Tag: Fox Sport News

All eyes were on Friday’s Opening Ceremony for the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics in Italy. Speed skater Erin Jackson and bobsledder Frank Del Duca were the U.S. flag bearers, while Italian legends Sofia Goggia, Alberto Tomba and Deborah Compagnoni lit the Olympic cauldrons. Lindsey Vonn continues to prove doubters wrong with a miraculous comeback, while the U.S. skating and curling teams got off to hot starts. The U.S. women’s hockey team has also taken precautions against the norovirus outbreak.

Here are the top five stories of the day:

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1. Opening Ceremony

While the 2026 Winter Olympics started Wednesday, the Opening Ceremony took place Friday in Italy. The U.S. flag bearers were speedskater Erin Jackson and bobsledder Frank Del Duca.

Jackson, 33, is a three-time Olympian and the reigning Olympic gold medalist in the 500 meters. Jackson also became the first Black woman to win an individual gold medal at the Winter Games. Del Duca, 34, is also a two-time Olympian and a sergeant in the U.S. Army. The U.S. team walked out in Ralph Lauren, the sponsor for the Opening and Closing Ceremony. The ceremony ended with Sofia Goggia, Alberto Tomba and Deborah Compagnoni lighting the Olympic cauldrons in dramatic fashion.

A week after rupturing her surgically repaired right ACL in last week’s upper section of the World Cup downhill race in Switzerland, Lindsey Vonn completed a successful training run early Friday morning. The run was required if Vonn wanted to compete in Sunday’s Olympic women’s downhill competition. Vonn scored 1:40.33, a time that placed her 11th out of the 43 finishers.

Vonn also gave updates on her injury diagnosis on social media. On Thursday, she posted a high-intensity workout that included weighted squats and box jumps. She revealed Friday that her ACL is “100% ruptured” and that she is not taking medications to reduce the pain.

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Despite entering last week’s race leading the downhill standings and sixth in the overall competition, Vonn opted to try to get more World Cup points.

The 41-year-old is a four-time overall World Cup champion and won gold in the downhill event in 2010. Vonn made a return after retiring from skiing in 2019. This is the most recent of the injuries she has had in the last few years.

3. U.S. off to a hot start in figure skating

The ice dance duo of Madison Chock and Evan Bates started the day with 91.06 to finish atop the standings and gain the United States 10 points. Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea posted a score of 66.59, fifth overall in the segment, despite Kam falling during an attempted triple loop. Alysa Liu finished the day with a score of 74.90 to keep the United States in first place after the first day of the team event.

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4. U.S. mixed doubles curling team stay undefeated

The United States mixed doubles curling team of Cory Thiesse and Korey Dropkin is 4-0 after wins over Canada and Czechia on Friday. Their 4-0 start was the best among any U.S. men’s, women’s or mixed doubles curling team since the sport was added in 1998.

Thiesse and Dropkin will continue round-robin play Saturday against 5-0 Great Britain and 0-4 South Korea.

5. U.S. women’s hockey team taking precautions against the norovirus outbreak

After Thursday’s 5-1 win over Czechia, U.S. women’s hockey goalie Aerin Frankel avoided giving the other teams hugs because of the norovirus outbreak.

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Norovirus, according to the Center for Disease Control, is a “very contagious” illness that is the leading cause of vomiting and diarrhea in the United States. Most people with norovirus illness recover in 72 hours or less, the CDC says, but they can still spread the virus for several more days afterward.

The entire Swiss team was isolated “as a precaution” after a player was diagnosed with norovirus. The Swiss team is scheduled to play Canada on Saturday. The Canadian team has yet to play a game after their opening game against Finland was postponed when the Finnish team had a norovirus outbreak.

The Swiss team’s outbreak reportedly took place after Friday’s 4-3 comeback win over the Czechia and shortly before the Olympic Opening Ceremony.

Highlight of the day

One more thing

Pita Taufatofua made his return to the 2026 Olympics, this time wearing a shirt!

The Los Angeles Lakers had to play the second half without Luka Dončić on Thursday. His absence will extend into at least their next game.

According to ESPN’s Dave McMenamin, there is “initial optimism” that Luka Dončić may have avoided major injury as he deals with a hamstring strain, but he was still ruled out for Saturday’s game against the Golden State Warriors.

