Just days before the world\u2019s best skiers, skaters, and snowboarders descend on northern Italy, the 2026 Winter Olympics have achieved something remarkable: They\u2019ve managed to disappoint almost everyone without enraging anyone. In an age when every major sporting event seems to provoke either a boycott or accusations of sportswashing<\/a>, Milan Cortina has slipped through the cracks of our outrage machinery.<\/p>\n Call it the Compromise Olympics.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Just days before the world\u2019s best skiers, skaters, and snowboarders descend on northern Italy, the 2026 Winter Olympics have achieved something remarkable: They\u2019ve managed to disappoint almost everyone without enraging anyone. In an age when every major sporting event seems to provoke either a boycott or accusations of sportswashing<\/a>, Milan Cortina has slipped through the cracks of our outrage machinery.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Call it the Compromise Olympics.<\/p>\n The numbers tell the story. Five Russian athletes have been approved to compete<\/a>\u2014not as Russians but as \u201cindividual neutral athletes.\u201d They\u2019ll wear no flag, sing no anthem, and won\u2019t march in the opening ceremony. Ukraine has protested<\/a> that even this is too much, documenting alleged connections between approved athletes and Moscow\u2019s war effort. Russia, meanwhile, treats the whole arrangement as an insult to national pride. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) insists it\u2019s threading the needle perfectly.<\/p>\n Everyone is a little bit angry, which means everyone gets to pretend they\u2019ve won.<\/p>\n This was not how things went down in 1980. When President Jimmy Carter announced that the United States would boycott the Moscow Olympics over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he didn\u2019t offer Benn Fields\u2014to take but one example\u2014the chance to compete under a neutral flag. The high jumper, then at the peak of his powers<\/a>, never had another chance to try for Olympic gold.<\/p>\n Representatives of the U.S. Olympic Committee\u2019s Athletes Advisory Council\u2014from left, Larry Hough, Anita DeFrantz, and Fred Newhouse\u2014speak to reporters at the White House after meeting with Carter administration officials on April 3, 1980. They said they held little hope that President Jimmy Carter would alter his position on the boycott of the Olympics in Moscow. Bettmann Archive\/Getty Images<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Athletes on both sides saw their dreams vaporized for a geopolitical point that, as then-IOC President Thomas Bach\u2014who lost his chance to fence in Moscow for West Germany\u2014noted<\/a> in 2020, \u201cserves nothing.\u201d The boycott hurt athletes. It hurt the population. Four years later, the Soviets returned the favor in Los Angeles. The Olympics, it seemed, were circling the drain.<\/p>\n But here we are in 2026, and the Games endure. Neutered, perhaps. Diminished, certainly. But surviving nonetheless, on a diet of careful accommodations that would have been unthinkable a generation ago.<\/p>\n The host tells its own story of compromise. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni\u2019s government represents the first time since Benito Mussolini<\/a> that a party with fascist roots has led Italy. Her Brothers of Italy party still sports that tricolor flame on its logo\u2014the one that makes historians\u2019 eyes narrow. There\u2019s a certain irony in a far-right government hosting an event meant to celebrate international brotherhood.<\/p>\n Except Meloni has proved remarkably adept at compromise herself. She backs Ukraine. She works with Brussels. She takes U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s calls and Chinese President Xi Jinping\u2019s money. The Olympics offer her something even better than legitimacy\u2014they offer her the appearance of normalcy. A successful Games won\u2019t change anyone\u2019s mind about her party\u2019s roots, but they might make those roots seem less relevant.<\/p>\n Which brings us to the climate compromise.<\/p>\n When Cortina last hosted the Winter Olympics in 1956, organizers used zero artificial snow. Instead, the Italian army trucked natural snow down from the Dolomites. This year, Italy will manufacture 2.4 million cubic meters<\/a> of the stuff. TechnoAlpin\u2019s SnowFactory will pump out artificial precipitation even when temperatures hover above freezing.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n \n \tBut a green sports movement is pushing for change, eager to see if Paris will be different. \t <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n <\/a><\/p>\n \n \tThe Italian prime minister is proudly defending her party\u2019s extremist predecessor by falsely claiming they were never fascists. \t <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n <\/a><\/p>\n \n \tFrom friendshoring to sportswashing, here are six new terms that entered foreign-policy discourse in 2022. \t <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n <\/p>\n The math is brutal. This year\u2019s Games will require 250 million gallons of water<\/a>, taken from newly built reservoirs that environmental scientists say alter local ecosystems. As climate change worsens, the number of cities capable of hosting the Winter Olympics without massive infrastructure spending and environmental vandalism shrinks every cycle. Switzerland for 2038, if we\u2019re lucky. After that, who knows? Anchorage? Nuuk?<\/p>\n The IOC\u2019s response has been to congratulate itself. Milan Cortina will use 85 percent existing facilities<\/a>, the committee notes\u2014a sustainability triumph! The organizers call it a \u201cmore sustainable future<\/a>.\u201d What they mean is: We\u2019ve figured out how to keep the party going a few more cycles before the climate sends us a bill we can\u2019t pay.