TeamBronze, mixed doubles curling: Stefania Constantini and Amos MosanerGold, women’s doubles luge: Andrea Voetter and Marion OberhoferGold, men’s doubles luge: Emanuel Rieder and Simon KainzwaldnerGold, women's super-G: Federica BrignoneGold, women's 5000m speed skating: Federica BrignoneTo an extent, a host-country boost is typical in the Olympics.The US shattered their medal records at Salt Lake City 2002.Canada set a record for gold medals in one edition of the Winter Olympics when they hosted in 2010, though that record has since been broken by Norway.
South Korea and China won more medals as hosts in 2018 and 2022 than they ever had in any previous edition,(The 2014 Games in Russia can’t provide a solid point of comparison because of the pervasive doping issues involving the host country,)Home advantage in the Olympics, especially the Winter Games, isn’t quite the same as it is in basketball or any code of football, where fans can intimidate opponents and officials,Curling frowns on heckling,Home fans aren’t shouting at opposing biathletes to make them miss their shots.
Cheering can provide a lift, but only in some sports.A downhill skier leaving the start gate isn’t going to be affected by the cheers from the bottom of the slope.But “home ice” can be a literal advantage.US bobsleigh, skeleton and luge racers had a stellar performance in 2002 on their beloved Utah Olympic Park track, where they knew all the turns like the backs of their hands.And Olympic committees and sponsors are well aware of the opportunity they have when the Games come to town.
Canada, who had suffered the embarrassment of failing to win a single event when hosting the 1976 Summer Olympics and 1988 Winter Olympics, launched the “Own the Podium” campaign five years before the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver,China started an audacious effort to get more of its citizens involved in winter sports,Those investments can pay off beyond a host Games,The US have remained a winter sports power, merrily making use of the world-class facilities built in Utah that will once again stage the Olympics in eight years,Canada has remained remarkably consistent since 2010.
The country that has mostly failed to capitalize on hosting the Olympics in the 21st century is the one making up for it now,In 2006, when the Games were in Turin, Italy came up well short of their best-ever performance 12 years earlier in Lillehammer,In 1994, they won 20 medals, seven of them gold,At home, they won 11 medals, five of them gold,Even if Lillehammer is written off as an aberration – skewed by a five-medal haul by the cross-country skier Manuela Di Centa – Italy’s medal total as host lagged behind their total of 13 from four years earlier in Salt Lake City.
The indelible image of Italy’s 2006 efforts came in ice dance, where the 2002 bronze medalists Barbara Fusar-Poli and Maurizio Margaglio tumbled to the ice near the end of their program, and Fusar-Poli stared at her longtime partner in despair and exasperation for a cringe-worthy 30 seconds before they finally took their bows,What’s different this time?General improvement is one factor,After the nadir of five medals in 2010 and no gold medals in 2014, Italy bounced back in 2018 and came close to its record by winning 17 in 2022,The surge could also be a reflection of increased enthusiasm,Turin never really warmed up to the Olympics.
This year’s Games feel different, and Italy’s early success – punctuated by vivid celebrations – should only keep the ball rolling.Momentum is difficult to quantify.Did Italy’s figure skating team inspire ice hockey goaltender Damian Clara to stop 46 Swedish shots to keep Italy on the verge of a huge upset on Wednesday before he exited with an injury? Surely not in a direct sense.Sports require the crunching of numbers.Thousandths of a second in luge.
Picayune adjustments to execution scores in figure skating.But many of the best moments in sports defy explanation.When the crowd roars for Rizzo, then the short-track relay team upsets the traditional power, can the presence of something that’s simply magical be denied?
