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Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
Michael Rosenberg

From Day 1, the Milan Cortina Olympics Are Already As Bizarre As Ever

MILAN — Welcome to the 2026 Winter Olympics. We are already one male-enhancement scandal into this thing.

We will get to that in a moment. First, a round of applause for Italy, which excelled at any host nation’s first task: convincing the world it was not ready to host the Olympics. In the old days, when budgets were larger, cities accomplished this in epic fashion. They would run way behind schedule, or act like they changed their mind and wouldn’t build anything after all. Sometimes the entire economy would collapse.

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