From Day One, the Milan Cortina Olympics Are Already As Bizarre As Ever

From reports of a crotch-size manipulation scandal in ski jumping to a Mariah Carey performance, the 2026 Winter Games are off to a peculiar start.

Despite having no connection to Italy, Mariah Carey sang at the Milan Cortina Olympics opening ceremony. | Geoff Burke-Imagn Images

MILAN — Welcome to the 2026 Winter Olympics. We are already one male-enhancement scandal into this thing.

We will get to that in a moment. First, a round of applause for Italy, which excelled at any host nation’s first task: convincing the world it was not ready to host the Olympics. In the old days, when budgets were larger, cities accomplished this in epic fashion. They would run way behind schedule, or act like they changed their mind and wouldn’t build anything after all. Sometimes the entire economy would collapse.

Italy had to get creative. As you might know, the NHL decided to send its players to the Olympics for the first time since 2014, which should add some juice to the tournament. Italy responded with an elaborate plan of pretending nobody in the country owned a ruler. The Olympic ice rinks are smaller than the agreed-upon specifications. Now, they are only around three feet smaller, but as any ski jumper allegedly with an artificially extended penis can tell you, a few inches can make a big difference.

We should say up front here that this is only a rumor, and the International Ski and Snowboard Federation says there is no evidence for it. But it is a rumor we are personally desperate to believe, so here goes: There are concerns that ski jumpers might be injecting their penises with hyaluronic acid, a substance found in cosmetic fillers, in order to jump farther. In related news, the new gold medal favorite is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

The reason a ski jumper would do this, as you probably know, is that a larger protrusion would mean a looser suit, which would help the jumpers catch a nice gust of wind and fly to the nearest brothel.

To understand the ramifications: Imagine that you went to your local park to fly a small kite, and your neighbor went to the same park to fly a much larger kite. What would happen? Obviously, neither kite would get off the ground, because no kite ever has, and your neighbor’s kite would take up much more storage space. That would give you an unfair advantage, right? The same principle applies here.

Now, back to Italy: Milan’s rinks appear to be built, more or less, which should be a relief to Olympic hockey players, except for the Finnish women, who have been locked in their hotel bathrooms since Wednesday with a norovirus outbreak. The Finns might have had to forfeit their first game, against Canada, but in a show of common sense and decency that cannot possibly be repeated, the IOC postponed the game until Feb. 12, by which point the Finnish women should be healthy enough to lose to Canada.

The rink at Milan’s Santagiulia Arena was supposed to meet NHL standards, but ended up more than three feet short. | Amber Searls-Imagn Images

Or … well, who knows? Maybe the Finns will pull off the second-greatest upset in Olympic hockey history.

“Nothing is impossible at all,” Mariah Carey sang Friday, though not, technically, in direct response to that sentence.

Italy gave Carey an early and prominent role in the opening ceremony. She sang in both English and Italian. Carey, of course, was born and raised on Long Island, but the Italian Olympic committee wanted to make a bold statement: Mariah Carey can sing. You might recall that at the last opening ceremony, in Paris in 2024, the French Olympic committee gave a prominent role to Carl Lewis, who is also American, though thankfully, the French did not let him sing. Meanwhile, back in the United States, some woefully insecure people feel threatened because a Puerto Rican will sing in Spanish at the Super Bowl. 

That, however, is America’s problem. Italy’s party is just getting started. At the opening ceremony in San Siro stadium, the stadium announcer touted these as the first widespread Olympics, which is a nice way of saying the mountain venues are roughly 43,000 miles away from Milan—and each other. The official slogan of these Games is “IT’s Your Vibe,” proving that Italy has also nailed the second task for any host nation: having a stupid slogan. Personally, I would have gone with “There Are Like Six Pastry Shops on Every Block and by the Time You Leave Here You Will Be Roughly the Size of Luxembourg.” But that’s just me.

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