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Former ESPN personality Sarah Spain grumbled on her podcast recently that sitting near “demon” Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Winter Olympics in Italy made her feel “ill.” The “Good Game with Sarah Spain” host described her proximity to the top Trump administration officials – about 20 feet away, according to Spain – as one of the “low lights” of covering the US women’s hockey team as they demolished Czechia at the Milano Cortina games last week. “Twelve minutes into the first period, that area suddenly is awash with large men in suits with...

While the United States isn't leading in the medal count, Team USA is looking golden at this year's Winter Olympic Games. Team USA has won seven medals so far and two of them are gold. The American team is tied for third place with Japan for total medals. Breezy Johnson won gold in women's downhill skiing on Sunday, becoming only the second American woman to accomplish the feat. It was the first Olympic medal of her career, and the first gold medal for Team USA at this year's Winter Games. She tearfully stood at the podium to accept her gold,...

Jamaica's iconic bobsleigh team — which inspired the hit film Cool Runnings — will make its tenth Winter Olympics appearance at Milano Cortina 2026. Nearly four decades on from Jamaica's debut at the 1988 Calgary Olympics that inspired the cult film Cool Runnings, the Caribbean country's bobsledders are now preparing for their tenth Winter Games in Italy. At the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics, Jamaica will compete in both the women's and men's bobsleigh events between 15 and 22 February. In the women’s monobob, the green, black, and yellow flag will be worn by Mica Moore — a former Great...

U.S. Vice President JD Vance sat with influencer and boxer Jake Paul as they watched the U.S. women’s hockey team ease to a 5-0 win over Finland at the Winter Olympics on Saturday. Vance and his family entered during the intermission at the end of the first period, with the U.S. leading 1-0. Paul joined them shortly after. Paul’s fiancee Jutta Leerdam is a speedskater for the Netherlands at the Milan Cortina Games. Vance sat with his youngest child, daughter Mirabel, on his lap. Usha Vance, wearing a sweatshirt with “USA” in big letters, clapped along to Queen’s “We Will...

On a Sunday morning filled with all kinds of emotion, American Breezy Johnson won the women’s Olympic downhill race. It was the first gold medal of Johnson’s career and the first awarded to the United States at the 2026 Winter Olympics.

Meet Politico's Supervillains of the TDS Universe. Artist Natalia Delgado provided us with a rendering of the sheer villainy of a howling mad J.D. Vance, whose angry piercing gaze seems about to burn the hearts out of sensitive Georgetown liberals whose world has been turned upside down in the wake of the 2024 election.Behind Vance, staring ominously out at the world, is the spooky Big Brother hypnotic glare of the unholiest of all unholy supervillains, none other than Orange Man Bad. Who, oh who, can combat the overwhelming power of the MAGA supervillains? Fortunately, Politico reporter Gregory Svirnovskiy on Thursday...

Team GB athlete has launched a stinging attack on the ICE agency ahead of the opening ceremony at the Winter Games, urinating the words “F--- ICE” into the snow. Gus Kenworthy, a British-American model and actor, who has come out of retirement to appear for Team GB in freestyle skiing, posted the message on his Instagram account on Wednesday before confirming his methodology with a follow-up message. “My last post was pee so it only felt appropriate to follow it up with a lil’ dump... of photos from January. Yes, I’m a child,” he told his 1.2 million followers. With...

It’s not unusual for athletes to spare no effort to put themselves into position to win, but this might be taking it a bit too far. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has confirmed that it is investigating allegations that male ski jumpers at this year’s Winter Olympics in Italy might have injected hyaluronic acid into their penises in hopes of gaining a competitive advantage. How might that help an athlete in a ski jump contest? According to the German publication, Bild, which first reported the controversy in January, suggests athletes are artificially enlarging their penises before official body measurements to...

As the opening ceremony approaches, Italy says hackers linked to Russia targeted foreign ministry offices and Winter Olympics sites.Italy has thwarted "a series of cyberattacks" of "Russian origin" targeting the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, the foreign minister said Wednesday (Feb 4), as security operations ramp up with just hours to go before the opening ceremony. The attacks were "on foreign ministry offices, starting with Washington, and also some Winter Olympics sites, including hotels in Cortina", Antonio Tajani said during a trip to the US city. His office did not provide further details, nor did the International Olympic Committee (IOC) immediately respond...