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Dončić exited Thursday’s game against the Philadelphia 76ers with an apparent leg injury and was later announced to be out for the rest of the game, with the Lakers describing the injury as left leg soreness. The injury occurred in the second quarter, on a stepback from the paint that led to Dončić grabbing his hamstring.

Dončić was not pleased with the development.

Dončić finished the game with 10 points on 3-of-10 shooting with 4 rebounds, 2 assists and 5 turnovers.

After the game, Lakers head coach JJ Redick said Dončić “felt some soreness in his hamstring” and the Lakers medical staff opted to hold him out. Dončić was also seen walking gingerly out of the building.

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It had mostly been a healthy season for Dončić, with appearances in 42 of the Lakers’ games this season. His longest absence was early in the season, when he missed three games with a finger sprain and leg contusion.

This injury comes at a sensitive time for the Lakers, who entered the game in sixth place in the Western Conference and only one game ahead of the seventh-place Phoenix Suns. After a strong start, they’ve been a significantly up-and-down team since the start of December but were hoping to get a shot in the arm with the return of Austin Reaves, who had been out for more than a month with a calf strain.

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Instead, they can only hope this isn’t the start of an absence for another of their top players.

Across the sports landscape, the NFL always seems to be the one league immune to the ratings erosion brought on by the era of cord-cutting. With one exception.

The 2026 Pro Bowl Games continued a worrying trend for the league, drawing an average of only 2.0 million viewers on ESPN in its new Tuesday timeslot, according to Sports Media Watch. That’s a 59.6% drop from last year’s record low viewership of 4.7 million.

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Just how bad are we talking here? The 2021 Pro Bowl, a tape-delayed virtual event in which some of the players faced off in “Madden NFL” due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, drew 1.9 million viewers.

Here’s how the ratings have gone since then:

• 2023: 6.3 million viewers

• 2024: 5.8 million viewers

• 2025: 4.7 million viewers

• 2026: 2.0 million viewers

To be fair, much of the drop-off from last year can be explained by the fact the game wasn’t on ABC. This year also saw a big change in both time and venue, as it was held on Tuesday in the Super Bowl host city of San Francisco rather than Orlando or Las Vegas. The NFL said the change was intended to help promote flag football for its debut at the 2028 Summer Olympics.

This year’s flag football game saw the NFC beat the AFC 66-52.

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Is it time to finally kill the Pro Bowl?

At some point, it might be time for the NFL to take a step back and ask, “Is this all worth it?”

The Pro Bowl was originally a simple idea. The best players in the league — or at least the best players who didn’t make the Super Bowl — get a Hawaiian vacation while taking it easy for a single game. However, there’s no guarantee of safety in a tackle football game, and the more the players tried to avoid injury, the less fun it became to watch. Player safety is understandably going to take precedent 10 times out of 10 when the stakes are so low, which is why the NFL switched to flag football in 2023.

At this point, the Pro Bowl Games are essentially a football variety show in which the public is invited to watch some of their favorite players goof off for a few hours. The NFL wants to promote flag football so it feels more natural when its athlete report to Los Angeles in 2028, but how much is this actually going to help?

Making the Pro Bowl has also become a hollow honor, at least at the quarterback position. It wasn’t a good sign for the event that its biggest story was Cleveland Browns rookie Shedeur Sanders making the game after a seven-touchdown, 10-interception season, but making it even worse is that Sanders was simply following the norm of the past few years.

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Tyler Huntley infamously made the game in 2023 after starting only four games for the Baltimore Ravens due to seemingly every other AFC quarterback being either hurt or unwilling to play, and a similar thing happened with Gardner Minshew in 2024. Joe Flacco spent his entire career getting squeezed out by a group of generational QBs, then made it for the first time this year with 10 mediocre starts for the Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals.

A Pro Bowl selection is supposed to mean a player was among the best at his position that season, but it really means “best among the players at his position willing and able to show up to a meaningless event.”

So what are we doing here? What’s stopping the NFL from announcing its Pro Bowlers at the end of the season and then … recognizing them at the NFL honors? How important is it that all of these guys come together on a Tuesday night, if it’s not even going to draw half the audience of your average MLB wild-card game?

