From unlikely winners to illness, The Globe’s Olympic team shares its highs and lows of Milan Cortina

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The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics were a sprawling endeavour, the most spread out Games ever held. From a results standpoint, Canada’s 21 medals – five gold, seven silver, nine bronze – mark our lowest output since the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City (17). There were still many notable performances, both good and bad, plus an unforeseen curling scandal that ensnared both the men’s and women’s teams. The Globe’s team of Olympic reporters saw it all. Here are their highs and lows from these Games.

High

As the reporter covering men’s and women’s hockey, I didn’t see much of the Olympics outside those two rinks, but the games were spectacular. The schedule was non-stop and often overlapped. It’s odd to nominate a transit system for MVP, but the No. 27 tram from Duomo to Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena is the Connor McDavid of public transit: It always shows up.

Inside the rinks, which is what really matters, the intensity and pace of play was the high point. The hockey world waited 12 years for best-on-best. Yes, Canada’s games were tense, near-misses at times, for the men and women. But every great hockey tournament has been that way. Gretzky to Lemieux in ‘87 wasn’t an insurance goal into an empty net. And Henderson in ‘72 didn’t salt the game away in the first period for an easy win. Like everyone’s messy best friend, I crave the drama.

Seeing McDavid somehow find another level, and the emergence of Macklin Celebrini as the future of Canadian hockey was something to behold.

Bonus high point: Talking to the players every day, you quickly realize many are not who they are on the ice. Sam Bennett is actually quite relaxed. Brandon Hagel is good for a comedic quote. And possibly the most insightful, well-spoken player on Canada’s roster was Tom Wilson. I always knew him as Ovechkin’s high-scoring, fast-skating hit man. But the guy can break down the game as good or better than any of them.

Low

Watching Sidney Crosby get pancaked by Radko Gudas in the quarter-final against Czechia and Marie-Philip Poulin get buckled in the women’s preliminary round game against Finland were the lows. They were the kind of plays that give you that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach.

As a journalist, you’re careful not to have a rooting stake (though that memo clearly didn’t make its way to the American I saw in the press box at one game with their face painted. Seriously). But when you see the two Canadian captains go down with serious injuries, you worry that best-on-best is actually not going to be best-on-best if core players are out.

Poulin was never the same and Crosby missed several games. The play that injured Poulin was penalized, but did not appear to have malice. The hit by Gudas was dirty, but not necessarily an infraction. He saw the chance to land on Crosby with his full body weight after a hit and clearly took it. He’s known for being that kind of guy in the NHL. Canada’s put players out of games in international hockey in similar ways. It just came back around.

Watching Crosby’s father, never a guy who likes to cause a scene, shout with anger from the stands and his mom sit with silent worry was interesting. In that moment, they looked like any hockey parent in any rink in any city. It didn’t matter who their son was.

Bonus low: The Olympics, being big business, are also a corporate, consumer frenzy. Seeing people line up for Aperol Spritz’s at Starbucks, and McDonald’s serve Tiramisu with fries wasn’t exactly the majestic old-world Italy Rick Steves talks about. I’ll let you decide if those two things are a high or a low, but know this: I will fight a Tkachuk if anyone says anything bad about McTiramisu. It’s shockingly good.

Grant Robertson, reporter

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High

I covered the sports in Cortina d’Ampezzo, and my favourite part of these Olympics was the simple beauty of this ski resort town in the heart of the Dolomites.

The eye-popping mountains and tall pines appear dusted in powdered sugar, like a scene from a Christmas snow globe.

The town has rustic wood homes, inns and shops, and upscale hotels, stylishly appointed with white lights. Blue and white flags are pinned to balconies, reading “Cortina 1956 2026 Host City”, a nod to its rebirth as Winter Games presenter, 70 years after the first time.

The ski hills are dotted in spotlights, the Olympic sliding centre lit like an oversized glowing serpent stretching down the mountain.

Shop windows are full of expensive ski wear. Patrons, from those on ski holiday, to fans, journalists and Olympians sit on winter patios, over wine and pasta.

It’s easy to understand why they shot a James Bond film here, and Hollywood elite like Sophia Loren made it a winter favourite. I tried endlessly to capture photos, but my phone could not do the arresting mountain scenery justice.

Low

It’s tough to hear athletes discuss heartbreak and disappointment. After training for four years, it must be heavy to leave the Olympics with regrets.

I heard it from Valérie Grenier after the women’s downhill race, where she adjusted the hand strap on her ski pole at the last second and was disqualified after leaving the exit gate late. Also, when she skied outside the blue lines in the Super-G or fell short of her own expectations in the Giant Slalom.

Bobsledder Cynthia Appiah cried in our interview after her sled hit the wall in corner two during a run in the monobob event and ping-ponged down the track a while before she regained control of it, costing her valuable time and spots on the leaderboard.

Jocelyn Peterman couldn’t stop the tears after missing the playoffs in mixed doubles curling but she put it eloquently:

“There’s a lot of disappointment and hurt,” she said. “I hope when that’s not as fresh, that we can be proud of how we fought.”

Rachel Brady, reporter

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High

Watching Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier lay down the skate of their lives to snag the bronze medal in ice dance is the moment that will define this Olympics for me.

Without getting super deep in the weeds on figure skating politics, this was not the outcome that the Skating Gods had been prepping us for. Despite being consistently ranked second in the world in recent years, the longtime duo were being ranked fourth in recent competitions – including in the team event at the start of the Games. In figure skating – rightly or wrongly – these types of narratives matter and the only antidote is perfection.

