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The Milan Cortina Games are one week old and already sport the most chaotic rap sheet of any Winter Olympics in memory. The organizers promised a return to Alpine elegance after Beijing's COVID bubble and the corruption stench of Sochi. Instead they got scandals on every surface—ice, snow, and diplomatic. Even the medals are falling apart. In this edition, CW surveys the wreckage at the halfway mark.
Breezy Johnson ⬆
The American downhill skier won gold on the same Cortina course that wrecked her knee and sat her out of the 2022 Olympics, completed a 14-month anti-doping suspension for missed whereabouts tests, watched her medal break into three pieces during the celebration, and got engaged at the Super-G finish line with a ring in a box engraved with Taylor Swift lyrics. Almost nobody noticed because teammate Lindsey Vonn's 13-second crash and helicopter evacuation was the only story anyone wanted to tell. Sometimes the actual comeback gets buried by the comeback that wasn't.
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Vladyslav Heraskevych ⬇
Ukraine's skeleton racer and flag bearer was disqualified 45 minutes before his race for refusing to remove a helmet honoring Ukrainian athletes killed in Russia's war—even after IOC president Kirsty Coventry personally pleaded with him and then wept at the prospect of disciplining him. Heraskevych pointed out that an Israeli skeleton racer wore a kippah bearing the names of the 1972 Munich victims without facing sanction. He may not have competed at the Games, but, with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky awarding him the Order of Freedom, he still returns home a hero.
Maxim Naumov ⬆
The 24-year-old American figure skater made his Olympic debut a year after losing both parents when an Army helicopter collided with a passenger plane over Washington, D.C., killing 67 people including 28 members of the U.S. figure skating community. He held up a childhood photo of his parents holding his hands on the ice, looked to the sky, and said: "Look what we just did." Inside his Team USA jacket was his father's quote: "Expect the unexpected"—advice that now doubles as the motto of these Games.
Sturla Holm Lægreid ⬇
The Norwegian biathlete won bronze in the 20 km, then used his live TV interview to confess he'd cheated on his girlfriend, calling it "social suicide" but hoping it would show "how highly" he loved her. She responded through the press: "I did not choose to be put in this position." In a week of judging scandals and genital injection rumors, Lægreid introduced a new Olympic discipline: the emotional biathlon.
Julia Simon ⬆
The French biathlete was convicted last October of stealing teammate Justine Braisaz-Bouchet's bank card for online purchases exceeding €2,000 ($2,300). She now has two gold medals at Milan Cortina. In French biathlon, the most dangerous competition isn't on the course—it's at the team dinner when someone leaves their wallet on the table.
JD Vance ⬇
The vice president was booed at the opening ceremony—NBC's U.S. broadcast feed was the only one not to notice. His 45-vehicle motorcade of Chevy Suburbans, built for American highways, blocked the skating arena parking lot so thoroughly that U.S. figure skater Alysa Liu nearly missed her own event. Vance came to Milan to support Team USA; Team USA almost needed someone to support them against Vance's security detail.
Originally a staple of Newsweek's print edition, Conventional Wisdom used arrows to track whose stock was rising or falling in the political circus. We're reviving it in the digital age because the problem it lampooned—hyperbole and partisan certainty masquerading as insight—has only intensified.
CW assigns arrows—up, down, or sideways—to the figures and forces shaping current events. The arrows don't predict the future or claim special insight. They capture the prevailing winds of the moment, uncluttered by tribal howling. In an era when partisan media reinforces rather than questions assumptions, CW operates from the center—skeptical of left and right alike, committed to puncturing inflated reputations and recognizing overlooked truths.
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