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In the natural flow of modern life, I can expect certain things every four years: a terrifying American election, a long hard think about staging my death for life insurance, and the bliss of a late afternoon pub buzz commentating on Olympic sports I know nothing about, like rhythmic gymnastics or canoe slalom. Oh, and the Winter Olympics swings by too. But it’s February, and my skin is grey, and my soul couldn’t give less of a fuck, really. Apologies to all these athletes – I’ve no doubt they work very hard – but historically, cross-country skiing does not serve me.
Then Milan opened its doors for 2026. Initially, the indifference took hold. The Brits aren’t very good at sports on snow, so why should we care? (Which, I get it, is a very British thing to think). Then I flicked on the figure skating, because I have no hobbies, and wait… have the Winter Olympics always been this strange? There was Stephen Gogolev of Canada, elegantly slicing through the rink like a master sushi chef, in a very stretchy, slightly anime lawyer three-piece suit (pocket watch included). Guillaume Cizeron took to the rink in very long (and pretty sexy) opera gloves right up to the elbow. I’m not alone in my observations; my friends Martha and Alex WhatsApped me a video of a couple ice dancing in perfect unison to Backstreet Boys in extremely ’90s fits. “It’s actually pretty sick,” Alex murmured in the background. A white bubble popped up in the chat. “I take back everything I said we are loving this,” Martha wrote at 9.52pm. I felt the same way when Tomàs-Llorenç Guarino Sabaté took to the ice dressed as a minion.
OK, so it is completely normal for figure skating to be completely nuts. Elsewhere at the Winter Olympics, menswear seems to have upped its meds – or come off them entirely. Snoop Dogg was seen on the slopes in a full star-spangled ski suit, a blown-up photo of American bobsledder Kaysha Love printed on the jacket. South Korea’s Hong Sujung was yeeted down the skeleton track, a wide-eyed, Stephen King kind of cat painted on her helmet. Haiti’s Stevenson Savart had a dangly little earring in the shape of a crescent moon during the cross-country skiing. Austrian snowboarder Benjamin Karl stripped off like he was leading a DSquared2 show. And plus, did anyone know that curling shoes went this hard? Part clog, part sneaker, part the orthopaedic shoes my Great-Grandma Clara once wore – it seems the sneakerverse is not a fully explored frontier after all.
These are just a few moments of blessed madness at the Winter Olympics. They might not come as much of a shock to the real fans. But I always had a preexisting image of this kind of stuff; you only have to visit Val-d’Isère once to realise that skiing – and alpine sport in general – over-indexes in very white, very rich people (and Finns who have never seen the sun). I expected preppy. Instead, I got fluoro and feral. Happy to admit that I was wrong.
Maybe the Winter Olympics are changing. Or maybe we’re all increasingly tapped in as the algo feeds us content from far-flung corners. Either way, Milano 2026 has been slightly weird, and chaotic, and I am converted. Also, shout out those cross-country skiers I once doubted; who knew they kitted up like a pack of Crayolas, Tron edition?