Podcast Intro and Community Shoutouts

Alex: It’s really easy for some knuckleheads to say it’s just a representation spot. She’s really freaking good, as are all these women. These are not representation spots. They are at the top of their game here. So yeah, I just want to point that out.

Caitlin: And you’re listening to Raising the Game, a podcast covering the rise in opportunity, visibility, and accessibility of women’s sports globally. We’re a husband-wife team who are avid sports fans raising two young girls, and we find the exposure and investment in women’s sports a gateway for them and other young girls like them to see their passions for play, performance, and leadership not as extracurriculars with an expiration date after high school or college, but as a real opportunity to build a career as an athlete, a coach, an analyst, an athletic trainer, a director of sports operations, or maybe even a podcaster. Each week, we’re bringing you the top stories in women’s professional and sometimes collegiate sports. We’ll highlight primetime performers, key business decisions, economic impacts, and the growing opportunities for women’s athletics. You’ll hear our perspectives on these stories as fans, but perhaps more importantly, as parents who value what these stories mean for our kids. If there’s a storyline or topic you’d like to hear us talk about, reach out via email at raisingthegamepod@gmail.com or on social media at @RTG_pod.

Caitlin: Alright, we’re doing it again. How are we doing?

Alex: Doing alright.

Caitlin: I’m just gonna preempt this with our audience: I’m coming off of a cold over the weekend, and I might be going into one, so this might be a little rough. Our voices are a little off. ‘Tis the season, I’m sure many of you can relate. Before we get into the material for this week’s episode, we just got a couple of shout-outs and things we want to cover. I had a favorite thing, so again, we’ll continue to shout this out: opportunities for community support here in Minneapolis. I know my own experience is that the national news headlines have been dwindling, but there’s still a lot of families who need support and a lot of ways to give back to the community. So look for some of that information we’ve been including in our show notes and YouTube description, and continue to support however you see fit. And then two things we completely spaced in our first episode last week in February. We record on Mondays, and Wednesday last week was National Girls and Women in Sports Day. We totally could have done a dedicated episode to that. It’s not like we sit here and talk about women’s sports all day long. So we missed that, apologies for not shouting it out, but we celebrated by releasing our podcast episode. So there you go. And then we also neglected to mention it, February is Black History Month. So we wanted to honor all of those Black female athletes who have blazed the trail, especially here in the month of February. We have a whole segment today, which is almost the entire episode. We’re actually going to deep dive a little bit on all of the Black female athletes that are making up Team USA at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics.

Favorite Things: The Start of the 2026 Winter Olympics

Caitlin: So, favorite thing. If you’re ready, you go first.

Alex: I’ve got to think. Okay. Oh wait, I think I have a lot actually. I think I’ll take the easy way out here. I mean, not the easy way out, it was my favorite thing. I was really enjoying the mixed doubles curling that we were watching on Saturday or Sunday. They were getting into some trouble early on in that game against Great Britain. They ended up losing that one, but then came back. Was that Sweden they came back against? They had a pretty tight game there, but a good victory.

Caitlin: I think it was Italy, because then they had to play Italy again today in the semis.

Alex: Oh, okay, okay.

Caitlin: And they won. And I jumped up off the couch when they won.

Alex: You were working, obviously.

Caitlin: Yeah, yeah.

Alex: I was reading a tweet or a thread or whatever the things are these days, of how you turn on curling in the Olympics and for the first 30 seconds you’re like, “This is boring,” and then 10 minutes in you’re making calls, and then 30 minutes in you’re like, “Why didn’t you hit that shot?” And then by the end, you’re just totally in it with the team. It’s one of those sports that the announcers do a great job of informing, but also commentating at a level that an expert kind of would. You kind of know as you’re watching, like, oh, this is good or this is bad. It sometimes kind of feels like they do the Tony Romo a little bit, or like Tom Brady, like, “I would do this right here. This is how I would set this up, and you hit this, this, this,” and it’s like, okay, cool, you kind of understand what the strategy is here.