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The NFL isn’t hurting anyone by doing the Pro Bowl this way and if it decides getting a couple million eyeballs on a Tuesday evening is a fine outcome, that’s their decision. Still, you’d imagine there is a number of viewers in which the endeavor is no longer financially worth it, especially if the league’s stars would approve of getting their week before the Super Bowl back.

North Dakota State’s long-awaited move to the Football Bowl Subdivision is inching closer to becoming a reality.

The Mountain West is in serious dialogue to add the FCS powerhouse as a football-only member starting this coming season, and a deal could be finalized as soon as this weekend, sources tell Yahoo Sports.

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North Dakota State and the Mountain West — in a courtship for more than a year now — are nearing the completion of a more permanent marriage. The move comes at a price for the Bison.

The school is expected to pay a substantial entry fee to join the conference — an offer that is becoming more standard for those schools wanting a promotion in conference affiliation.

For instance, Memphis proposed a $200 million entry fee into the Big 12 last summer, and Sacramento State has offered multiple FBS conferences an eight-figure entry fee. Two years ago, SMU, Cal and Stanford agreed to forgo a portion of conference distribution as an incentive for an ACC invitation.

If a deal is reached with North Dakota State, the Mountain West will have 10 football-playing members for 2026 — two football-only programs in NDSU and Northern Illinois, as well as Air Force, UNLV, Nevada, New Mexico, San Jose State, Wyoming and other new full members Hawaii and UTEP.

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Perhaps the most attractive school at the FCS level, North Dakota State has won 10 of the past 15 national championships. The Bison are juggernauts at that level, with facilities and resources on par with many members of the lower reaches of FBS. Since the 2011 season, the program has won 90 percent of its games and 10 conference titles in the Missouri Valley Conference.

In an interview recently, NDSU athletic director Matt Larsen said the school wishes to play at “the highest level” of Division I football and that “if there’s an opportunity, I think it’s something we would absolutely explore.”

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The opportunity has arrived.

Mountain West presidents recently agreed to grant the school an invitation to the league. However, the price to join — an entrance fee that could jump into the eight figures — has been a subject of negotiation over the last several days.

The school would also owe $5 million in a separate NCAA entry fee. Executives increased that figure three years ago from $5,000 — a whopping jump that is indicative of the desire from many power conference leaders to slow a rapidly growing FBS group that now stands at 136 universities.

Presumably, North Dakota State’s other sports would remain in the Summit League.

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The Mountain West-NDSU conversations come on the heels of the league’s announcement of its new media rights package featuring CBS Sports, Fox Sports, The CW Network, and Kiswe. It also comes amid two lawsuits — between the Mountain West and Pac-12, and the Mountain West and the five schools departing for the Pac-12. The MWC is requesting more than $100 million in damages from the legal challenges.

Former NFL first-round pick Darron Lee was arrested and charged with first-degree murder on Friday after his girlfriend’s death, the Hamilton County (Tenn.) Sheriff’s Office announced.

First responders reportedly found the unnamed victim on Tuesday afternoon and determined she was dead after attempting life-saving measures. Preliminary findings led to detectives ruling the death a result of homicide, with Lee taken into custody at the scene.

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In addition to murder, Lee, 31, faces a charge of tampering with evidence. Additional charges could be added pending the outcome of the investigation.

Per jail records, Lee is currently being held without bond and has a court date scheduled for next Wednesday.

Lee was a second-team All-American linebacker and won the 2015 College Football Playoff with Ohio State, earning defensive MVP honors in the Sugar Bowl semifinal win over No. 1 Alabama. He was selected 20th overall by the New York Jets in the 2016 NFL Draft.

Over the course of three seasons, Lee started 36 games for the Jets and appeared in 40 total, accruing 241 total tackles, 17 tackles for loss, four sacks and three interceptions. However, he was suspended four games in 2018 due to a substance abuse violation and struggled enough that the Jets declined his fifth-year option.

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The Jets eventually traded Lee to the Kansas City Chiefs in 2019. He appeared in 16 games but started only two, and was inactive for Kansas City’s Super Bowl LIV victory. He was suspended for four games again the following offseason and he never found significant playing time after that.

Lee’s last appearance in an NFL game was with the Buffalo Bills in the 2020 season. He joined the Las Vegas Raiders in 2021, but was released in training camp.

Just like the New York Giants and Philadelphia Eagles defenses, peer pressure has proven effective against Tom Brady in Super Bowl week.

