Time has never seemed to stop the US skiing star. Entering Sunday’s Olympic downhill medal race, injuries haven’t either

It was all going a little too easy for Lindsey Vonn. All the nervous apprehension, the paternalistic concern, the arch skepticism and hushed snickers that had rippled through the sports world when she announced her comeback from a six-year retirement had long since gone silent. A once-unthinkable fairytale ending at the age of 41 on the slopes of Cortina d’Ampezzo was practically within touching distance.

Back in November 2024, having been chased from the sport in 2019 by a battered right knee worn down by a string of gruesome crashes and multiple surgeries, Vonn proposed a return to a high-risk sport where no woman had ever won a race past the age of 34. There’s a history of comebacks like these going brutally wrong, and even Vonn’s most dedicated fans were bracing themselves for the worst. Think a shopworn Joe Louis getting battered through the ropes and on to the ring apron by Rocky Marciano. Or Björn Borg returning to the tour in the early 90s with a wooden racket, defiantly flailing through a sport that had moved on without him.

The showpiece to kick off the Games happened across multiple venues but politics and protests were also present

The most striking thing about the opening ceremony isn’t a single prop, celebrity cameo or piece of choreography: it’s the geography. For the first time, an Olympic opening ceremony in effect happened across multiple live venues all at once, with Milan, Cortina, Livigno and Predazzo linked into one narrative structure. It felt less like a show in a stadium and more like watching a country perform itself in real time. The organising concept – “Armonia”, the idea that different elements can move together without losing their identity – isn’t just branding. It shapes how the ceremony actually functioned. Sitting in San Siro, you’re constantly aware that somewhere else, at that exact moment, another piece of the story is unfolding. It created a strange sense of scale: intimate and enormous at once. In an era when global attention is fragmented across screens and platforms, Italy staged the opposite – a ceremony built on simultaneity, connection and shared rhythm.