Caitlin: Yeah, yeah. So as Alex was starting to share that, I was like, well, duh, the Olympics officially started. So that’s my favorite thing. Our whole episode today is primarily focused on the Olympics. We’re going to be talking about all kinds of different storylines coming out of the first full weekend of the 2026 Winter Games. I think for me, just watching these performances, we’ve gotten to see Team USA play a few hockey games so far. One of the things I love about the Olympics are the storylines. Alex was listening to me gush over the weekend about how inspiring these stories are. NBC does such a great job of capturing these behind-the-scenes moments for these athletes and really making it personal. And then there’s this sense of pride that you can’t explain. You become one with the team, and it’s really the only sporting event where I think there’s an ad for something they’re running right now. It might be for the Olympics, quite frankly, where they’re showing a bunch of rivalry fans, like a Boston Red Sox fan gets on the subway with the Yankees fan and Celtics. Everyone’s kind of glaring at each other. And then you turn on the Olympics and it’s like, we’re all fans of the team. So I think that’s really fun. Should we pivot into headlines?

Alex: Let’s do it.

Top Headlines in Women’s Sports: LPGA, Tennis, PWHL, WNBA, and NCAA

Alex: New LPGA commissioner, Craig Kessler, apologizes for how the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions ended. We talked about this last week. Ended because of cold weather in Florida in January.

Caitlin: Yeah, yeah. So it was 30 degrees, which is pretty cold for Florida. And what I read was there were concerns about the ground being frozen, right? And then that affects the players’ shots, it affects how the ball’s gonna run on the green and things like that. But there were a number of players, you had Annika Sörenstam, who’s an LPGA great, one of the greatest of all time in women’s golf, in all golf. And she was playing in the celebrity tournament side and she was like, “It was totally playable”. Yeah, and just, if you’re not from Minnesota, it takes a lot longer than a couple of hours at 30 degrees to freeze the ground. And so, bring in someone who knows a little bit more than you and make decisions based off information. Well, and the other crazy thing I read was that Kessler wasn’t even on site. He was at home in Texas. So he was having to make these calls based off of information packets and reports from people on the ground. And to his credit, he’s like, “It was my bad, I should have been there”. I’m kind of like, why weren’t you there for the first tournament of the season? Anyways.

Alex: We could drain that. Let’s move on. Coco Gauff falls from three to five in world rankings following quarterfinal loss in the Australian Open.

Caitlin: Yeah, there were a couple other shakeups. I think most of the other Americans stayed relative. I know I saw Jessica Pegula held on to her number six world ranking, but this definitely dropped Gauff out of the top four for the first time, I think, in two or three years.

Alex: Wow, okay. Jordan Chiles nails a perfect 10 floor routine against Minnesota set to Minnesota music legend Prince, her fourth 10 in as many weeks. And I think I heard she specifically changed it up just for Minnesota.

Caitlin: She did. So I think she’s had this routine, she’s done it before. She had been using a different track for her floor routines this season, but she pulled it out. Little tribute to Minnesota. She did a really nice speech after the event was done, stuck around, signed autographs, took pictures with little girls. Just what a true professional and somebody who really understands her platform and the impact that she can have.

Alex: Yeah, that’s awesome. The Olympic stage, a coming out party for PWHL and specifically USA Hockey, hopes for bi-directional viewership benefits with Olympics competition drawing fans to the PWHL and vice versa.

Caitlin: Yeah, so I was reading a lot about this and we’ll probably talk a little more about hockey in our next episode, because we’ll be into the knockout rounds of the tournament for women’s ice hockey. But the PWHL, we’ve talked about in a previous episode here, started three years ago. That was after the last Olympics. And so there’s now this professional league that’s gaining traction in the States. And so you’re seeing this kind of push-pull of fans of the Olympics, which used to be one of the only places you could watch women’s professional hockey at this level, coming over and now wanting to watch these players in the PWHL, and then fans who maybe have just kind of glommed onto the PWHL now coming in and tuning in for the Olympics. I’ll be really curious to see what viewership numbers are for these games once they start to report those out.

Alex: Team USA captain and five-time Olympian Hilary Knight scored her 14th career goal over the weekend tying Natalie Darwitz and Katie King-Crowley for the all-time Olympic scoring record.

Caitlin: Yeah, so she’s off on a tear. She’s got a couple assists, too. I think she’s got three or four total points in the tournament so far. They’ve played three games. They are set on a collision course for a tilt against Team Canada tomorrow, recording this on Monday. So yesterday. By the time you hear this, the result will be out for that round robin game. But Hilary Knight is looking in really good form. This is gonna be her last Olympics.

Alex: She’s my Captain America. Yeah. WNBA league officials provide counter offer after over six weeks of not responding. The offer, according to Front Office Sports, made marginal changes to revenue sharing percentages with no changes to the system while conceding on some housing provisions as well as developmental player roster spots.