The New England Patriots legend reversed course from his stated neutrality in Super Bowl LX, posting an encouraging message aimed at Patriots owner Robert Kraft urging him to win a seventh ring.

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“You know I got your back RKK [fist emoji] Get that 7th ring so we can match,” Brady posted on his Instagram story.

Brady unintentionally triggered a backlash from multiple former Patriots teammates on Monday, when he declared “I don’t have a dog in the fight, may the best team win” in the upcoming Super Bowl between the Patriots and Seattle Seahawks.

He explained it as caring more about the people involved than the actual teams:

“I think there’s always different chapters in your life. And you have different chapters and moments that you go through where you are affiliated with a certain team. Michigan, and then I was with the Patriots for 20 years. I was with Tampa for three amazing years. I’ve been in broadcasting, now I’m an owner of the Raiders. So, those memories that I have are forever ingrained in me and I’m indebted to all the people who worked so hard to help make our team successful.

“And now in a different phase of my life, I really root for people and the people I care about. The people who I know the work that goes in to what they are trying to accomplish. I really want to sit back as a fan and enjoy the game, enjoy the moment. And I always think, may the best team win. It’s not going to be who I’m cheering for or who I think is going to win, it’s going to be decided by the people out there on the field.”

As much as Brady tried to explain the nuances of his stance, it didn’t square with some of his most famous teammates.

Vince Wilfork called the comments “political bullcrap.” Asante Samuel Sr. called him Flaw Ass Brady, said he was “highly disappointed” in Brady for not rooting for his ex-teammate, Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel, and jokingly suggested Brady’s Gillette Stadium statue be replaced with one of himself. Rob Gronkowski made very clear he was rooting for the Patriots.

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As for current Patriots, linebacker Robert Spillane said the idea “makes me sick.”

So Brady mildly backtracked, though you could argue his message to Kraft very much falls in the category of rooting for people he cares about that he originally explained. It apparently remains to be seen if he will be forgiven.

A Patriots win on Sunday would give the franchise its record seventh Super Bowl title, and would even the score with Brady after his final title with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. While he is more formally associated with the Las Vegas Raiders, owning a minority stake in the franchise, he had his statue unveiled in Foxboro last August.

The Winter Games have begun in Italy. From the rink to the slopes, a new generation of stars has emerged to chase gold. We’ll keep you connected to all of the thrilling moments and top stories as we track the medal race each day of the Games.

The U.S. women’s hockey, mixed doubles curling and ice dance teams will look to continue their dominant early showing, while eyes will be on Lindsey Vonn to see if she does another training run before Sunday’s Olympic women’s downhill competition.

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Here are the top five things to watch Saturday at the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics:

1. Medals

Medals will begin to be handed out Saturday morning. The first medal events are men’s downhill skiing and the women’s 20 km skiathlon. There will also be medals awarded for women’s 3000m speed skating, men’s big air snowboarding and women’s normal hill ski jumping.

2. Lindsey Vonn training run?

After participating in Friday’s training run, Lindsey Vonn’s coach, Aksel Lund Svindal, said he was not sure if Vonn would participate in Saturday’s training run, but she is on the list of starters. This will be her second chance after the cancelation of the first training on Thursday.

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A week after tearing her ACL during the upper section of the World Cup downhill race in Switzerland, Vonn completed a successful training run early Friday morning. The run was required if she wanted to compete in Sunday’s Olympic women’s downhill competition. Vonn clocked in at 1:40.33, a time that placed her 11th out of the 43 finishers.

The 41-year-old is a four-time overall World Cup champion and won gold in the downhill event at the 2010 Olympics. Vonn made a return after retiring from skiing in 2019.

3. U.S. women’s hockey set to face illness-stricken Finland

The U.S. women’s hockey team meets Finland in its second game of the 2026 Olympics. The U.S. opened the Olympics with a 5-1 win over Czechia. Finland has yet to play after their opening game against Canada was postponed until Thursday after a norovirus outbreak.

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Norovirus, according to the Centers for Disease Control, is a “very contagious” illness that is the leading cause of vomiting and diarrhea in the United States. Most people with norovirus illness recover in 72 hours or less, the CDC says, but they can still spread the virus for several more days afterward.

