Seeing all these huge teams come to little Bodo is amazing but, of all of them, I like least to lose to Tromso. It is a rivalry as curious as it is passionately contested, with the two clubs lying some 300 miles apart, such is the vastness of the Norwegian north.
Bodø/Glimt were already admired for their ascent through the Norwegian system-returning to the top flight only in 2017 and winning four league titles in the years that followed. But their leap into the Champions League spotlight this season has been extraordinary. As tournament debutants, they arrived with curiosity surrounding them-but they quickly replaced intrigue with astonishment.
Norway tallied a record 41 medals, 8 more than the second-place Americans, who have a population over 60 times that of Norway. Norway's 18 gold medals at the 2026 games were also a record, with 6 of these golds coming from cross-country skier Johannes Høsflot Klæbo.
Having settled on where to ski in Norway, I found myself packing up the Kvikk Lunsj wafers and sweet brown brunost cheese sandwiches at the glassy Juvet Landscape Hotel, deep in the Sunnmøre Alps. Then the slow ascent, with skins on our splitboard skis, up to the peak at Mefjellet: torturous in some ways, looking at all that glinting Care Bear snow all the way up, but also a deliciously tantric act of meditation and delayed gratification.
Jorrit Bergsma, the mullet-wearing 40-year-old speed skating legend from the Netherlands, won the men's mass start on Saturday afternoon for his second medal of the Milano Cortina Games and his first Olympic gold since 2014. Bergsma crossed first in 7:55.50, ahead of Viktor Hald Thorup of Denmark and Andrea Giovannini of Italy, denying American star Jordan Stolz in his bid to become the first man in 32 years to win three long-track speed skating golds at a single Olympics.
"I feel heartbroken about what's happen[ing] in the United States," Chris Lillis said. "I think that as a country we need to focus on respecting everybody's rights and making sure that we're treating our citizens as well as anybody with love and respect." "It's definitely a tough time in our country right now," commented Svea Irving. "I just continue to represent my values, compassion and love and respect for others."
Can you remember the last time a bronze medalist became the big story out of an Olympic event? Here's one for you: During his post-race interview, Norway's Sturla Holm Lægreid didn't talk about the run he'd completed, which earned him the bronze medal in men's biathlon. Instead, he chose to tell the world about how he cheated on his ex-girlfriend.
The pants have achieved cult status in curling circles, with a Facebook page titled The Norwegian Olympic Curling Team's Pants boasting more than 360,000 followers. Asked what it was about the pants that captivated fans, Ramsfjell said: It's something about curling being a bit silly, and then people showing up looking a bit silly. I feel like it's a perfect synergy.
I cannot tell any trick that anyone on skis or a snowboard does from any other trick that anyone else does; I have to take Johnny Weir's word for what is an axel vs. what is a salchow; and watching ski jumping is like looking at a painting. For one, he's up there, while his competitors are back there, but more relevant to our purposes, he can pound out the pace on skis in a way that nobody else can.
This ski cross race at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics started out pretty normal, but it ended with one of the most dramatic photo finishes in sport history, let alone ski racing history. The race was the men's ski cross quarter-final. The top two finishers would continue to the semi-final, and it looked like Swedish skier Victor Oehling Norberg and Russian skier Egor Korotkov had it locked down heading into the final jump.
The sun rises late in Cortina d'Ampezzo, like everything else in this little alpine town. It's gone eight o'clock in the morning by the time the daylight has made it over the high peaks to the east, and it's another two hours from that before the Olympic day gets under way. It's slow out, as if everyone's still sleeping off the night before, when the town was out cheering for the athletes as they made their parade around the square.
Brad Stulberg took to Instagram to share that the country's approach to youth sports could be part of the reason why. Obviously Norway and winter sports kind of go hand-in-hand, but Stulberg points out that the country does things a lot differently than countries like America or Canada, where youth sports often feel more like minor league tryouts than kids learning sportsmanship, athleticism, and skills.
"Ask a child to draw a snowboarder, and there's a good chance they'd come up with something that looks a lot like Halldór Helgason. He's the archetypal shredder: baggy pants, oversized hoody, scruffy hair poking out the beanie, splashes of neon from head to toe. Tattoos and 'tache accompanied by a heavy soundtrack" (Rob McCreath, WL Issue 122) Halldór has defined what it means to be a snowboarder for almost two decades.