Caitlin: Yeah, so this is another one we could spend a lot of time on. But just briefly, there has not actually been much reporting about what the league provided the union yet. And that makes me think the union is still reviewing, it clearly hasn’t been the monumental shift towards the union’s ask around revenue sharing, which is disappointing, I know, for the union. There was a lot of chatter that came out after the meeting last Monday about some of the provisions the W has conceded on. And the general public reaction was, “They’re not already getting these benefits?” And so it continues to kind of go back and forth. Now there are some players involved in the negotiations who are optimistic that there is going to be a deal done in time for the season. So that’s a little change in tune. I think prior to the meeting last Monday, there was a lot of frustration, maybe not that sense. But we’ll continue to see.

Alex: Yeah, and I think I heard one of the players say that it’s just going to be the revenue sharing portion and then everything else they think will fall in place really quickly.

Caitlin: Yeah, President Nneka Ogwumike definitely said that.

Alex: Alright, Unrivaled 1v1 tournament brackets released to take place starting on Wednesday of this week. And I think we have some more information on the “what to watch” segment.

Caitlin: Yeah, so excited to watch that. That’s going to be really fun.

Alex: UConn women’s basketball team wins 20th game by 25 points or more, extend unbeaten streak to 41, 25 and 0 so far this season and heavy favorite to win the title.

Caitlin: Yeah, I was looking up their record and it is just absurd. They’re averaging something like high eighties for scoring per game, which is a lot. They’re regularly beating, I mean, this is the 20th over 25 points. They have games where they’re winning by like 40, 50 points and not against bad teams. So I just don’t see a chink in the armor.

Alex: Yeah, and I think one of the stories we talked about last week was they won by 21 or 24 and Geno Auriemma was like, “Wasn’t our best game”.

Caitlin: Yeah. Well, and they had one over the weekend against Butler where Sarah Strong, their all-star sophomore forward, was out. And they still won by 36 or something. Good luck.

Alex: Alright, UCLA women’s basketball team extends win streak to 17 games, barely beating conference foe Michigan 69 to 66. I think this was one of the games we called out for what to watch last week.

Caitlin: Yes, it was. And I think this could be the team that could contend. They’ve got senior Lauren Betts and Kiki Rice out there for UCLA. They featured in last year’s NCAA tournament.

Alex: Are they in the number two spot still?

Caitlin: Yeah, they’re still in the number two spot. They’re pretty firmly in place in first place in the Big Ten as well. So we’ll see, we’ll be tuning into that a lot more as we get closer here.

Alex: Yeah, we’re getting really close here. WNBA’s Chicago Sky minority owner files lawsuit alleging majority owner Michael Alter breached his fiduciary duty to minority investors by devaluing the team.

Caitlin: This news coming at a time where team owners probably don’t need to be making these kinds of headlines. I also saw that Angel Reese had put out some demands. I don’t know if it was in relation to these questions, but she was essentially like, you need to get me a better team around me. And so this is just a bummer to hear about.

Weekly Women’s Sports Headlines: NWSL Expansion and Global Soccer

Alex: Denver Summit FC sells 40,000 plus tickets to inaugural home opener, set to break NWSL attendance record. Insane. Wild. They went on sale and they had sold 40,000 within a couple days. People want to watch football. Are they playing at Mile High for that first game?

Caitlin: They have to because their temp stadium is like 12,000 or something. So they’ve got to be doing Mile High or opening up some other venue for them.

Alex: Alright, Alexia Putellas? Putellas with a double L right there, okay. Two-time Ballon d’Or Féminin, best FIFA women’s player. Did I say it wrong?

Caitlin: No, you’re good. You’re good. I’m laughing because I feel like I set you up for failure.

Alex: Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot going on for words here and I’m not the best word-sayer. So best FIFA women’s player and UEFA women’s player of the year winner, Spanish national team all-time leading scorer and Barcelona team captain, debuts first signature Nike boot. Okay, and then there’s commas and spaces and like, am I reading this at the right cadence?

Caitlin: So originally all it said was Alexia Putellas debuts first Nike boot. And then I was like, we have to talk about how amazing she is. And so I added all of her accolades and made Alex read it. They look cool. Go check them out. They’re customized. Got a lot of signatures for Alexia. She’s known as La Reina in Spanish, for the queen. And so there’s some nods to that there.