The Finnish team is reportedly optimistic about playing after most of the team took part in practice. The Americans, meanwhile, have taken precautions to protect themselves from catching the virus.

4. Can U.S. mixed doubles curling team stay undefeated?

The U.S. mixed doubles curling team is off to a record-setting, undefeated start after two days of competition with wins over Canada and Czechia on Friday. Cory Thiesse and Korey Dropkin’s 4-0 start was the best among any U.S. men’s, women’s or mixed doubles curling team since the sport was added to the Olympics in 1998.

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On Saturday, it will be a challenge to stay undefeated as they take on 5-0 Great Britain and 0-4 South Korea in round-robin play.

5. Free dance, men’s short program in team figure skating

Team USA will enter the day with the lead in the team competition after strong performances Friday from Madison Chock and Evan Bates in the rhythm dance and reigning world champion Alysa Liu in the women’s short program. Team Japan sits just two points behind the U.S. in second place after Kaori Sakamoto’s strong short program.

Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026

All times ET.

Alpine Skiing

Downhill

• 5:30 a.m.: Men’s final (USA Network)🏅

Cross-Country Skiing

20 kilometer skiathlon

• 7 a.m.: Women’s final (NBC)🏅

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Curling

Mixed doubles round-robin

• 4:05 a.m.: Great Britain vs. Canada (USA Network), Switzerland vs. Sweden

• 8:35 a.m.: Estonia vs. Norway, Czechia vs. South Korea, Sweden vs. Italy, Great Britain vs. USA (USA Network at 9:30 a.m.)

• 1:05 p.m.: South Korea vs. USA, Canada vs. Estonia, Czechia vs. Switzerland, Norway vs. Italy

Figure Skating

Team competition

• 1:45 p.m.: Men’s short program (NBC)

Freestyle Skiing

Slopestyle

• 4:30 a.m.: Women’s qualifying (USA Network; NBC picks up coverage at 5:30 a.m.)

• 8 a.m.: Men’s qualifying (NBC)

Hockey

Women’s pool play

• 6:10 a.m: Germany vs. Japan

• 8:40 a.m.: Sweden vs. Italy

• 10:40 a.m.: USA vs. Finland (USA Network)

• 3:10 p.m.: Switzerland vs. Canada (USA Network)

Luge

Men’s singles

• 11 a.m.: Runs 1, 2 (Run 2 airs live on NBC beginning at 12:45 p.m.)

Ski Jumping

Normal hill

• 11:45 a.m.: Women’s final (airs on USA Network at 8 p.m.)🏅

Snowboarding

Big air

• 1:30 p.m.: Men’s final (USA Network) 🏅

Speed Skating

3000 meters

• 10 a.m.: Women’s final (NBC coverage begins at 10:05 a.m.) 🏅

LIVIGNO, Italy — Getting from the center of the Winter Games in Milan to this ski resort just a few miles from the Swiss border can be a thrill ride on its own, requiring hairpin turns through steep mountain passes befitting the Olympic events that will take place here when you finally arrive.

But the interesting thing about what’s happening in Livigno over the next two weeks is that most of the athletes here — the ones who will fly through the air on snowboards and skis performing mind-bending tricks — did not grow up dreaming about being Olympians at all.

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“The X games was the pinnacle,” said Nick Goepper, a 31-year-old freestyle skier. “It was the sort of the Olympics of our time. And there in the beginning, the Olympics was almost like an asterisk.”

Like everyone in his generation, Goepper was raised on the X Games, a creation of the late 1990s that brought winter sports counterculture to the mainstream when it hit ESPN in 2002. The Olympics? Those were for the proper skiers, but the X Games had the energy, the crowds, the danger.

And when the IOC tried to cash in on that phenomenon, adding a small handful of snowboard and freeski events to the Winter Olympics in hopes of appealing to a younger audience, many participants were hesitant to embrace it.

Much like their counterparts in skateboarding, which has undergone its own reckoning as an Olympic sport, the larger X Games community viewed it as too corporate, too competitive, too far from the pure artistry that drew kids like Goepper or Alex Hall to the sport in the first place.

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“Freeski experienced a little of that at the start,” Hall said. “Personally, I didn’t grow up watching the Olympics.

“In the end, the Olympics is amazing and it’s cool to have it, but freeskiing is so much more than the Olympics or the competition venue. There’s so many aspects to it that bring me a ton of joy, so [the Olympics is] an important category of freesking, but it isn’t everything.”

