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<\/p>\nAlain Stephens is an investigative reporter covering gun violence, arms trafficking, and federal law enforcement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
At the Milan Cortina<\/span> 2026 Winter Olympics, competing under the American banner has put some athletes at odds with their own government, transforming them \u2014 in a handful of candid remarks \u2014 from cereal-box patriots into political liabilities swiftly pilloried by the conservative establishment.<\/p>\n When reporters asked American freestyle skier Hunter Hess how it felt to wear the U.S. flag in front of the world in this moment, he said it \u201cbrings up mixed emotions<\/a>.\u201d Hess drew a clear line between the country he competes for and the policies coming out of Washington, saying, \u201cJust because I\u2019m wearing the flag doesn\u2019t mean I represent everything that\u2019s going on in the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n Hess\u2019s plain, honest answer triggered one of the most striking political crosscurrents of these Games: President Donald Trump logged on to Truth Social to call Hess \u201ca real loser<\/a>\u201d who shouldn\u2019t have tried out for the Olympic team at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n Hess wasn\u2019t alone<\/a> in speaking out. Curler Rich Ruohonen, an attorney and Minnesota native, criticized recent federal law enforcement actions in the state, saying the operations were \u201cwrong<\/a>\u201d and violated Americans\u2019 constitutional rights. Snowboarder Chloe Kim, whose parents immigrated to the United States from South Korea, defended her fellow teammates, saying Trump\u2019s immigration policies \u201chit pretty close to home<\/a>\u201d and that athletes are \u201callowed to voice\u201d their opinions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The response from conservative media was instant: shame, dismissal, and, at times, openly cheering against the very athletes carrying the American flag.<\/p>\n Vice President JD Vance told reporters that Olympians are \u201cnot there to pop off about politics<\/a>\u201d and said they should expect \u201cpushback\u201d if they do. Florida Rep. Byron Donalds went further on social media, telling U.S. athletes<\/a> that if they don\u2019t want to represent the flag, \u201cGO HOME.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Sports in America are advertised, sold, and draped in red, white, and blue so completely that they become impossible to separate from nationalism.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Conservative commentators also charged in on behalf of the administration. After U.S. figure skater Amber Glenn, who won gold in the team event, voiced support for her LGBTQ community, conservative podcaster and former Fox News host Megyn Kelly branded her \u201canother turncoat to root against<\/a>\u201d to her 3.6 million followers. The outrage snowballed, and Glenn said she received a \u201cscary amount of hate\/threats<\/a>,\u201d prompting her to take a break from social media altogether. (She later returned to TikTok with a carousel of images of her and teammate Alysa Liu wearing their team gold medals and addressing her critics<\/a>: \u201cThey hate to see two woke bitches winning.\u201d)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The intensity of the backlash illustrates how symbolic these Games have become \u2014 not just for who wins medals, but for who gets to define what national representation means on the international stage. While the Olympic Committee and the U.S. government prefer to present the Games as a neutral display of discipline, athletic poise, and national pride, the truth is less tidy. The Olympics have always served as a global window into the political and social conditions athletes come from \u2014 and when that window opens, protest has rarely been far behind.<\/p>\n Although the modern Olympic Charter\u2019s Rule 50<\/a> aims to ban political, religious, or racial \u201cpropaganda\u201d from competition, the idea that the Games have ever been apolitical ignores more than a century of history. Long before the International Olympic Committee tried to censor athletic competition, athletes and states recognized there was no separating sports from politics. At the 1906 Athens Games, Irish track and field star Peter O\u2019Connor protested<\/a> being listed as a British competitor by climbing a 20-foot flagpole and unfurling a green flag bearing the words \u201cErin Go Bragh\u201d \u2014 Ireland forever \u2014 and went on to win gold.\u00a0<\/p>\n As the Olympics entered the broadcast era and the audience stretched far beyond the stadium, political leaders were acutely aware they could use the Games\u2019 reach to bolster their legitimacy. By the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Adolf Hitler and his propagandists transformed the Games<\/a> into a showcase for the Nazi regime\u2019s image and ideology. The widely publicized spectacle of a nation unified under Nazism was engineered to sanitize the Third Reich at home and abroad, cementing the modern Olympics as a global platform for state propaganda \u2014 and, inevitably, for those willing to resist it. Jewish organizations, labor leaders, and civil rights groups in the United States and Europe tried to organize a boycott<\/a> of the event, warning that participation would validate Hitler\u2019s regime and its persecution of Jews, but the effort ultimately failed. Athletes responded with the most direct act of resistance available to them: by winning, in open defiance. Jesse Owens \u2014 an African American runner \u2014 shattered Hitler\u2019s carefully staged narrative of \u201cAryan\u201d superiority by winning four gold medals<\/a>, turning his victories into a de facto rebuke of the regime\u2019s racial ideology.\u00a0<\/p>\n Decades later, the 1968 Mexico City Games delivered one of the clearest political statements in Olympic history: sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising black-gloved fists on the medal stand in protest of racial injustice<\/a> in the United States \u2014 an enduring image that turned the podium into a site of public dissent in front of the world.<\/p>\n The backlash was swift. Olympic officials expelled them from the Games, much of the press cast them as radicals, and both men faced threats and professional fallout for years afterward<\/a>. Their protest remains one of the most controversial moments in Olympic history \u2014 and, as Smith later put it, entirely necessary: \u201cWe had to be seen because we couldn\u2019t be heard.\u201d<\/p>\n At the 2024 Paris opening ceremony, Palestinian boxer Waseem Abu Sal wore a shirt depicting the bombing of children in Gaza and told AFP<\/a> it was meant to represent \u201cthe children who are martyred and die under the rubble,\u201d bringing the war\u2019s human toll visibly into the Olympic spotlight.<\/p>\n Across decades and continents, athletes and nations alike have used both participating in and abstaining from the Olympics to make statements about war, occupation, racial oppression, and human rights.<\/a> This long history underscores a simple truth: When the whole world is watching, both governments and their critics understand the Games are too powerful a platform to leave unused.<\/p>\n It\u2019s important that dissent shows up at the Olympics for more than just symbolic reasons: The conditions that shape who gets to compete are deeply connected to the social and political structures in the athletes\u2019 home countries. Sports in America are advertised, sold, and draped in red, white, and blue so completely that they become impossible to separate from nationalism, transforming competition into a ritual where athletic achievement is inseparable from the story the nation tells about itself.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n
Seen, Not Heard\u00a0\u00a0<\/h2>\n
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More Than a Podium<\/h2>\n