Along with rooting for Team USA, here are three villains to root against in the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics.
The 2026 Winter Olympic Games kicked off on Friday, and we are now starting to get into the thick of the medal hunt. With most of the events over the first few days being qualifiers or round-robin tournament games, most of the medal events are still on the horizon. One of the best things about sports is being able to “hate-watch” certain teams and players. Having such a hatred for a team or athlete and seeing them fail in the biggest moment is more rewarding than it should be.
While the media likes to paint everything as beautiful and elegant in the Olympics and really drives home the “togetherness” aspect of the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, there are some big-time villains to cheer against that’ll make your Olympic viewing that much more fun. We break down the three villains to root against in the Olympic Games 2026.
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Top Villains of Milano Cortina Winter Olympics 2026
Eileen Gu
Before we get started, I want to iterate that this list is in no particular order, as seen by the next entry in this list clearly taking the cake for biggest “villain.” With that out of the way, let me introduce you to Eileen Gu, who is competing for China in Freestyle Skiing Big Air and Halfpipe and has already taken silver in Slopestyle. Eileen Gu is one of the biggest villains of the 2026 Winter Olympics because of what she stands for, or maybe more accurately, what she doesn’t stand for. Representing one’s country is one of the greatest honors for an athlete, unless your name is Eileen Gu.
Gu was born in San Francisco, California. Her mom is a first-generation Chinese immigrant, while her dad is American. She attended Stanford University and went through the American school system. While this may seem like a wholesome story, it’s sadly not. Gu started out representing the USA from 2018-19 before switching her allegiances to China. While China does not recognize dual citizenship, it made sure to bend the rules so it could finally get an athlete for the Winter Olympics that could win something of value. While this may sound like an overreaction, the big issue with Gu is her blatant hypocrisy.
She has been incredibly outspoken in the past about the Black Lives Matter movement, abortion, and anti-asian racism, but has fallen completely silent when it comes to social and political topics in China, more specifically, things the Chinese government has done to its own citizens. For an athlete who stated she changed allegiances to “unite people, promote common understanding and create communication,” her hypocrisy in speaking out against America while staying silent as long as China keeps paying her bills is disgusting, making her one of the top villains of these Olympic Games.
Laurence Fournier Beaudry/Guillaume Cizeron
If you thought an athlete flipping allegiances and covering up atrocities by a foreign government was bad, oh boy, do I have another one for you. I introduce to you Laurence Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron, who are French ice dance partners. They are heavy favorites to win the gold this year. Before we dive into this situation, I do want to make it clear that these are allegations. With that in mind, they are pretty damning and paint a bad picture of the athletes and France for letting them compete. Beaudry used to skate for Canada with another man, Nikolaj Sørensen, whom she was dating. In 2023, a US figure skater alleged that Sørensen held her down against her will and raped her. I won’t get into the horrifying details, but it was serious enough that Sørensen was banned for six years, although that was overturned on jurisdictional grounds. Beaudry continued to stand by his side through the entire ordeal and still maintains his innocence to this day.
Beaudry teamed up with Cizeron due to his old partner’s retirement. In her memoir, his partner stated that Cizeron was demanding and exhausting, going as far as to say that “Little by little, I realized I was in a dangerous situation for my physical and mental health.” Cizeron quickly denied all allegations and even threatened his former partner with legal action and recourse.
Again, both of these accounts are purely allegations. With that being said, seeing Beaudry’s old partner was suspended for six years, and Cizeron’s partner felt so poorly and run down that she retired and wrote a memoir detailing what was going on, there is certainly plenty here to unwrap. The two are just the latest scandal to come out of France and the ice skating world, and that puts them up there with any other villains at the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics in 2026.
International Olympic Committee
I don’t think anyone would be surprised if you told them that the International Olympic Committee did something stupid. Nevertheless, we should all take great satisfaction in any event or circumstance that causes the IOC to look like morons during these Olympic Games. While it is certainly understandable for them to have the stance of no political statements during the Olympics, they have officially taken it so far that it could easily be classified as cruel.
Let me introduce you to Ukrainian skeleton athlete Vladyslav Heraskevych. As an athlete in the skeleton event, he is obviously required to wear a helmet. As an athlete from Ukraine, it’s also quite obvious that he has known and even been friends with multiple other athletes who have since been killed in their ongoing war with Russia. Heraskevych decided to fashion a helmet with the pictures of his fallen friends and fellow athletes in a touching tribute.
Immediately, the same IOC that is fine with athletes having Russian flags on their helmets when the country is banned from the 2026 Winter Olympics, banned his helmet due to it violating the rules against political statements. Let me iterate that again: the IOC banned a helmet honoring innocent civilians killed in an act of war because it was a “political statement.” There was no writing on the helmet, just pictures of fallen athletes. No matter what you think of Ukraine, that is an asinine decision and one that makes the IOC look even dumber than they already do.
So, once again, until the end of time, screw the IOC, as they are nothing but a conglomerate of villainous people.
