Key events
Here’s Bryan on the opening ceremony and the crowd disapproval of one of America’s widely loathed regime. “Information asymmetry” is quite the phrase.
If you didn’t catch Day 1 in pictures, do yourself a favour. There are some tremendous snappers out on the slopes. (Not the fish.)
If you want to get more summaries than I can give you, get hold of The Briefing, which is our daily Olympic mailer.
What to look out for today
Times are all in local time in Milan and Cortina. For Sydney it is +10 hours, for London it is -1 hour, for New York it is -6 hours and San Francisco it is -9 hours.
Snowboard: The women’s and men’s giant slalom elimination runs are on now. Then from at about 1pm the women’s quarter finals, 2:12pm the women’s semis, at 2:19pm the men’s semis, and at 2:26pm the women’s final, with 2:36pm the men’s final. Later, at 7:30 pm, we’ll have the women’s Big Air qualifiers. Get on up.
Curling – 10:05am, 2:35pm, 7:05pm: The first mixed doubles matches are the ones underway now, Czechia v Norway and Estonia v Korea, then later on it will be Canada v Sweden and Great Britain v Switzerland. The Brits are already through, mind you, unbeaten from seven games played so far. They just have today’s match and one against Italy to go, which will happen in the latest round tonight, as well as Sweden v USA, Switzerland v Norway, and Canada v Korea.
Alpine skiiing – 11:30am: A 36-entrant field for the women’s final, but much of the attention will be on American veteran Lindsey Vonn, racing on a damaged ACL – a knee ligament, which you would think you need to ski. Apparently not.
Cross-country – 12:30pm: This is the men’s 10×10 skiathlon event, the one where they switch ski styles halfway through.
Biathlon – 2:05pm: Two women, two men, six kilometres each, plus both styles of shooting, which means standing and lying down for a rest. That’s the relay.
Speed skating – 4pm: The men’s 5000 metres final, when they go round and round and round and round and round and round…
Ice hockey – 4:40pm and 9:10pm: Group games for the women between France and Sweden in the early match, and Czechia against Finland in the latter.
Luge – 6:34pm: This will be the fourth and final luge run for the men, which will decide the winner. They had two runs yesterday, Germany’s Max Langenhan is the current leader.
Figure skating – 7:30pm, 8:45pm, 9:55pm: This will be a flurry of creativity. It’s the final stretch of the team event, where national teams combine scores across a team doing all four skating events. We’ve already had the ice dance, so today it will be the pairs first, then the women solo, then the men.
Preamble
Hello, friends and rivals, Italy enthusiasts and snow bunnies. We’re about to embark on the second day of the Winter Olympics 2026, and it’s an exercise in contrast, with the first few medals already lodged in the tally from some ski, skate, and snowboard events, and about eight million curling matches yet to play before reaching the business end there.
What’s up for grabs today? These are the medal events.
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Alpine skiing: the Women’s Downhill event, after the men’s yesterday.
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Cross-country skiiing: Men’s 10km+10km skiathlon
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Biathlon: Mixed replay 4x6km
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Snowboard: Women’s Parallel Giant Slalom
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Snowboard: Men’s Parallel Giant Slalom
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Speed Skating: Men’s 5000m
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Luge: Men’s Singles
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Figure Skating: Team Event – Men’s Single Skating
It’s going to be a busy one, building up from a relatively quiet start to a big finish. Right now we’ve got the women’s giant slalom boarding qualification runs going, and a couple of curling matches in the mixed doubles round robin.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/live/2026/feb/08/winter-olympics-2026-womens-downhill-snowboarding-luge-speed-skating-live
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