Almost exactly six months after the Summer Olympics ended in Tokyo, it’s time for the next batch of the world’s best athletes to gather together in China for the 2022 Beijing Games. And just like we did last summer, FiveThirtyEight will be tracking each country’s medal-earning progress against its recent form throughout the Olympics. You […]
The first gold medal to be awarded at the inaugural Winter Olympics is housed at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. U.S. speedskater Charles Jewtraw earned it at the 1924 Games in Chamonix, France, when he completed the men’s 500-meter race in 44 seconds. The win inspired fellow Lake Placid, New York, speedskater […]
Maame Biney was the first Black woman to make it onto the U.S. Olympic Speedskating team. But she almost didn’t make it to Beijing this year after working with a coach she found abusive. In this episode of The Mental Games, Biney opens up about struggling with her mental health and how she regained her […]
Mikaela Shiffrin entered the starting gates trailing by a little more than half a second on the last run of her final slalom race before the 2022 Beijing Olympics. A challenging past few months had compounded an agonizing few years since Pyeongchang, a stretch of time so disorienting that America’s preeminent alpine skier, a blur […]
After the 1996 Olympics were over, after her big press tour had ended, Amy Van Dyken went grocery shopping. In the cereal aisle, the six-time gold medalist swimmer saw herself smiling back at her from the rows of Wheaties boxes on the shelves. “I remember just standing there, looking at it, and being like, ‘That’s […]