MILAN — The buildup to Sunday’s women’s Olympic downhill, Lindsey Vonn’s comeback story, had been extraordinary.

Then, just 13 seconds into the race, she crashed in an explosive shower of ice and snow. For the second time in 10 days — the fall Jan. 30 in Switzerland that destroyed the ACL in her left knee — she was airlifted off the mountain.

“It’s like the man in the arena,” Vonn’s sister, Karin Kildow said, citing Teddy Roosevelt’s famed speech from 1910. “She dared greatly. She put it all out there.”

Now, perhaps the most profound image that will linger from these 2026 Winter Games will be that helicopter framed against the sky — Vonn, in a red body bag, suspended, with what’s next a complete unknown.

MILAN — In her remarks Friday at the Milano-Cortina 2026 opening ceremony, IOC president Kirsty Coventry invoked the African philosophy called ubuntu.

The essence of ubuntu, linked in particular in history to Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Demond Tutu, is that one’s humanity is inextricably connected to the humanity of everyone else. 

What might ubuntu mean for the way the IOC operates, as a touchstone for key decisions, the way the organization — which dates to 1894 — positions itself in these middle years of the 21st century? The IOC is, has always been, Eurocentric. And now this rooted-in-Africa philosophy? Can Kirsty Coventry get ubuntu buy-in?

Insiders at World Athletics are believed to have stolen about $1.75 million over “a period of several years,” prompting the federation to pursue criminal cases while launching “a set of enhanced internal financial controls,” it said in a statement.

The federation said it discovered the “systemic theft” earlier this year. The focus, it said in the statement, centers on two former employees and a contracted consultant. At issue: fake or doctored invoices.

One of the two ex-employees left before the theft was discovered. The other, and the consultant, “had their contracts terminated,” the federation said in that statement, offered in response to an inquiry about the matter.

The immediate past president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, served for 12 years with this elegant guiding notion: “unity in diversity.”\

Six years ago, Bach wrote a column published in The Guardian, the British newspaper, that read, in part: “The Olympic Games cannot prevent wars and conflicts. Nor can they address all the political and social challenges in our world. But they can set an example for a world where everyone respects the same rules and one another.”

The new IOC president, Kirsty Coventry, elected in March, faces enormous challenge in delivering on the aspirational promise of the Olympics that Bach articulated so eloquently.