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By Gavin Kentch
LAGO DI TESERO, Italy — When describing the day before the first race of the Olympics, the term “calm before the storm” is as apt as it is clichéd. The courses are set, the pieces are in place, the venue looks largely as it will when the women’s skiathlon kicks things off at 1 p.m. tomorrow local time. But there are no crowds, no spectators, and, for the Olympics, a surprising paucity of official-looking people telling you where you can or can’t go.
A slightly disheveled, deeply jetlagged reporter was largely able to roam where he wished, simply by virtue of having an accreditation badge plus a general semblance of purposeful movement. I, I mean that reporter, probably can’t wander to the top of the photography grandstand, the edge of the finish straight, or the heart of the wax village over the rest of the next sixteen days. But for now the sun was out, the barriers were down, and the vibes were good.
(I am going to try to refrain from overuse of the term vibes during the next fortnight, but I have to say that the official motto of the 2026 Winter Olympics, IT’s Your Vibe — there is no official Italian translation — is growing on me. In all sincerity, though, I really do believe that the margins are so thin in high-level sport, it often largely comes down to who has the best vibes. Especially in an event of this magnitude and duration, where the bad vibes can just fester and compound. Honestly I feel like they were onto something with this one.)
Anyway. I walk around the venue, and the vibes are good. I tell Erik Flora, the longtime head coach at APU, that I am so psyched to be here, but that I am also a draggy, jetlagged mess inside and am trying to fake it the best I can while I talk with everyone I know in skiing and try to seem competent. Flora is sympathetic, and tells me not to make any important life decisions for the next few days. He also tells me to enjoy myself. I make a mental note to move my vibe away from Big Life Decisions and more towards enjoyment.
I wander around some more, ultimately going through a very long tunnel that goes under the course. (The hill up and over this tunnel is the final bump in both sprint and distance courses, roughly 175 meters before the finish line. Later, I will walk to right next to this finish line, and watch Very Serious Men in Official Timekeeper vests sinking the red plastic tape that provides a visual marker of the finish line. They do this the same way this is accomplished in races all over the world: with a chainsaw. The only difference here is that more people nearby them are smoking, because Italy.)
I emerge from the tunnel and into an area that I believe will be formally open to spectators, a large semicircle ringed in by the course on all sides. The entire plain has several inches of snow in it, rapidly becoming mushy as temperatures climb well into the 40s. I reapply my sunscreen, follow one of the few paths already worn in through the snow, and make a mental note not to be one of the first people out here tomorrow so that someone else can break trail for me.
I stand immediately by the course barrier. There will be thousands of people here on Saturday; for the moment, I am the only one here. I am immediately within the inside of the curve for the skate portion of tomorrow’s skiathlon course, and 20 or 30 feet away from the classic course.
My view of the skate course looks like this:
My view of the classic course looks like this (in the background):
I stay here for a good half hour or so, relishing the chance to watch the world’s best athletes up close. Harald Østberg Amundsen goes through at least three times, at speed, trying out a different line around the curve each time. Calle Halfvarsson, an athlete whose middle name, my perusal of Expressen has led me to believe, is now legally the Swedish for “washed up old man,” doesn’t actually look that washed up. Alvar Myhlback looks older than his 19 years. Edvin Anger looks taller than his 1.93 meters of height.
I do all athlete identifications from memory, because everyone is wearing a bib that says only “ATHLETE” (plus a number). Shoutout to the reader from yesterday who liked my John Kruk joke about this. I am a dork, obviously, and my athlete racesuit-dar is by this point fairly well refined, but I strike out on, inter alia, Argentina, Colombia, and Iran. The Colombia suit is notably yellow. I like it.
The Iranian skier has a name, Danyal Saveh Shemshaki, I learn from my later research. A few minutes later Shemshaki laps through again. I search my mental lexicon for all the Farsi I know, coming up with, in total, the cardinal numbers one through eight plus the word for “cockroach” (sosk) (long story). I refrain from engaging with Shemshaki in his native language, which is doubtless a good decision on my part for the sake of international relations.
The bibs may be anonymous, but, for someone who grew up watching or racing against half these athletes (to stretch the term against beyond all reasonable semantic limits), the scene is deeply familiar. Kendall Kramer has the same locked-in expression, on a slightly tilted head, at the Olympics as she did when she was winning races in high school. (See here for some pictures of precisely that.) Rosie Brennan has the same, relatively wide stance here as she does when she competes in the Alaska Nordic Cup in early-season racing. Flora has the same lost-in-thought mien testing skis here as when he is overseeing the wax call for Besh Cup, the Alaska JNQ series. At heart, skiers are skiers and a ski course is a ski course; this one just has a lot of rings on it.
This one also has karaoke. At approximately 11:55 a.m., for reasons surpassing understanding, the stadium PA system announces that it is time for karaoke. An upbeat and enthusiastic song begins playing in Italian, while the lyrics for same flash across the large screen visible from the grandstand. The production values are sound, but, obviously, no one joins in singing because the only people currently at the venue are athletes, coaches, or tech crew, and everyone currently here has a job to do.
The song is jaunty. I find it extremely likely that it will be stuck in my head by the end of the Games.
Five minutes pass by. The Chiesa di Sant’Eliseo just up the hill in Tesero, which dates to 1134 CE, begins to toll twelve times to mark the hour. Somewhere around chime number seven, the PA system switches over to the dulcet tones of “Ice Ice Baby,” which dates to 1990 (or to 1981, depending on what you do with its notorious sampling of David Bowie’s “Under Pressure”). Ancient, modern, altogether. IT’s Your Vibe, indeed.
You’re reading this on Nordic Insights, one man’s labor of love dedicated to publicizing American skiing. We started with nothing and now we’re at the Olympics. You can read more about our first three years here, and donate to the Olympics fund here. Thank you for consideration, and, especially, for reading.
