On the eve of the Winter Olympics, IOC president Kirsty Coventry issued a statement designed to ward off complex matters of geopolitics from intervening in the festival of sport.
“We understand politics and we know we don’t operate in a vacuum. But our game is sport. That means keeping sport a neutral ground. A place where every athlete can compete freely, without being held back by the politics or divisions of their governments,” she said.
Of course that statement was in itself political. An emphasis on remaining neutral was the clearest signal yet that Russia could be welcomed back into the Olympic fold, while it was also a non-comment on the continued participation of Israel at the Games, and a conciliatory hand extended to the American organisers of the next Olympics just two years away, despite the US administration’s brutality against its own citizens in Minneapolis.
Protests have broken out in Milan at the role of ICE agents in policing the Games; they are unlikely to have felt calmed by vice president JD Vance’s refusal this week to apologise to the family of Alex Pretti, who was gunned down by federal agents last month. “For what?” was his flippant response.
The level of perceived anti-American feeling is such that Coventry was asked in another pre-Olympic press conference whether it was understandable for spectators to boo American athletes.
In a case of inauspicious timing, Vance himself has been deployed to the Games. The vice president arrived in Milan on Thursday morning alongside his family and secretary of state Marco Rubio, to visit the US athletes and lead a delegation at the Opening Ceremony, in a diplomatic blitz before heading on to Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Vance told an assortment of American freestyle skiers on Thursday morning that “this is one of the few things that unites the entire country. The whole country, Democrat, Republican, independent, we’re all rooting for you, and we’re cheering for you.”
That in itself seems unlikely; one can only imagine the vitriolic response pending on Truth Social if any of the American squad were to loudly disavow ICE, or any of the Trump administration’s other policies and projects.
Several major American stars, notably cross-country skier Jessie Diggins and downhill skier Lindsey Vonn, have already issued polite rebukes. Diggins said she would race for “an American people who stand for love, for acceptance, for compassion, honesty and respect for others”; Vonn said her “heart is incredibly heavy” after the recent violent crackdowns.
It was against this backdrop that Team USA, USA, USA got their Games underway on Thursday afternoon, as the women’s ice hockey team took on Czechia in their first preliminary game.
But it seemed that the healthy crowd inside the Milano Rho Ice Hockey Arena had indeed bought Coventry’s message – or switched off from the demands of politics for a couple of hours, at least. And not even the presence of Vance and Rubio inside the arena could chill the enthusiasm.
But Vance’s presence can’t be seen as anything other than political. The US women’s ice hockey team are the favourites to win the tournament. The reigning champions are arch-rivals Canada, who if this US administration had its way wouldn’t be competing at all, but would be subsumed into the United States as a 51st state.
The atmosphere in the Rho Arena was buoyant on Thursday evening; that may not remain the case if the US and Canada meet in the knockout rounds.
Perhaps it was a deliberate decision, then, for the Vance party to sneak into the arena some seven minutes before the end of the first period, rather than make a big song and dance of turning up, a la Donald Trump at last year’s US Open. The cameras, too, avoided the vice-president and his entourage, including his wife and children.
And perhaps in a bid to distract, the organisers leaned into the ‘festival of sport’ atmosphere, with a DJ, club tunes at every minute break in play, flashing lights, and Mexican waves. Anywhere the cameras panned were scores of American fans decked in flags, hockey jerseys, and Team USA merch.
And the predominantly American crowd went suitably wild when, just shy of 16 minutes into the first period, the US finally broke the deadlock, helped by having a woman advantage after a two-minute penalty to Czechia’s Dominika Laskova. The inevitable chants of “USA, USA, USA” broke out; the outnumbered Czech fans went grimly silent.
Megan Keller, appearing on her third Games, scored the opener; she no doubt would go into the Vance good books for a carefully stated pre-Games message: “The powerful thing about sport in the Olympics is it’s everybody uniting together.”
Poignantly, however, she was assisted by Laila Edwards, the trailblazing 21-year-old who is the first black woman to make a US Olympic ice hockey squad, and the first to even make the senior national team.
Joy Dunne and Hayley Scamurra built on their advantage in the second period, and even a lightning-fast counter-attack by Barbora Jurickova couldn’t turn the tide as goals from five-time Olympian Hilary Knight and another from Scamurra sealed the game. It was a triumphant start and a well-deserved sporting victory for the team.
But even as Vance hid in relative anonymity in the stands, the bigger political questions around this Olympics refuse to be simply waved away. That party atmosphere feels unlikely to last long off the ice.