In their free program, Gilles and Poirier were perfect. Their moving Vincent routine was top-to-bottom flawless. In fact, many in the skating world think they had the free dance of the night. They certainly had the biggest reactions from the crowd.

Honourable mention highs: Watching Canada’s Stephen Gogolev almost medal at his first Olympics when absolutely no one thought that might happen; seeing Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps become Olympians after a fluke injury right before the Games made it look like this might not happen, and seeing short track speed skating in person. This sport is bonkers and Courtney Sarault is a gladiator.

Lows

I drink a lot of coffee, including well into the evening. I could have an espresso before bed and it would not impact my sleep. And in Italy, every corner has a barista offering delicious €2 cappuccinos. I was in heaven my first few days until someone informed me it’s very gauche to order cappuccinos after noon. I ordered them anyway … but I knew I was being judged.

Robyn Doolittle, reporter

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High

It was possible, though far from certain, that Canadian freestyle superstar Mikaël Kingsbury – superstar in the global sense – would win gold in Milan Cortina. He was 33 – ancient for a freestyler – and the competition from younger rivals, notably Japan’s Ikuma Horishima, was ferocious.

Kingsbury won silver in the single moguls, a total letdown for the man from Deux-Montagnes, Que., who had scored three medals, one of them gold, in three previous Games.

The dual moguls would present him with one last chance to end his Olympic career in a blaze of glory. Bang! He won gold. I was there. He and all the Canadians in the audience, myself included, beamed with pride when the medal was draped around his neck and the Maple Leaf hoisted as the Canadian national anthem blared.

But that itself was not my favourite moment of the Olympics; it would come minutes later, when Kingsbury bounded over to greet his family members and best friends – about 20 of them. Hugs, kisses, cheers and tears all around; tender and loving for everyone. I resisted my journalistic instinct to rush over with my notebook. Their magic moment did not need an interloper.

Lows

Allow me two of them, please. The first low is that the Milan Cortina Games did not feel like a proper Olympics to me (I have covered three since 2012). They felt more like individual World Cups because they were scattered all over the northern Italian map – nine Olympic sites in total – some of them hours apart. Since the mountain competition venues were not focused on one or two spots, nor were the crowds or the buzz that goes with them.

Bormio, the host town for the men’s alpine races, where I was based, lacked energy on most days. My other complaint was the food. At the Olympic sites themselves, the grub was expensive and bland – a missed opportunity for Italy to project soft cultural power to a global audience.

The Italian Olympic organizers filled the sites with concessions that generally pursued an unwrap-it-and-heat-it model, part of the woeful trend to make the Olympics more commercial. But the cuisine in the restaurants beyond the Olympic sites was delicious, especially the mountain beef.

Eric Reguly, reporter

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High

In Milan, for most of the Olympic fortnight, you wouldn’t have known there was a Games going on. If you’d heard something about it, you might have thought it was happening at the Duomo - the spot with the city’s biggest line-ups.

However, inside the venues, it was rocking. I’m not talking Sunday afternoon at a baseball game rocking. I’m talking Neil Young rocking.

During breaks in play, everybody – young, old, men, women, children, stoats – was up and dancing. At the women’s hockey venue, the MC had a bit where he’d sing Volare and everybody would sing along. It killed every time. At long track, they would crowd source John Denver’s Country Road with a techno remix. And if mascots Tina or Milo showed up? Forget it. Total pandemonium.

An Olympics lives on its atmosphere. The city of Milan is a little too cool to provide much of that on the streets. But the people who showed up to cheer the athletes were determined to have the most fun possible.

Low

The marquee events – big hockey games and figure skating – started late and went late. Some nights, figure skating didn’t end until well after midnight. This is in a country used to soccer games kicking off in the early afternoon.

It’s not hard to figure out why – NBC. Starting events well into the Italian evening made them more accessible to U.S. TV audiences.

Part of the charm of an iconic sports event is waking up at strange hours to watch it. I can remember dragging myself from bed as far as the couch to spend the first few mornings of summer holidays watching Wimbledon. But nowadays, the whole world is expected to run on U.S. east coast time.

The effect on the ground in Milan was robbing the venues of any exterior buzz. Because who’s going to schlep out to the far-flung places where the sports were held here so that they can stand around in the dark of winter? Who’s taking the kids to a viewing party that kicks off at 9 p.m.?

The Olympics is a daytime thing – local daytime. If that doesn’t suit New York, they can go back to watching it in replays.

Cathal Kelly, columnist

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High

Watching Laurent Dubreuil win bronze was a reminder of the sacrifice that goes into this for a majority of the Canadian athletes here, who combined probably earn less for their efforts than the top line of the men’s hockey team. Dubreuil clearly does not do it for the money.

He’s paying his own way to the World Championships next month in the Netherlands, where he will be crashing with friends. There are Dubreuils on every podium at these games.

It is corny, but there is something pure about the love of sport, intensity of competition and civic pride on display at the Olympics. It almost makes you forget about all the suffocating consumerism, sport-washing and cheating that bubbles up from beneath the surface of every Games ... almost.

Low

I ran into something of a bug halfway through the games that flatlined me. I was laid up in my hotel room for two days and could only watch the games from a screen. It was inevitable: from the moment we arrived, at every venue and work room and press tribune and mixed zone, reporters and photographers were coughing and sneezing and sniffling. It was only a matter of time until it got me.

By the end of the Winter Games, those coughs I’d been hearing, it sounded like they’d gotten even worse. Just in time for everyone to board their flights home.

Jamie Ross, sports editor

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct the placeline. This article was reported from Milan, Cortina d'Ampezzo and Bormio.