Alex: It’s pretty cool. Awesome. Record viewership in Brazil for a Corinthians women’s football club during the FIFA Women’s Club tournament with over 1 million concurrent streams.

Caitlin: Yeah, so this was the FIFA Women’s Champions Cup. They played Arsenal in the final and this is huge. I read too that this was in competition with a championship game for a club in Brazil and that this was contending with it for viewership or topping it at certain points too. So huge for women’s football, growing globally, so fun to see.

Alex: That’s awesome. Kansas City Current announces the launch of Teal Rising Academy in Itu, São Paulo, Brazil, the first NWSL team to establish an international youth academy presence.

Caitlin: Just more evidence of how this game is gonna continue to grow globally.

Alex: The Soccer Tournament (TST) is launching a mixed gender event during their summer competition with 16 mixed gender teams and a $1 million purse for the winning team. This is going to be an event we’ll have to talk about, super fun to watch. It’s 7v7 soccer. You bring out a bunch of the old guard, but sometimes you get some of the other sport athletes. And it’s a lot of fun.

Caitlin: Yeah, so I did read Hope Solo is going to be participating in the mixed gender event, which is kind of interesting. She did the quote I read from her when she was throwing some shade at unequal pay and things that could get resolved while she was still playing. But that’ll be interesting to see her back out on the field.

Alex: LA 2028 Olympic soccer venues announce stadiums across America, not just California, including Nashville, Columbus, New York, and St. Louis.

Caitlin: Yeah, so soccer fans, I hope you also can pay for a couple of plane tickets.

Alex: Canadian Soccer Business announces the acquisition of non-exclusive Canadian media rights to NWSL, in which more than 20 Canadian players currently compete professionally.

Caitlin: Yeah, so that’s amazing. They’re looking to do full broadcast in Canada. We talked when we did our hockey segment a couple episodes ago about how they are really supportive and do full broadcasts for the hockey teams too up there. So love to see these broadcast networks getting behind these leagues.

Alex: Yeah, that’s awesome. Alright, let’s move over to our Olympics segment here today.

The 2026 Winter Olympics: Women Driving NBC Viewership

Caitlin: Alright, okay. I am gonna get into some fun facts about this Winter Games, but I have to open this segment on a little bit of a surprise for Alex and a monologue for all of you. I love the Olympics. I was trying to think about why, and I think there’s a couple reasons that I’ve identified. But these events, these two-week tournaments essentially that happen every two years with winter and summer games, there’s something about it that is so unique and powerful to me that I don’t really get from any other sport season. So a couple things for me, I think one is the Olympics for much of my childhood were one of the only ways that you could really see female athletes compete at the highest level. We didn’t have a lot of these professional leagues, or if we did, you couldn’t really watch them because they didn’t have the broadcast deals that they have now. And so I think as a young girl who is very interested in sports, being able and really looking forward to these events to see the best of the best do their thing really meant a lot to me. Second thing, I was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and we were able to go to the 1996 Summer Games when they were hosted in Atlanta. And I think that fundamentally changed my DNA a little bit. So getting to see those events live and the ceremony and the pageantry around the Olympics really made an impression on me. And then the stories that they craft about these athletes and just the grit and commitment and determination, that actually has burrowed itself into who I am now. And I think a lot of that came from hearing these stories of these athletes not giving up, of putting in all the extra time, really honing your craft. One of my favorite quotes in the world is, whatever you do, do it well, do it so well that others will go and tell, or people will go and tell others to come watch you do what you do. And to me, that just so embodies an Olympian. I had to get that out of the way, because you’re gonna hear a lot of passion. I think there’s a lot to be said about the IOC and the governing bodies and the need for continued improvements and inclusion. I never want those opportunities for improvement to take away from what these athletes have achieved to just get to the Olympics, let alone win medals.

Alex: Yeah. Absolutely.

Caitlin: So with that, now we can dive in a little bit on the 2026 Winter Games. This is the third Winter Games that Italy has hosted. It’s the second time that Cortina has hosted. Cortina hosted alone in 1956.

Alex: Oh wow.

Caitlin: Yes, that was 70 years ago.

Alex: That was 50 years ago. What?

Caitlin: No, it’s just how I feel. I feel old saying 70. I did the math. Yes, that was 70 years ago. And this Olympics in particular, we’re continuing to see those barriers broken. 47% of all athletes this year are women. That is a record for any Olympics. And there are 50 women’s events. That is a record for the Winter Olympics. The other thing that I read that was really cool about these Olympics is all Olympians and Paralympians will all receive $200,000 in just kind of a fund. I could not track down who is providing this.