Heraskevych’s ‘helmet of memory’ forces IOC into PR fiasco at Winter Olympics | Sean Ingle
Skeleton racer sacrificed his dream of winning a medal and succeeded in putting the horrors of the war in Ukraine back on the agendaTo be an Olympic-class skeleton racer requires extraordinary guts and impeccable nerve, as the corners loom and then whoosh past at frightening speed. So did anybody really believe that Ukraine’s Vladyslav Heraskevych would lose his when the world’s eyes were upon him?Not the International Olympic Committee, who flipped between threats of expulsion and sweet talk over the past fortnight, without coming close to changing his mind. And certainly not those of us who have spoken and messaged Heraskevych, and found a man utterly prepared to sacrifice his dream of winning a Winter Olympic medal for a higher purpose.In public and private his message was the same: he would not back down. And if the IOC barred from competing in his “helmet of memory”, which commemorates some of the 600 Ukrainian athletes and coaches killed by Russian bombs and bullets since 2022, he would accept his fate
‘It’s emptiness’: banned Ukrainian athlete accuses IOC of fuelling Russia’s propaganda
Vladyslav Heraskevych has accused the International Olympic Committee of doing Russia’s propaganda for them after he was barred from racing in the Winter Games because he wanted to wear a “helmet of memory” in honour of Ukraine’s war dead.In one of the most controversial decisions in recent Olympic history, the Ukrainian skeleton racer was informed only minutes before he was due to compete that his accreditation had been rescinded.It followed a last-ditch meeting in Cortina on Thursday morning with the IOC’s president, Kirsty Coventry, who left in tears after she failed to persuade Heraskevych to change his mind.The IOC has maintained all week that the helmet, which shows the images of 24 athletes and children that died from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, violates its athletes’ charter because the field of play must be free from political expression.However Heraskevych, who had a genuine chance of winning Ukraine’s first medal at these Winter Olympics, has insisted that the helmet is an act of remembrance for the friends he has lost and that it would be a “betrayal” to back down
Move over Pommel Horse Guy: USA’s Curling Rambo becomes cult hero of Winter Olympics
At Paris 2024, the US had Pommel Horse Guy. At these Winter Olympics, the Americans have a new cult hero: Curling Rambo.Aidan Oldenburg, a member of the US men’s curling team, has attracted attention for his glasses, thick thatch of hair and red bandana. His appeal as an unlikely hero has drawn comparisons with Stephen Nedoroscik, USA’s bespectacled, Rubik’s Cube-solving gymnastics hero who won two bronze medals at the Paris Olympics.Like Nedoroscik, the 24-year-old Oldenburg has hobbies away from his sport
‘If they’re a chef short, I’ll fill that role’: Safyaan Sharif ready to cook up T20 World Cup shock
It is fair to say that England’s first two games at the T20 World Cup have not inspired much confidence – unless you’re one of their future opponents. For Scotland, last-minute call-ups after the decision to banish Bangladesh from the tournament last month, English travails have put some extra pep in their step ahead of the now-crucial Group C clash in Kolkata on Saturday.“Definitely,” says the seamer Safyaan Sharif. “They’ll be feeling pressure because they know they have to win if they want to qualify. Obviously that’s the same with us, but I don’t think we have too much to lose
Olympic champion Breezy Johnson crashes out of super-G then gets engaged at end of course
Olympic downhill champion Breezy Johnson didn’t add to her medal haul during the women’s super-G on Thursday, but she left Tofane with something precious anyway: an engagement ring.Johnson, who won gold on Sunday in the downhill, crashed out of the super-G after she clipped a gate with one of her poles, sending her tumbling into the safety fence. However, there was some consolation: her boyfriend, Connor Watkins, proposed to her near the finish line. Surrounded by members of the US Ski Team, Johnson said “Yes!” and the two embraced.Johnson said she had an idea Watkins would propose, although the exact location and timing was still a surprise
Victoria and WA shook the foundations as Origin hit a peak that it will never reach again | Brendan Foster
When a late snap from Gary Buckenara put Western Australia ahead of Victoria in the 1986 State of Origin game, I feared the stands at Subiaco Oval were about to collapse under the weight of the thunderous thumping of rapturous fans.Almost 40,000 supporters squeezed into the ageing Soviet-style concrete stadium on a Tuesday afternoon in July to watch the Sandgropers take on the Big V in what is widely regarded as one of the greatest interstate football matches.Maybe it was because the ground was bulging at the seams with thousands of jittery, sugar-fuelled school kids and slightly sloshed Sandgropers, whose bosses had turned a blind eye to their midweek sickies – but I’ve never experienced an atmosphere like it.There was a chaotic, Colosseum-like frenzy to the noise, without the gladiators or the lions. (If you think I’m dishing up a decent serving of hyperbolic hogwash, watch the last quarter to see why the game remains timeless
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