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Tag: olympics 2026

  • Lindsey Vonn is preparing to fly home to the US with more surgeries to come, team official tells AP

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    CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — American Lindsey Vonn was preparing to fly back to her home country on Sunday after her terrifying head-over-heels crash in the Olympic downhill, the U.S. Ski Team’s chief told The Associated Press.

    Sophie Goldschmidt, president and CEO of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, said the team’s medical staff has been coordinating Vonn’s recovery since the crash and subsequent helicopter evacuation at the Milan Cortina Games and would try to accompany her home. Vonn has had multiple surgeries in Italy to repair a complex tibia fracture in her left leg.

    “We’re working through all of that at the moment,” Goldschmidt said. “We’ve got a great team around helping her and she’ll go back to the U.S. for further surgeries.”

    Spectators tuning in to see Vonn attempt to win a medal at age 41 with a torn ACL in her left knee and a partial titanium replacement in her right knee were stunned when she clipped a gate 13 seconds into her run, resulting in a spinning, airborne crash that sent her careening down the Dolomite mountain.

    “The impact, the silence, everyone was just in shock. And you could tell it was a really nasty injury,” said Goldschmidt, who was there. “There’s a lot of danger in doing all sorts of Alpine sports but it gives more of an appreciation for how superhuman these athletes are.

    “I mean, putting your body on the line, going at those speeds, the physicality. Sometimes actually on the broadcast it’s really hard to get that across,” Goldschmidt added. “Danger sometimes brings fans in and is pretty captivating. We obviously hope we won’t have injuries like that but it is unfortunately part and parcel of our sports.”

    Vonn herself said she has no regrets.

    “When I think back on my crash, I didn’t stand in the starting gate unaware of the potential consequences,” Vonn said in an Instagram post late Saturday. “I knew what I was doing. I chose to take a risk. Every skier in that starting gate took the same risk. Because even if you are the strongest person in the world, the mountain always holds the cards.

    “But just because I was ready, that didn’t guarantee me anything. Nothing in life is guaranteed. That’s the gamble of chasing your dreams, you might fall but if you don’t try you’ll never know,” Vonn added.

    Goldschmidt visited Vonn at the hospital twice and said, “She’s not in pain. She’s in a stable condition.

    “She took an aggressive line and was all in and it was inches off what could have ended up a very different way,” Goldschmidt said. “But what she’s done for our sports and the sport in general, her being a role model, has gone to a whole new level. You learn often more about people during these tough moments than when they’re winning.”

    The video in the player above is from a previous report.

    Copyright © 2026 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

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  • Fugitive on the run for years is arrested when he turns up at Olympics to watch hockey

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    Saturday, February 14, 2026 1:10AM

    ABC7 Chicago 24/7 Stream

    ROME — A Slovak fugitive who had been on the run for 16 years was finally arrested when he turned up in Milan to support his national ice hockey team at the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics, police said Friday.

    The 44-year-old man, who was not named, was wanted by Italian authorities for a series of thefts committed in 2010.

    The carabinieri managed to track down and arrest the man Wednesday after he checked into a campsite in the outskirts of Milan, thanks to an automatic alert from the campsite reception.

    The fugitive was then taken to Milan’s San Vittore prison to serve a pending sentence of 11 month and 7 days, the carabinieri said.

    The man did not manage to see the opening game in which Slovakia’s hockey team beat Finland with a sound 4-1 at Milan’s Santagiulia Arena on Wednesday.

    Copyright © 2026 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

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  • Madison Chock and Evan Bates Felt a ‘Roller Coaster of Emotions’ at Olympics

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    Figure skaters Madison Chock and Evan Bates are bringing home gold at the team event after competing at the Winter Olympics, but their second-place finish in the ice dancing competition is drawing controversy. “We’ve certainly gone through a roller coaster of emotions, especially in the last 24 hours,” Chock said to NBC News. “And I think what we will take away is how we felt right after our skates and how proud we were of what we accomplished and how we handled ourselves throughout the whole week. Putting out four great performances at the Olympic Games is no small feat, and we’ve got a lot to be proud of.” The couple placed second in the rhythm dance and the free dance competition; France’s Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron came in first in the overall competition, beating them by 1.43 points.

    Some judges’ scores throughout the Olympics drew criticism, like two free dance scores; one judge from Spain ranked Chock and Bates third, and a judge from France ranked the French couple 7.71 points higher than the American couple — five of the nine judges ranked Chock and Bates first.