Alex: Every country’s Olympians, not just one country?

Caitlin: I think so. I need to go look into it, but again, some of these athletes are not making billions doing curling in Duluth, Minnesota. Or I mean, there’s some Chaska folks here from nearby. So I thought that was cool. Let’s talk a little bit about the business side of things. NBC has been chosen as the premier broadcast partner for the Olympics. They signed a deal in 2014, a $7.75 billion deal for all games broadcasts of summer and winter broadcasts through 2032. The Olympic committee announced a $3 billion agreement just recently for the 2034 Salt Lake City games, and the 2036 summer games. So all in from 2014 to 2036, that’s an over $10 billion, almost $11 billion broadcast deal with NBC. They have been doing the Summer Olympics since 1988 and the Winter Olympics since 2002. What is really key about this is they have just signed these big contracts and they are choosing to feature women. When NBC dropped its first main trailer for the Olympics, it happened during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. It was all female athletes. It was Lindsey Vonn. It was Alysa Liu. It was Chloe Kim. It was Mikaela Shiffrin. This is so intentional. You don’t sign multiple billion dollar contracts and then not intentionally choose the athletes who are going to drive viewership. And what it points to is that women are driving viewership of these sports. If we take the last two summer games, Tokyo in 2020 and Paris in 2024, we saw 56 to 60% of prime time coverage geared towards female athletes.

Alex: Yeah, and I feel like a lot of times what people will say is like the demand for it isn’t there. And I almost kind of think of the opposite, is that the supply hadn’t been there for so long of women’s athletics in these games and they’ve been trending that way. And so as the supply has increased, the consumption has increased.

Caitlin: And I want to say, I think supply hasn’t necessarily been there because it hasn’t always been allowed. So there’s always been female athletes doing these things that are really high level. But like we just mentioned, they are adding events for women. They are adding opportunities for them to compete at these tournaments that were originally only for men. Supply from broadcast and supply from actual events. So if we go back to those two games, we saw the highest social media engagement rates. During the 2020 Olympics, Simone Biles, who withdrew from the tournament, produced 100 million organic impressions and $2.7 million in social value from one tweet. One tweet. You think that marketers and people aren’t looking at that going, we should be putting her in our feature? Exactly. High performance. 67 of the 126 medals won by Team USA during the Paris Olympics were brought home by women. High viewership, so two examples of this: 9 million average viewers for the women’s soccer gold medal match, saw the U.S. take gold over Brazil. And then 13 million peak viewership during the women’s gymnastics team final, because Simone Biles had come back. You had Jordan Chiles, you had Suni Lee. So if you’ve watched the Olympics at all this Winter Games, you will notice that it is highly geared towards women. The features are, we’ve seen the Visa ad with Mikaela Shiffrin and her younger self. I gotta be honest with you guys, I don’t think I could name the only male athlete I can name is Korey Dropkin because he’s on the mixed curling doubles team with Cory Thiesse. I feel like I’ve heard more men’s names from other countries, frankly, than I’ve heard from Team USA. And that’s no shade to the male athletes on Team USA. It’s just that there’s this intentional focus on women which is really cool to see.

Highlighting Black Women on Team USA at the Winter Games

Caitlin: As we think about that representation, it’s also really important for us to think about the representation for other minority groups. As we mentioned at the top, it’s Black History Month. There’s a record number of Black American women competing in this Winter Games. I want to start by opening it with a little nod to the first Black American woman to win gold was Vonetta Flowers in the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. She won gold in the two-person bobsled.

Caitlin: Moving into our 2026 Olympians. Gotta start with our girl, Laila Edwards. Go Badgers. Laila currently plays for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she’s a senior, she’s a two-time national champion. She is the first Black woman on a national hockey team. And in 2024, she was named the MVP at the IIHF Women’s World Championship. She was the youngest ever to be named MVP. And so far in these games, Laila has showed up. She has three assists so far on Team USA’s now 15 goals.

Alex: I think the important thing with any of these athletes that we’re talking about in this segment, it’s really easy for some knuckleheads to say it’s just a representation spot. She’s really freaking good. As are all these women. Like these are not representation spots. They are at the top of their game here.

