2026 Winter Olympics begin with little fanfare

The 2026 Winter Olympics opened, with a surprising lack of international fury.

The International Olympic Committee has “managed to disappoint almost everyone without enraging anyone,” an analyst argued in Foreign Policy: Five Russian athletes will compete under a neutral flag, a compromise which satisfied no one but did not annoy anybody so much that they stormed off.

Even the venue is a compromise — distributed across 8,500 square miles of northern Italy, “an admission that no single city wants to shoulder the whole financial burden any more,” with viewership of the winter games in decline for years and their soft-power value weakening. Still, Flagship’s London-based team thinks they are off to a good start: Britain beat Estonia in the curling.