The International Olympic Committee is delaying the selection of the 2030 Winter Olympics host city after discussing climate change and sustainability during its executive board meeting on Tuesday. The 2030 host city was originally scheduled to be announced after the 2023 IOC session. The executive board is giving the Future Host Commission more time to look at the preliminary results of academic research that shows a potential reduction in the number of climate-reliable hosts. A proposal to ensure climate reliability would require hosts to show average minimum temperatures of below zero degrees for snow competition venues during the Winter Games...

In 1986, the International Olympic Committee voted to split the Winter and Summer Olympics so they would alternate every two years instead of occurring together every four years. The new tradition began in 1994 with the Lillehammer Winter Olympics, site of the infamous showdown between figure skaters Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding. The IOC initiated the split schedule in part to bring greater attention to the winter events, and while this move did bring them out from the shadow of the more popular summer games, it also locked the Winter Olympics into permanent competition with an even bigger quadrennial athletic...

How convenient when a bureaucratic body has the power to switch COVID standards at the drop of a hat in order to allow it to continue moving forward and not shut down as the rest of us have been forced to do. COVID Standards around testing and quarantine rules are going from asinine and impossible to achieve to almost gone in the blink of an eye. Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced last week he was doing away with all COVID precautions from vaccine mandates to mask wearing, and instead, would rely on the judgement of its citizens to protect...

The ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee suggested Friday that China will launch an invasion of Taiwan sometime after next month’s Winter Olympics in Beijing. “I do think after the Olympics — China has gotten so provocative, so aggressive in the South China Sea, that you are going to see the CCP, the [Chinese] Communist Party invading Taiwan,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) told reporters on a conference call. McCaul argued further that resident Biden’s botched messaging on the ongoing Ukraine crisis sent a signal of weakness to America’s adversaries, which McCaul believes they will look to exploit. ......

As some sports leagues embarrass themselves with actions antithetical to American values, the National Hockey League followed the right path earlier this week.Professional hockey, which planned to pause their season for three weeks in early 2022 to accommodate players traveling to Communist China, made a bold decision by announcing this week the league will not compete in the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics.Some hockey fans may be disappointed, but they’re likely sentient enough to know it’s the right move.The “Genocide and State-Sanctioned Kidnapping Games,” as they should be called, should of course have no American presence.A noxious country that spits on...

LONDON (AP) — No U.K. government minister will attend the Beijing Winter Olympics, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced Wednesday, calling it “effectively” a diplomatic boycott. The announcement came after the White House and the Australian government confirmed diplomatic boycotts of the Winter Olympics in February to protest Chinese human rights abuses. China has vowed to react with “firm countermeasures.” When asked in the House of Commons on Wednesday whether Britain would join in the diplomatic action, Johnson said “There will be effectively a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing." “No ministers are expected to attend and no...

Beijing: China on Wednesday registered over 100 new COVID-19 infections, including nine in Beijing, which has already forced several curbs restricting its resident's travel to other parts of the country amid the new surge in infections. China's National Health Commission said on Wednesday that 93 locally transmitted COVID-19 cases and 16 new imported cases were reported on Tuesday, the highest in a single day in recent weeks. Of the new local cases, 35 were reported in the province of Heilongjiang bordering Russia, 14 in Hebei, another 14 in Gansu, nine in Beijing, six in Inner Mongolia, four each in Chongqing...

Beijing, which will host the 2022 Winter Olympics, is staging a series of test events -- giving a strong taste of what the Games will look like and what coronavirus measures will be in place.... ...Chinese officials say participants will stay in a "closed loop" -- a strict bubble insulating them from spectators and the outside world for the whole Games. Athletes will have to be fully vaccinated or undergo a 21-day quarantine on arrival in the Chinese capital... ...State media showed overseas participants landing in Beijing met by police in hazmat...

Lausanne (AFP) - The World Anti-Doping Agency on Monday banned Russia for four years from major global sporting events including the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 World Cup in Qatar over manipulated doping data, prompting an angry response from President Vladimir Putin. WADA's executive committee, meeting in Lausanne, handed Russia the "robust" four-year suspension after accusing Moscow of falsifying data from a doping testing laboratory that was handed over to investigators earlier this year. The toughest ever sanctions imposed on Russian state authorities will see government officials barred from attending any major events, while the country will lose the...

Yes, this is an odd time to be talking about the Olympic Games, since we’re sort of in the middle of a cycle. But it’s worth pointing out that the 2022 Winter Olympics are out there on the horizon and they’re going to be in Beijing. (Technically in a bunch of places across China, but that’s the center.) It’s something I look forward to because I really enjoy watching the curling. But wait, you might be thinking. Didn’t China just host the games pretty recently? Yes, they did. They hosted the Summer Olympics in 2008 and put on one...