Politics take center stage at 2026 Winter Olympics

Sports and politics have always been intertwined, but the 2026 Olympics hit different for many Americans.

Earlier this month, American figure skaters Amber Glenn and Alyssa Liu won Olympic gold in the team figure skating event. Following their win, Glenn dropped a now-iconic line addressing her haters: “They hate to see two woke b*tches winning.” 

Glenn, who is the first out queer female figure skater in Team USA history, has reportedly received death threats over her self-described “woke” political opinions. That Glenn is out and queer during a time in which the Trump administration is actively erasing LGBTQ history and threatening the rights of Glenn’s community is a political statement in and of itself, especially in a sport that often revolves around rigid gender norms and heteronormativity. 

Criticism of Glenn only amplified when she missed a pivotal jump in the women’s short program the following week, landing her in 13th place leading up to the free skate. Glenn’s mistake cost her dearly, not only in the rankings, but in online vitriol.

Her blunder wasn’t just a personal error–it was framed as a reflection of her politics. “Go woke, go broke” sentiments echoed across social media, and Glenn’s politics were trashed just as much as her skating. And although she bounced back in the free skate, she still missed the podium, placing fifth overall. In the aftermath, Glenn expressed her frustration with the vitriol her and her fellow “Blade Angels” Isabeau Levito and Alyssa Liu, who won gold in the women’s event, have experienced in large part because of their beliefs.

“I really hope that going forward we can find ways to better support athletes, especially when it comes to online spaces. There have been some really disturbing things said online about the three of us as female athletes,” Glenn said, following the competition.

Glenn isn’t the only Team USA athlete causing a political stir at the Olympics this year. Freestyle skier Hunter Hess has voiced his conflicted feelings about representing his country amid so much political turmoil. “It brings up mixed emotions to represent the U.S. right now. I think it’s a little hard,” Hess said in a press conference, prompting Donald Trump to call him a “real loser” on Truth Social. “There’s obviously a lot going on that I’m not the biggest fan of, and I think a lot of people aren’t. Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S.”

After Vice President JD Vance was booed at the Opening Ceremony, (NBC denied editing out the boos during their broadcast after a social media firestorm) he voiced his opinions on the matter: “You’re not there to pop off about politics,” Vance said. “So when Olympic athletes enter the political arena, they should expect some pushback.” That sentiment was echoed by WFAN radio host Boomer Esiason, who told athletes to do the Olympic equivalent of “shut up and dribble.”

However, sports and politics have always been inseparable, despite how much both politicians and sports fans try to separate the two. For Dr. Johanna Mellis, an Associate Professor of History at Ursinus College, and co-host of the End of Sport podcast, politics have been threaded through Olympics history from the very beginning.

“When the International Olympic Committee was founded in the 1890s, its founder was a French baron named Pierre de Coubertin,” Mellis explained “He and a small group of European elites sought to organize the Olympics so that wealthy athletes could come together and compete against one another ‘peacefully’ according to their nationality. This occurred about a decade after the infamous Berlin Conference in 1884-1885, where European leaders met to carve up the remainder of Africa that they had not yet colonized, and split it amongst themselves. They did this without the consent of African peoples. The goal? To ‘ensure peace’ amongst themselves, so that they would not be fighting militarily against themselves to colonize the whole continent.”

Mellis further explained that from the 1890s onward, Coubertin’s goal for the Games was to increase the number of IOC member nations and expand Olympic sports to other countries due to his belief and the larger ideology that “Western Europe was superior to the rest of the world at that time, even regarding cultural activities like sport.” Part of this plan was to educate what Coubertin viewed as lesser nations about western culture, values, and presentation–including rigid ideals about gender norms we still see in sports like gymnastics and figure skating–and encourage compliance to these ideals. 

“Thus, we see a class politic, and a politics around the nation-state—nationalism,” Mellis said. “Perhaps most of all though, it was a politics of cultural imperialism.”