Caitlin: Yeah, appreciate that. Next on our list, we have Erin Jackson. She is the first Black woman to win individual gold. Vonetta Flowers won in the two-person bobsled, but Erin Jackson won individual gold at the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing in the 500-meter speed skate. I saw her skate today in the 1,000 meter speed skate. It’s not her top event. Her top event is the 500 meters. I think she ended up sixth. She was on the podium for a little while, but then got knocked out by her teammate, Brittany Bowe. Back to Erin Jackson, she holds six national records. So again, going to like, these aren’t just spots to fill. 28 World Cup medals, 16 of those are gold. She’s a baller. She also had the honor of being the flag bearer at these Winter Olympic Games, which is a huge honor.

Caitlin: Alright, we’re gonna move now into bobsled. Elana Meyers Taylor, she’s a five-time Olympic medalist in bobsled. She is a four-time world champion, and she is the most decorated Black winter Olympian of all time. She’s also the mom of two. She is chasing gold at these games. She has finished on the podium in every race, but never gotten that coveted gold medal. She competes in both the monobob and the two-woman bobsled.

Alex: A few weeks before the Olympics, she was in a race where the front axle of her sled apparently tore off, I believe, almost hit her. She continued, got in another crash, had to go to the hospital and then kept competing. She’s a tough cookie.

Caitlin: Moving along in our bobsled spotlight, Kaysha Love, she started doing bobsled in 2020. Made her Olympic debut just two years later in Beijing. What I will point out is a lot of collegiate sprinters convert to bobsled. She won the Monobob World Championships in 2025. She has 13 career podium finishes, seven in Monobob, six in the Two-Woman event. Next up, we’ve got Azaria Hill. She is the daughter of two Olympians. Her mom was a track and field athlete and her dad was an Olympic boxer. She is an Olympic debutante here in the 2026 Games. She was recruited to bobsled by her college track and field teammate, Kaysha Love. She was a fourth-place finisher at the 2024 World Championships and she competes in the two-woman bob. And then rounding out our bobsled athletes, we’ve got Jasmine Jones, also a debutante. She transitioned from sprinting in college into bobsled. She’s the mom of one and is a member of the US Air Force World Class Athlete Program.

Caitlin: And then our final two Black athletes that we’re highlighting today are skeleton athletes. Skeleton, you’re gonna lay on your belly on the sled with your head facing down the track. Mystique Ro, she discovered skeleton through a recruiting email from Elana Meyers Taylor. When she went to a rookie camp, she finished top three right out the gate, and then became the first American in eight years to medal in skeleton at the 2025 world championships. And then rounding out our featured athletes here, we have Kelly Curtis. She was the first Black skeleton athlete for Team USA. She competed at the 2022 Games in Beijing. She is also a member of the US Air Force World Class Athlete Program.

Team USA Figure Skating Trio: Amber Glenn, Alysa Liu, and Isabeau Levito

Caitlin: We are going to talk about Team USA’s figure skating, the women of the figure skating team. They opened the 2026 Olympics with gold in the team event. Let’s start with Amber Glenn. This is her first Olympics. She is the 2025 Women’s National Champion, and she’s coming off a record-breaking performance in her short program during qualifiers. She shares a lot about some of the things that she’s dealt with. She’s had some mental health issues, depression and anxiety, she’s dealt with an eating disorder. She is the oldest female individual skater in almost 100 years at 26. She’s also the first openly queer woman to skate for Team USA in the Olympics. I think she talks a lot about representation and being able to be out there on the world stage and just showing other young girls that no matter who you are, no matter what it is that’s important to you, you can compete at the highest level.

Alex: You get this idea that anybody can do almost anything. And then you have someone like Amber Glenn, who comes out and talks about her battles with depression, eating disorders, and anxiety, and it’s like a second side to that. Not everyone who is here has everything figured out. We deal with stuff too, and it’s just really cool to see that kind of stuff come out as well. Humanizes them, right?

Caitlin: One of her teammates, Alysa Liu. She is the reigning world figure skating champion. At 13, she won the senior U.S. National Championship. She’s the youngest ever to do that. And then she stepped away from the sport at 16. She came back in 2024, about 18 years of age, and is now back in the Olympics at 20. She was part of the 2022 bronze medal team in Beijing.

Alex: I think maybe that time away really helped her out. They said it’s like she walks around the building and skates on the ice like she’s on a cloud. And that is exactly what that routine looked like.