Even as the reigning Olympic gold medalist in slopestyle, which debuted in 2014, Hall feels so comfortable saying that both because it’s true and because it reflects an interesting moment for the sports the IOC has imported from the X Games.

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They have now become such an important part of the Winter Olympics that they can stand on their own up here in Livigno, with 17 gold medals being awarded in freestyle skiing and 13 in snowboarding. Particularly for an American audience, these events have arguably surpassed the traditional Alpine ski events in terms of eyeballs and interest.

Yet at the same time, where the Olympics fits is part of an ongoing cultural shift. Everyone acknowledges that it’s good for these sports to be part of the Olympics because of the new fans and participants it attracts with each passing four-year cycle.

“You look at China coming in now, 12 years ago I don’t know if there were that many Chinese snowboarders,” said Red Gerard, who won the second-ever slopestyle gold in 2018 when he was a mere 17 years old. “I think it’s just given a lot of snowboarders a different avenue.”

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But is a gold medal the pinnacle of snowboarding or freestyle skiing? It’s still up for debate, in part because those who made it here understand they are not competing against all the best in their sport. It’s simply a numbers game: With limited spots available for Americans and Canadians, who have had such a historical head start and are generally dominant on their tour, potential medal winners are sitting at home.

“In some ways the field is more mellow because the U.S. team is so good,” Hall said. “It’s a little weird sometimes because you don’t feel like you have everyone at the event that should be there.”

At the same time, how important is the competitive aspect of their sport to begin with? In many ways, winning has long been secondary to pushing boundaries, entertaining fans and impressing each other with new tricks. For them, it’s not just sports, it’s art. How can you maintain that identity when you come to an Olympics and everyone acts like winning a gold medal is supposed to change your life?

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“Our sports are very lifestyle based,” Goepper said. “We’ve got a really deep culture built around them, and I would say respect and kudos from our peers is really valued by a lot of our community. I think that’s super important to maintain that value for the future of our sport. That’s what separates us from some of the other sports that are purely focused on higher, faster, stronger” — three tenants of the Olympic motto.

Still, even Goepper acknowledges as he prepares for his fourth Olympics that the gravity of this event, and only having one opportunity every four years, has altered the competitive legacy of snowboarders and freeskiers. The 14-year and 15-year olds who could contend at the next Winter Games are taking their cues from athletes whose attitudes are changing.

“For me, growing up, X Games has always been top of top,” 21-year old Troy Podmilsak said. “I feel like the last few years it’s kind of switched to being the Olympics now being our biggest and best event.”

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What does that mean for snowboarding and freestyle skiing as they entrench themselves even more as core parts of the Olympic movement? It’s just the next evolution in a cross-generational balancing act for athletes who want to stay true to their roots while taking advantage of a worldwide platform even the X Games can’t offer.

“Freeskiing is not an Olympic sport,” said Hunter Hess, who will make his debut at the Games this year. “It’s just a sport that gets to compete in the Olympics.”

MILAN — Lindsey Vonn has built her career out of being fearless, out of pushing the limits between glory and physical ruin, out of taking risks that others would not.

So there was no way the 41-year-old American was going to play it safe Saturday on the eve of the most anticipated race of her life.

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Eight days after tearing an ACL in a cruelly timed crash in Switzerland, Vonn used her second and final training run before Sunday’s downhill to test drive what her injured left knee could do. She charged out of the start and skied defiantly down the mountain in a session that was not mandatory and that she could have skipped if she feared aggravating her injury.

Vonn pumped her fist and appeared satisfied with her run despite a slight bobble on the final portion of the course. She clocked a time of 1:38.28, third best of the day and more than two seconds faster than her training run from Friday. American Breezy Johnson posted Saturday’s fastest training run.

Only 21 of the 40-plus skiers were able to complete their training runs before thick fog and snow created visibility issues along the course. Organizers canceled the rest of Saturday’s training runs after a delay of nearly two hours.

“She was very calm when she came down,” Vonn’s coach Aksel Lund Svindal said. “She talked about skiing and was calm and didn’t talk about the knee at all. And then I didn’t want to ask either, because I figured that’s a good sign.

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“How I’ve learned to know her is when she’s calm it means she feels like she has it under control.

