New sports and athletes to watch at the Milano-Cortina Olympics

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The countdown to the 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympic Games has begun. And after another European city’s post-pandemic Olympics success, expectations are high for the upcoming cold season event. 

Although there are still some kinks to iron out — cough, hockey rink, cough — athletes are gearing up for a nail-biting two weeks with new events and changed formats. 

We decided to round up a few of the alterations being made to the Winter Olympics in the fashionable city of Milan and pretty mountains of Cortina d’Ampezzo. Here’s some of what you can expect. 

Ski mountaineering and other new events 

There are eight new medal events coming to the 2026 Milano-Cortina Games, three of which make up a whole new discipline: ski mountaineering. The sport is considered an endurance one in which athletes climb uphill, often on skis with special skins, and then race back down on skis. The 2026 program at the Stelvio Ski Centre in Bormio includes women’s and men’s sprint races and a mixed-gender relay. 

Also entering the Games this year are dual moguls in freestyle skiing, pitting two skiers in a head-to-head race on parallel courses where judges decide whose performance they prefer. Other additions to existing disciplines include women’s doubles in luge, women’s large hill ski jumping, a mixed team skeleton event and a team combined alpine skiing event.

Cross-country skiing distances and Nordic combined

The International Olympics Committee (IOC) has said the 2026 Games would be the most “gender-balanced” in Olympic Winter Games history, with women making up 47 per cent of competing athletes this year. 

But there’s still one notable discipline where women aren’t competing: Nordic combined, a sport that features cross-country skiing and ski jumping. 

Anna Malacinski, a 24-year-old athlete, has spoken out against the exclusion of women in her sport, noting she would be attending the Olympics to watch her brother compete in the discipline. 

“I ski jump the same jumps; I cross-country ski the same courses. I put the same amount of love into this sport yet because I am a woman I don’t have the opportunity to fulfil my dreams,” Malacinski said on TikTok, calling on people to watch Nordic combined men’s to encourage viewership of the sport in the hope that women will be included in 2030. 

“Unfortunately, we’re living in a world where it’s about politics and money, and how much the IOC can make off of you,” she said. 

What to expect in hockey 

A lot of ink has already been spilled about the hockey rink being built in the Milan suburb of Santa Giulia. 

Emphasis on “being built.” Final touches are still being put on the Santa Giulia PalaItalia Ice Hockey Rink, which is expected to be completed on Feb. 5, a day before the opening ceremony, Alessandro Giungi, a Milan city councillor and the head of the city’s Olympic committee, told the New York Times earlier this month. 

The delays in construction have received special attention because it’s the first time in a dozen years that NHL players will participate in the Winter Olympics and league officials have expressed dismay at the handling of the rinks, their size and ice-quality concerns.

Overall, the tournament’s structure hasn’t changed much from recent Winter Games, in which teams are divided into groups for preliminaries that get whittled down through quarterfinals, semifinals and then bronze and gold medal games.

Neckguards will be mandatory for all players, after the rule was introduced by the International Ice Hockey Federation in response to the 2023 death of Adam Johnson, an American hockey player competing in England.

Heated Rivalry and Mariah Carey at opening ceremony

Speaking of hockey, the stars of the steamy Canadian series Heated Rivalry, Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, will combine fire and ice at the opening ceremony when they will be among the torchbearers carrying the Olympic flame. 

Oh, and speaking of icons to the queer community, Mariah Carey has been confirmed to be performing at the opening ceremony.

Debuts and comebacks

Among other noteworthy appearances at Milano-Cortina are 17-year-old alpine skier Tallulah Proulx, the first and youngest female athlete from the Philippines to obtain a spot at the Winter Olympic Games, and the legendary Lindsey Vonn, who is returning to alpine skiing at 41 after undergoing partial knee replacement surgery in 2024 and stepping away from the sport in 2019.

Freestyle skier Gus Kenworthy is also returning to the Games. In a recent interview with the New Yorker, Kenworthy reflected on his time as a gay athlete before coming out in 2015 and how Heated Rivalry resonated with his own experience.