When it’s on, how to watch, our medal hopefuls, and one prediction.

What’s all this then?

Milano Cortina 2026, aka the Winter Olympics, starts this week in Italy. It’s our quadrennial opportunity to enjoy a lot of ice- and snow-based sports we’d normally never watch, and maybe – just maybe – bask in the glory of one or more New Zealanders winning a medal.

When does it all kick off?

The opening ceremony begins around 8am NZT on Saturday morning, but if you can’t wait, a couple of events are starting early. Of particular note to New Zealanders is the men’s snowboarding big air qualifiers at 8am Friday morning.

How do we watch?

The free-to-air Sky Open (née Prime) will have a carefully curated tasting menu of Olympic action each day, with all the most important stuff (ie featuring New Zealanders) broadcast live – it’s also available to stream online via ThreeNow. Sky Sport subscribers, meanwhile, can choose from multiple channels for a more buffet-style viewing experience.

Timezone-wise, the action typically kicks off around 9pm NZT and wraps up around 11am, meaning we can chill out to a bit of curling before bed then wake up with some white-knuckle luge over breakfast, etc.

Who are New Zealand’s big medal hopes?

There are 17 athletes representing the silver fern in Italy, of whom 16 are concentrated in snowboarding and freestyle skiing events. The most recognisable name is snowboarder Zoi Sadowski-Synnott, who won New Zealand’s first ever Winter Olympics gold medal in slopestyle at Beijing 2022, along with a silver in big air. She placed second in both those events at the X Games in Aspen earlier this year.

New Zealand’s other gold medallist at Beijing, freestyle skier Nico Porteous, stepped back from competitive skiing in 2025, but don’t worry – Wānaka’s Fin Melville Ives will be there to defend his crown, fresh from winning gold in the X Games superpipe (the same medal Porteous won in 2021 and 2022). Fellow Wānaka freestyle skier Luca Harrington, meanwhile, took home gold in slopestyle and silver in big air for the second X Games in a row. (Both of these guys have brothers who are also competing – Fin’s twin Cam in the snowboard halfpipe, and Luca’s brother Ben in the freeski halfpipe.)

The only non-snowboarder or freestyle skier in the New Zealand team, alpine skier Alice Robinson is competing at her third Winter Olympics. She finished well outside the medal places in 2018 (when she was just 16) and 2022, but is coming into this year’s event off the back of a silver in the women’s giant slalom at the 2025 Alpine Skiing World Cup. If she makes the podium here she’ll be following in the footsteps of New Zealand’s first Winter Olympics medallist Annelise Coberger, who won silver in the slalom in 1992.

When are they competing?

The schedule for New Zealand athletes is here, and the full schedule is here.

What are they wearing?

This is the first Olympics since Kathmandu took over from the sometimes maligned Peak as team New Zealand’s apparel partner. They haven’t exactly reinvented the wheel with this year’s uniform, but it looks comfortable, warm and, most importantly, black.

Can we upload messages of support for the team to an online portal that they can access by scanning a QR code on the inside of their jacket?

Believe it or not, yes.

What other sports are worth watching?

The Winter Olympics may not have as many events as its summer counterpart, but your odds of finding something fun, exciting or novel to watch at any given time are significantly better. 

Curling is probably the ultimate once-every-four-years sport – easy to pick up, with a pleasing rhythm and satisfying aesthetic.

Any sport in which athletes have to travel down a slope as fast as possible is an exciting watch – skeleton, luge, alpine skiing and bobsleigh (yes, Jamaica has a bobsleigh team, and word on the street is they might actually be pretty good this year). And for pure spectacle it’s hard to look past the vastly different disciplines of figure skating and ski jumping.

Novelty seekers should also keep an eye out for ski mountaineering, which is making its Olympic debut. It involves going uphill then downhill as fast as possible, and sounds like it could be the winter equivalent of the Summer Olympics’ best new sport, speed climbing.

Who are the mascots?

“Cheerful stoats” Tina and Milo are the official mascots of Milano Cortina 2026. According to the Olympics website Tina is “passionate about art and music” and enjoys drinking espresso, while her younger brother Milo, the Paralympic mascot, was born with one paw missing and enjoys DJing.

What will New Zealand’s exact medal tally be?

One gold, two silvers, one bronze.