If there is a mirror for the formation of the Olympics, we need only look to America’s founding story. American audiences are used to seeing Team USA as standing for something good during competitions held during times of international conflict like the Cold War and the rise of Nazism in the 1930s. However, the playbook has now flipped–in the global eye, we are the source of global conflict and indisputably one of the villains of the 2026 Olympics. 

It’s a stark contrast to the halo that typically surrounds America in the domestic press each Olympic cycle. However, Mellis notes that this framing is not a sentiment shared by much of global society.

“Lots of people do not view Americans as the ‘good guys’ historically nor today,” she explained. “In the name of empire, the U.S. since its creation has believed that it is owed more land, control over people’s bodies and labor, and political autonomy over indigenous people, enslaved Black people, over all women, and many more people, and, that the U.S. is owed favorable trade and oil policies and concessions from other countries.”

In spite of the political roots of the Olympic Games, the IOC stands firmly against the “politicization of sport” and maintains that Olympic competitions are apolitical. Further, the IOC bans many forms of political protest on the field of play, although athletes have previously engaged in political symbolism on the field with mixed results.

Perhaps the most memorable example for U.S. Olympics fans is John Carlos and Tommie Smith being banned from the Olympic village and facing further sanctions and vitriol after they raised their fists in a Black Power salute on the podium at the 1968 Olympics. During the podium ceremony of the recent Tokyo Olympics, shot putter Raven Saunders raised her arms in an “X” formation, symbolizing “the intersection where all oppressed people meet,” which launched an investigation by the IOC that was later dropped.

This year in Milan, Ukrainian skeleton athlete Vladyslav Heraskevyc bowed out of competition after his helmet, which featured 20 Ukrainian athletes and coaches killed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, stating that the ruling “looked like discrimination,” given that other athletes wore equipment with similar expressions–including Italian snowboard Rolland Fischnaller wearing a helmet with a small Russian flag on it.  

Vladyslav Heraskevyč: “Ukradli jste mi můj olympijský okamžik, ale jsou důležitější věci.”
Ukrajinský skeletonista Heraskevyč odmítl sundat helmu s fotkami ukrajinských sportovců zabitých při ruské invazi a byl diskvalifikován z olympijského závodu. Podle MOV na hry “nepatří… pic.twitter.com/VbBI7XUrxh

— Nora Fridrichova (@NoraFridrichova) February 13, 2026

Ultimately, the IOC has the final call on what constitutes an inappropriate political expression, making it risky for athletes to speak out in competition. And, considering the IOC’s inconsistent history of punishing athletes combined with the reality that only half of recent American Olympians reported receiving compensation for their efforts, and only 10% have sponsors, the Olympics have proven to be a risky battleground for athletes who want to speak out. One false move could spell the end of an athlete’s career.

Press conferences, however, are free game, and American athletes have used them to the fullest. And it shouldn’t be surprising to sports fans that the media is asking athletes overtly political questions at the Games and beyond. That, in a nutshell, is why Mellis believes that it is imperative for athletes to speak out in what is becoming an increasingly dark time in American history, even if it makes sports media and sports fans uncomfortable.

“This is one of the most important times in our history for Olympic athletes to be speaking out, particularly against the rising global tide of fascism, imperialism, and genocide. Athletes must organize together and use the cultural-political platform at their disposal to try to speak plainly about the devastation of marginalized peoples everywhere—from transgender and undocumented people in the U.S., to Palestinians in Gaza, to Ukrainians, to the Zaghawa, Fur, and Masalit peoples in Sudan, and more.”

In other words, the Olympics has always been about more than just the sports athletes compete in, and the Games have always been political. So, too have sports outside of the Olympics, and sports media must embrace what has become a taboo side of an inherently political enterprise, even beyond the Olympic cycle.

For Mellis, the reason is simple. “Everyone’s humanity is worth more than sports.”