<\/p>\n This is compromise as a survival tactic. The Winter Olympics can\u2019t solve climate change, so the IOC is performing climate consciousness while pumping millions of gallons of water through snow machines. It\u2019s the geopolitical equivalent of ordering a Diet Coke with your double cheeseburger.<\/p>\n Cannons blow artificial snow near buildings in Livigno, Italy, on Jan. 9 ahead of the 2026 Olympic Games. Yara Nardi\/Reuters<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Even the geography screams compromise. These will be the most distributed Winter Olympics in history<\/a>, spread across 8,500 square miles of northern Italy. Events scattered from Milan\u2019s new hockey arena to Antholz near the Austrian border, from the Dolomites to the Valtellina valley. The IOC calls it \u201cregional development.\u201d What it really is: an admission that no single city wants to shoulder the whole financial burden anymore.<\/p>\n But here\u2019s the trouble with compromise: It rarely makes for compelling television. The five Russian athletes competing under no flag satisfy no one\u2014not Ukraine, which protests their presence; not Russia, which treats neutral status as an insult; and certainly not the viewers, who watch an awkward pantomime where medalists stand silent during what should be their national anthem. It\u2019s the geopolitical equivalent of mediocre dinner theater; everyone pretends something meaningful is happening while we all know it isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n The same goes for the environmental theater. When you\u2019re staging snowfall in the Alps, you\u2019re not hosting a Winter Olympics\u2014you\u2019re hosting a requiem for winter itself. Young viewers especially notice this dissonance. U.S. Gen Z viewership for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing crashed\u00a036 percent<\/a> from the previous Summer Games in Tokyo\u2014a steeper decline than any other generation, even among expected drops. Perhaps they\u2019re less willing to pretend that business-as-usual is sustainable when the \u201cbusiness\u201d requires manufacturing 2.4 million cubic meters of snow in a warming world. Or perhaps they\u2019ve simply figured out that watching highlight clips on TikTok beats sitting through NBC\u2019s tape-delayed pageantry. Either way, the compromises that allow these Games to happen are the same compromises making them harder to care about.<\/p>\n The Olympics have always been about more than sport, of course. They\u2019re soft-power projection and national branding played out on snow and ice. What has changed is the honesty of the exchange. Today, the Olympics are just one of many sporting events to embrace sportswashing. Qatar spent $300 billion<\/a> on a World Cup, calculating that the positive public relations would outweigh the slave labor accusations. Saudi Arabia pays Cristiano Ronaldo $400 million<\/a> to play soccer, and everyone shrugs. We know the game now. We\u2019ve seen the playbook.<\/p>\n Demonstrators protest against sportswashing and the participation of Israel in the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, on Jan. 11.Elisa Marchina\/NurPhoto\/Retuers<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Milan Cortina represents the evolution of that understanding. These Olympics won\u2019t whitewash Italy\u2019s political drift rightward. They won\u2019t make anyone forget Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine. They won\u2019t reverse climate change or restore the Winter Games to environmental viability. They\u2019ll simply happen, and we\u2019ll simply watch, and everyone will walk away having preserved exactly as much as they needed to.<\/p>\n The Russian athletes will compete without a flag and tell themselves they struck a blow against discrimination. Ukraine will protest their presence and claim moral victory. Meloni will smile for the cameras and bank the prestige. Climate activists will point to the snow machines, and the IOC will point to the reused venues, and both will be right.<\/p>\n This is what compromise looks like in 2026: Nobody\u2019s happy, but everyone gets through it.<\/p>\n Maybe that\u2019s enough. The 1980 boycott achieved nothing except breaking hearts. The Beijing 2022 criticism changed nothing except making Xi briefly annoyed. If the choice is between righteous confrontation that hurts athletes and cynical accommodation that lets the show go on, perhaps accommodation is the adult choice.<\/p>\n An activist protests against Beijing\u2019s hosting of the 2022 Winter Olympics outside the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles on Feb. 3, 2022. FREDERIC J. BROWN\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Or perhaps we\u2019re just tired. Tired of manufacturing outrage for events that come and go in 17 days. Tired of pretending sports can solve problems that governments can\u2019t. Tired of expecting the Olympics to be anything more than what they\u2019ve always been: a brief, beautiful, and ultimately meaningless truce in the endless noise of geopolitics.<\/p>\n The Milan Cortina Games won\u2019t inspire the way we pretend the Olympics should. They won\u2019t unite the world or transcend politics or prove that sport can conquer all. They\u2019ll simply be the Olympics of our age: compromised and compromising.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll watch the downhill runs and the figure skating. We\u2019ll marvel at human excellence on ice and snow. And then we\u2019ll move on, having changed nothing and preserved everything.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the deal we\u2019ve struck. That\u2019s the compromise we\u2019ve chosen.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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