How the Politics of the Olympics Have Changed

Divisions in the US are spilling into the games in unexpected ways

The Olympics have long been sold as a kind of global ceasefire — an interlude when rival nations set aside their disputes long enough to cheer their countries’ finest athletes. Flags raised, anthems played, competitors draped in national colors. For a few weeks, we tell ourselves that competition can substitute for conflict and that sport can accomplish what diplomacy often cannot.

At the 2026 Winter Olympics, that understanding has frayed more quickly — and more publicly — than at most recent Games.

Olympic skier Hunter Hess

Several American athletes arrived in Italy carrying more than skis and skates. They carried ambivalence. In interviews, some spoke openly about feeling conflicted representing the United States amid political turmoil at home, including unrest over immigration enforcement tactics in Minnesota and other states. They emphasized that wearing the flag does not require endorsing every policy carried out in its name.

Freestyle skier Hunter Hess said he had “mixed emotions” about representing the country in the current climate, adding, “Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the US.”

His comments were restrained. They were also unmistakably political.

Instead of brushing past them — as presidents historically have — President Donald Trump responded on social media: “U.S. Olympic Skier, Hunter Hess, a real Loser, says he doesn’t represent his Country in the current Winter Olympics. If that’s the case, he shouldn’t have tried out for the Team, and it’s too bad he’s on it. Very hard to root for someone like this. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

It is difficult to identify another moment when a sitting American president publicly attacked a member of the US Olympic team while the Games were underway. Past Olympic controversies have triggered boycotts, diplomatic crises, and domestic backlash. But presidents have generally resisted turning their fire on their own country’s athletes.

The tensions were visible even before competition began. News that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents would assist Italian authorities with security coordination — part of routine interagency cooperation for major international events, according to US officials — sparked protests in Milan. Demonstrators carried banners reading, “Milan despises you.” The backlash was swift enough that American figure skating, hockey, and speedskating federations quietly rebranded their athlete-hospitality venue from “Ice House” to “Winter House,” a small but telling acknowledgment that even the surface athletes compete on had become politically charged.

Vice President JD Vance initially attempted an apolitical show of support, wishing American competitors well regardless of party affiliation. Yet the political undertone was impossible to escape. The American team was cheered at the opening ceremony in Milan, but Vance was booed by part of the crowd when he and his wife, Usha, were shown on the stadium screens. Later, Vance offered a more restrained version of Trump’s admonition not to criticize the United States. “My advice to the athletes would be to try to bring the country together,” he said. “And when you’re representing the country, you’re representing Democrats and Republicans. You’re there to play a sport and you’re there to represent your country and hopefully win a medal. You’re not there to pop off about politics.”

That argument has intuitive appeal. The Olympics are one of the few rituals that still feel broadly shared. Even in polarized times, Americans who disagree on almost everything else can rally behind a relay team or a downhill skier. Presidents of both parties have traditionally leaned into that unity, particularly during periods of international tension.

The Olympic movement itself formally discourages overt protest on the field of play. Rule 50 of the International Olympic Committee’s charter prohibits “demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas,” although athletes may express views in press conferences and on social media. This year in Milan, a Ukrainian athlete was disqualified when he insisted on wearing a helmet with images of some of his countrymen killed in the war with Russia. Rule 50 enforces strict political neutrality in competition spaces.

Yet the Games have not existed completely outside politics. In 1936, Adolf Hitler used the Berlin Summer Olympics to showcase Nazi ideology, only to watch Black American track star Jesse Owens win four gold medals, undermining the regime’s racial mythology before a global audience.

Jesse Owens, center, salutes on the podium at the Berlin Olympics in 1936

At the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their gloved fists in a Black Power salute during the medal ceremony for the 200 meters. They were expelled from the Games and received death threats upon returning home; their careers suffered. But the condemnation came largely from sporting authorities and segments of the public. President Lyndon B. Johnson did not publicly criticize them — a restraint that underscores how unusual the current moment feels.

During the Cold War, the Olympics became a proxy contest. The United States led a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; four years later, the Soviet Union and its allies retaliated by boycotting the Los Angeles Games. South Africa was barred for decades because of apartheid.

More recently, after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the country has been banned from submitting a team, forcing Russian athletes to compete as neutrals rather than under their national flag. The 2014 Winter Games in Sochi were widely viewed as a showcase for Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing prompted a US-led diplomatic boycott over human rights concerns, with American officials declining to attend even as athletes competed.

What feels different in Milan is that the point is distinction, not rejection. The athletes who have spoken out have not framed themselves as anti-American. They have not performed any gestures of protest. Many have explicitly said they were proud to compete for Team USA. But they have also made clear that representing the United States doesn’t require approval of everything that happens in it — and that being an athlete does not require silence about politics.

Figure skater Amber Glenn pushed back against the familiar “stick to sports” refrain: “I know that a lot of people say, ‘You’re just an athlete. Like, stick to your job. Shut up about politics.’ But politics affect us all.”

Snowboarder Chloe Kim, the daughter of immigrants from South Korea, said current debates “hit pretty close to home” and emphasized leading with “love and compassion.” Freestyle skier Chris Lillis described feeling “heartbroken” by developments back home, including immigration raids and civil unrest.

Olympic snowboarder Chloe Kim

For athletes from Minnesota — where federal immigration agents shot and killed Minneapolis residents Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti during enforcement operations — the tension was especially pronounced. Cross-country skiing gold medalist Jessie Diggins said she that was racing “for an American people who stand for love, for acceptance, for compassion, honesty, and respect for others,” and that she did not stand for “hate or violence or discrimination.” Curler Richard Ruohonen was similarly direct: “What the Olympics means is excellence, respect, friendship… We are playing for the people of Minnesota and the people around the country who share those same values, that compassion, that love, and that respect.”

All made clear they were representing their country — but not every action taken in its name. For the administration, that distinction is illegitimate. Trump’s rebuke of Hess showed that, in a hyper-partisan environment, ambivalence can easily be reframed as disloyalty.

Social media accelerates that reframing. A comment made at a press event in Milan becomes a domestic flashpoint within minutes. The US Olympic and Paralympic Committee has reported an uptick in abusive messages directed at athletes. Even Utah Governor Spencer Cox, a Republican who has urged respectful disagreement in politics, weighed in. “We love our athletes,” he said. He then told reporters, “I hate the questions you ask the athletes,” claiming they were too political.

For decades, the understanding was not that politics disappear at the Olympics, but that internal disputes need not define America’s external face. You could argue fiercely at home and still cheer together abroad.

In Milan, that boundary appears more porous. The culture war has proven portable. Athletes carry it with them. So do the politicians who respond.

The athletes argue that loving a country sometimes means criticizing it. The administration argues that unity requires discretion, especially on foreign soil. Both claim to represent the same flag. The question is whether the American public still views the Olympics as a space where disagreements should be temporarily bracketed, or polarization has reached a point where even the Olympic podium is an arena for ideological sparring.

The Olympics have always reflected the political climate of their time. In 1936, they showed fascism’s spectacle. In 1968, they crystallized American racial unrest. During the Cold War, they mirrored superpower rivalry.

In 2026, they reflect something more intimate: a nation so divided that it cannot even agree on how to represent itself.