    The husband-and-wife duo, who have been fan favorites leading up to the Winter Olympics, have won three World Championships in a row and led to some confusion about their scoring but it seems like the couple accepted their second place in stride. “I feel like life is sometimes you can feel like you do everything right and it doesn’t go your way, and that’s life and that’s sport,” Bates explained. “And it’s a subjective sport. It’s a judged sport.”

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    Alejandra Gularte

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  • US Olympians speaking up about politics at home face online backlash – including from Trump

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    MILAN — U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday said that it is hard to cheer for American Olympians who are speaking out against administration policies, calling one such critic “a real Loser” who perhaps should have stayed home.

    It was the latest and most prominent example of U.S. Olympians at the Milan Cortina Games inviting online backlash with their words.

    Reporters on Friday asked U.S. athletes at a news conference how they feel representing the country during the Trump administration’s heighted immigration enforcement actions. Freestyle skier Hunter Hess replied that he had mixed emotions since he doesn’t agree with the situation, and that he is in Milan competing on behalf of everyone who helped get him to The Games.

    “If it aligns with my moral values, I feel like I’m representing it,” Hess said. “Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S.”

    Among those who piled on Hess were YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul.

    “From all true Americans If you don’t want to represent this country go live somewhere else,” he wrote on X, where he has 4.4 million followers. Minutes later, he was photographed sitting beside U.S. Vice President JD Vance at the U.S women’s hockey game in Olympic host city Milan.

    Trump said the next day that Hess’ comments make it hard to root for him.

    “Hess, a real Loser, says he doesn’t represent his Country in the current Winter Olympics. If that’s the case, he shouldn’t have tried out for the Team, and it’s too bad he’s on it,” he wrote on his Truth Social account.

    Hess wasn’t the only athlete voicing discontent – or facing blowback

    At Friday’s news conference with the athletes, freestyle skier Chris Lillis referenced Immigration and Customs Enforcement, saying he’s “heartbroken” about what is happening in the U.S.

    “I think that, as a country, we need to focus on respecting everybody’s rights and making sure that we’re treating our citizens as well as anybody, with love and respect,” Lillis said. “I hope that when people look at athletes compete in the Olympics, they realize that that’s the America that we’re trying to represent.”

    And U.S. figure skater Amber Glenn said the LGBTQ+ community has had a hard time during the Trump administration.

    In addition to Paul, conservative figures criticizing the athletes on social media include former NFL quarterback Brett Favre, actor Rob Schneider and U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds – who Trump has endorsed for the Florida gubernatorial race in November. And there was a flood of vitriol directed at them from ordinary Americans.

    Glenn posted on Instagram that she had received “a scary amount of hate / threats for simply using my voice WHEN ASKED about how I feel.” She added that she will start limiting her social media use for her well-being.

    In response to questions from The Associated Press, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee said in a statement Sunday that it is aware of an increasing amount of abusive and harmful messages directed toward the athletes and was doing its best to remove content and report credible threats to law enforcement.

    “The USOPC stands firmly behind Team USA athletes and remains committed to their well-being and safety, both on and off the field of play,” it said.

    Anti-ICE protests in Italy

    Support for the U.S. abroad has eroded as the Trump administration has pursued an aggressive posture on foreign policy, including punishing tariffs, military action in Venezuela and threats to invade Greenland.

    During the opening ceremony, Team USA athletes were cheered on, but jeers and whistles could be heard as Vance and his wife, second lady Usha Vance, were shown on the stadium screens, waving American flags from the tribune.

    In Milan, several demonstrations have broken out against the against the local deployment of ICE agents – even after clarification that they are from an investigations unit that is completely separate from the enforcement unit at the forefront of the immigration crackdown in the U.S.

    Homeland Security Investigations, an ICE unit that focuses on cross-border crimes, frequently sends its officers to overseas events like the Olympics to assist with security. The ICE arm seen in the streets of the U.S. is known as Enforcement and Removal Operations, and there is no indication its officers were sent to Italy.

    A demonstration on Saturday featured thousands of protesters. Toward its end, a small number of them clashed with police, who fired tear gas and a water cannon. That followed another one last week, when hundreds protested the deployment of ICE agents.

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    Associated Press writer Graham Dunbar contributed to this report.

    Copyright © 2026 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

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