“She knows she’ll have to push harder tomorrow, because the rest of the girls will, and it’s the Olympic downhill. You’re not going to get away with a medal here unless you push hard.”

Expect Vonn to hurl herself down the mountain even more aggressively on Sunday with a global audience watching and more than just an Olympic medal at stake. She wouldn’t just solidify herself as one of the greatest female ski racers if she somehow wins gold on a shredded knee. She’d shove her way onto the list of America’s most legendary Olympians, shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Michael Phelps, Jesse Owens, Simone Biles and the 1980 U.S. Hockey team.

Vonn was already poised to be one of the faces of the Milan Cortina Winter Games even before she was airlifted off a mountain in Switzerland eight days ago. NBC has relentlessly promoted the four-time overall World Cup champion and 2010 Olympic downhill gold medalist throughout her extraordinary comeback after nearly six years away from ski racing.

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When Vonn initially retired in 2019, she said the physical toll of an array of injuries had become too much to bear. She had her right knee partially replaced in April 2024, hoping only to be able to live a normal, pain-free life again.

Vonn felt so much better with her repaired right knee that she made a stunning announcement in November 2024 that she was un-retiring. She has been dominant in downhill races this World Cup season and finished on the podium in two of her first three super-G races, raising hopes she can contend for medals in both disciplines in Cortina.

Had she not crashed during the final World Cup downhill before the Olympics, Vonn would have been a favorite to win the gold medal on Sunday. Now she’s trying to make a comeback within a comeback, trying to compete for a medal on a good knee made of titanium and a bad knee missing its main stabilizing ligament.

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“This is not, obviously, what I had hoped for,” Vonn said Tuesday. “I’ve been working really hard to come into these Games in a much different position. I know what my chances were before the crash, and I know my chances aren’t the same as it stands today, but I know there’s still a chance and as long as there’s a chance, I will try.”

The training runs were critical steps for Vonn to test what her knee felt like coming into and out of the sharpest turns on the challenging Olympic downhill course in Cortina.

On Friday, in her first training run, Vonn test-drove her injured left knee and proved that a return to competition is realistic. She cruised down the mountain, crossing the finish line 11th fastest out of 47 skiers and impressing her coach with both her resilience and her conservative approach.

“She was smart, she didn’t go all in,” her coach, Aksel Lund Svindal, told reporters. “She made a mistake on the bottom, but the rest looked like good skiing. No big risk. To me, it looked symmetrical. I didn’t see any differences [between her] right and left [side]. That’s what we were looking for today.”

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The prudent decision for Vonn might have been to stay off her knee on Saturday. Naturally, that’s not the decision she made.

“On our way to work!” she posted to social media about 90 minutes before the training runs began. “Course looks good today, snow is a lot more firm. Should run quite a bit faster. Because of that, I’ve decided to start in the training run today. See you out there”

For days, Vonn has insisted that she believes she’s capable of the unthinkable on Sunday, that she won’t allow even one of the most feared injuries in sports to stop her in her quest for the perfect ending to her storied career. If she does it, she’ll become an enduring symbol of resilience for years to come.

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A gold medal, at 41, after tearing an ACL just over a week ago?

“I’m not letting this slip through my fingers,” Vonn said earlier this week. “I’m going to do it, end of story.”

Doubt her at your own risk.

Eileen Gu qualified for the Olympic slopestyle final with a strong second showing following a fall in her first qualifying run on Saturday.

Gu earned a score of 75.30 in her second run to place her within the top 12 skiers to advance to Monday’s final.

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The 22-year-old Gu, who was born in San Francisco but represents China, was a silver medalist in the event in 2022 in Beijing. She also won two golds in big air and halfpipe four years ago and will take part in all three events in Milan. She lost out on triple gold after finishing 0.33 points behind Switzerland’s Mathilde Gremaud in the slopestyle final.

Since Beijing, Gu has taken part in just four World Cup slopestyle events and made the podium in three of them. Gremaud is the reigning world champion and has finished in first or second place in eight of nine World Cup events she has competed in since November 2023.

Gremaud also qualified for the final after posting a Saturday best score of 79.15 in her second run.

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American Avery Krumme, 17, finished with a score of 64.93 and will also move on, while Grace Henderson (49.78) and Marin Hamill (47.91) failed to advance.