The Olympics are a peculiar kind of mirror
United States' Breezy Johnson shows the gold medal she won in the alpine ski women's downhill race, at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, Sunday. Credit: AP/Andy Wong
There must be a metaphor in all those broken medals at the Winter Olympics in Italy.
At least six athletes, including Americans Breezy Johnson and Alysa Liu, who won gold in women’s downhill skiing and team figure skating, respectively, reported that their medals had broken. The precious hardware had detached from their ribbons — in Johnson’s case, as she jumped in celebration — and cracked upon landing.
It seemed a parable about the fragility of hard-won success. Or the relative worth of trinkets, even gold-plated ones, compared to the substance of the achievement itself. Or the quality of modern craftsmanship.
That’s the thing about the Olympics: They are a peculiar kind of mirror that reflects what we want to see.
The organizers of the Games say they have a fix for this recurring medals embarrassment. Time will tell. Meanwhile, the Milan Cortina Olympics march on with their refractive powers intact.
A skeleton athlete from Ukraine was disqualified a few days ago because he was planning to wear a helmet that honored countrymen killed in the war with Russia. Vladyslav Heraskevych’s “remembrance helmet” depicted the faces of more than 20 victims, some of whom were athletes, some of whom were friends. The images were haunting. But Olympics officials said the helmet ran afoul of the Games’ ban on political speech. International Olympic Committee president Kirsty Coventry, who spoke sympathetically about the “powerful messaging,” was left in tears after she was unable to reach some accommodation with Heraskevych.
Did the affair showcase the inability of modern society to reach compromise? Or the tendency of those in power to quash poignant protest in the face of catastrophe? Or the bravery of individuals standing up for the country they love against the savagery of a tyrannical aggressor? Or the insolence of someone who deserved punishment for his refusal to follow the rules? Or the hypocrisy of an organization that made its traditional pre-Games request that its member nations observe the ancient Olympics truce during the competition (which they never do) but nevertheless sanctioned an athlete also making a plea for peace.
When U.S. snowboarder Hunter Hess said that in competing for the United States he was not representing everything going on in the United States, citing the immigration crackdown roiling Minnesota, was he exercising his freedom of speech? Or was he “a real loser” and someone “very hard to root for,” as dubbed by President Donald Trump?
Consider the men’s 20-kilometer biathlon, a skiing and shooting event, during which Slovenia’s Lovro Planko accidentally stepped on one of the ski poles of Germany’s Philipp Nawrath, who dropped it. When Planko handed Nawrath one of his own poles and continued to race with only one, did you see in his gesture the epitome of sportsmanship, the kind the Olympic Games always seem to deliver?
Did you see in the scandal shadowing the ski jumping competition — two former coaches and the former equipment manager for Norway’s team were recently suspended for 18 months for illegally altering ski jumping suits to make them more aerodynamic — yet more evidence that the upper echelon of sport is still too often marred by cheating and a do-anything-to-get-ahead ethos?
Did you see in the eye-popping judging of the ice dancing competition by a judge from France an honest evaluation of a stirring performance by Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron? Or did you see a hometown score so out of whack with her fellow judges that it gave the French couple the gold medal?
Are the silver medal winners on all those podiums failures for not bringing home the gold or success stories for being better than every human but one?
Look around the Games, and they make you wonder: Are the Olympics an escape from the world or a reflection of it?
Michael Dobie is a retired member of the Newsday editorial board.
