Special to WorldTribune.com

By John J. Metzler, February 9, 2026

Set amid the spectacular Alpine scenery and historic towns of northern Italy, the XXV Winter Olympics have opened in Milan/Cortina.

The two week event hosting 90 teams and some 2,900 athletes are competing in sporting events from the traditional downhill skiing, snowboard, speed skating to hockey, bobsled, figure skating and luge are set to enthrall and create new sporting records.

Clearly 2026 is going to be a big year for global sporting events. First the XXV Winter Olympics in Italy. Followed by the Para Olympic Games in March at the same venue. Then in June comes the FIFA World Cup of Soccer (Football) which opens a month of competitive international soccer matches throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Cortina d’Ampezzo, a chic resort region, sits in the heart of the Dolomites among jagged alpine peaks amid lush valleys. Cortina and cosmopolitan Milan and two other sites in Livigno and Predazzo share events.

Of course, the Winter Olympics were held at such famed mountain venues as Innsbruck 1964, Grenoble 1968, Sapporo in 1972, Calgary 1988, Salt Lake City 2002, and more recently Pyeongchang in South Korea 2018 and Beijing in 2022.

Remember those storied athletes whose names still resonate; Jean Claude Killy, Karl Schranz, Toni Sailer, Eric Heiden, Bode Miller, Lindsey Vonn, Peggy Fleming, Dorothy Hamill and Michelle Kwan?

Among the 230 athletes in Team USA, the small but powerful Winter sport State of Vermont has at least a dozen participants in Cortina including mega-star Mikaela Shiffrin, probably among the greatest Alpine skiers of all time and Jessie Diggins, the most decorated U.S. cross-country skier.

Interestingly the Cortina d’Ampezzo Winter Games in 1956 became the first Olympics to be televised. Today the global media descended upon Italy to cover the Games.

TV and streaming rights constitute 60 percent of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) income!

Indeed, Italy is well prepared for the games having earlier hosting the 2006 Turin Winter Games. Beyond the nearly $2 billion Olympic operating budget, Italy has slated $4 billion in infra-structure investment upgrading transportation and connectivity across the region.

Many of the upgrades and improvements are being rolled out even after the games to ensure the work was not just a one-off event for the Games.

But the Olympics often courted controversy and paralleled world events.

The Lake Placid Games 1980 at the height of the Cold War still forms part of Olympic folklore in the USA. Here in New York’s rugged Adirondack mountains, the game saw Team USA playing the Soviet Union in Hockey. Tensions were high and so much political capital rested on the hockey game in rural upstate New York.

On Feb. 22, 1980, Team USA beat the vaunted Soviets in semi-finals with a score of 4-3. The event is still celebrated as the Miracle on Ice.

Then there were the sadly forgotten Olympiads, Sarajevo in 1984. Just a few years later the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia shattered into civil war and Sarajevo in Bosnia became a venue for fighting not harmony. Sarajevo was under siege for nearly four years; Olympic Sporting venues became battlegrounds, as ski slopes were heavily mined and the bobsled track was used for Bosnian-Serb artillery positions among the contested territory for both Bosnian and Serb combatants.

There’s the enduring China controversy. China’s mega team strutted into the opening ceremony with an aggressive panache.

During the post-war era, originally the Republic of China on Taiwan participated in the Olympics. But following U.S. diplomatic recognition of Beijing in 1979, China forced the ROC out of the arena. Since 1984, however a compromise allowed for a small Taiwan team under the name “Chinese-Taipei” to participate with a neutral flag.

Traditionally the Soviet and Russian teams were powerhouses at any Olympics. Yet, given Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Moscow’s team and that of allied Belorussia are barred from the Winter Games. Only about a dozen Russian athletes however are participating under the name “Individual Neutral Athletes.”

And what of the traditional Olympic truce during such events? Back in December the UN General Assembly unanimously passed an Italian-sponsored resolution for the Olympic Truce.

As the Games began UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres stated hopefully, that the “spirit of Olympic Truce” should continue. “It carries a simple truth: that the only struggle between nations should be on the sports field, not the battlefield.” He added, “I call on all parties in conflict to honor the Olympic Truce. Let us strive together, for gold, yes, but even more so, for peace.”

Is Russia listening in Ukraine? Is anyone listening?

John J. Metzler is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He is the author of Divided Dynamism the Diplomacy of Separated Nations: Germany, Korea, China (2014). [See pre-2011 Archives]

2026 Contract With Our Readers

  Peace through competition? Winter Olympics open in scenic Alps near Milan