Caitlin: And then rounding out our trio here, Isabeau Levito, she is the youngest individual skater on the team at 18 years old. She’s a first-time Olympian. She is the 2023 U.S. champion and 2024 world silver medalist. She also is Italian-American, so it’s sort of a homecoming for her to be competing. Her mom actually is from Milan.

Caitlin: One final thing from a figure skating perspective, Madison Chock and Evan Bates, the ice dance duo, they’re the reigning world figure skating champions with three total world championships and seven national titles. They are competing, going for gold. They have not won an Olympic medal yet. They performed today in the rhythm dance portion of the ice dance event. They are currently in second place behind Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Nikolaj Sørensen heading into the free dance.

Lindsey Vonn’s Olympic Return and the Double Standard in Sports Media

Caitlin: Moving on to our final feature story in our Olympics segment, one of the GOATs, probably the GOAT. We’re going to talk about Lindsey Vonn. There were a lot of opinions over the weekend. Lindsey Vonn is from St. Paul, Minnesota. Started skiing at the age of two. She is a four-time World Cup champion. She has a gold medal in downhill in 2010, the first for an American woman. She has three total Olympic medals. She retired in 2019 due to injuries. She came out of retirement in 2024 following successful knee replacement surgery to become the oldest downhill skiing World Cup champion ever at 41. She came in with a completely torn ACL. She had to complete a training run to compete in the Olympics. On Sunday, when she got to the gate for the downhill, she started her run, she crashed 13 seconds into that run. Here’s what she said: “My Olympic dream did not finish the way I dreamt it would. It wasn’t a storybook ending or a fairy tale. It was just life. In downhill ski racing, the difference between a strategic line and a catastrophic injury can be as small as five inches. I was simply five inches too tight on my line when my right arm hooked inside the gate, twisting me and resulted in my crash. My ACL and past injuries had nothing to do with it”.

Caitlin: It’s hard for me to not get emotional or charged about this. Even after she made the decision to compete, there were journalists writing articles saying, “What soul searching is she doing? What is she trying to prove?” One guy was like, “She’s beautiful and smart and already a millionaire. Why is she trying?” You would not say that about a man. And the fact that societally, we continue to feel the need to comment on what a woman decides to do with her body is atrocious. Now you’ve got a bunch of knuckleheads out there saying she should have never done it and that of course this was going to happen. No, it wasn’t. If you watch, the crash had zero to do with her knee. She caught a gate. It was brave of her to step into that starting gate. Let’s celebrate that.

Alex: Any man, LeBron James, they would have called him brave. They would have said playing on a ruptured ACL in the finals is so brave, and I don’t understand why there’s such a big double standard there.

Caitlin: I do understand because it’s how it’s always been for women. I wish Lindsey Vonn the best recovery. She has a complex tibial fracture. Horrible injury, but she is truly an inspiration.

Upcoming 2026 Winter Olympic Events to Watch

Alex: Mikaela Shiffrin, skiing team combined competition. We have women’s Super G on Thursday the 12th at 4:30, the giant slalom on Sunday the 15th, and then the women’s slalom Wednesday the 18th. Women’s snowboard halfpipe Chloe Kim qualifiers on Wednesday, and then finals will be midday on Thursday the 12th. Kristen Santos-Griswold, short track speed skating 500 meters on Thursday. We got women’s ice hockey, Canada versus Finland on Thursday the 12th at 7:30 AM. Rescheduled cause Finland fell ill with the norovirus. And then Friday at 9:40, the start of the playoffs for the women’s hockey, quarterfinals on Friday, semi-finals by Monday. We talked about this earlier, mixed doubles curling final, where Team Korey Dropkin and Cory Thiesse are both competitors from our home state. Ski Mountaineering, it’s a new event. They actually have to climb up a mountain and then go down a mountain.

What to Watch This Week: Unrivaled 1v1 Tourney and NCAA Action

Alex: We have the Unrivaled 1v1 tourney starting Wednesday evening at 7 Central. This is a 32-player single elimination bracket. Final round is best of three, half court setup, first to 11 points or the highest score at 10 minutes. We have the champion getting $200,000, the runner up getting $50,000 and then $25,000 to each of the two semifinals.

Caitlin: This might be the biggest game prior to the tournament for NCAA women’s basketball: number 3 South Carolina at number 6 LSU this Saturday the 14th at 7:30 PM Central on ABC. Dawn Staley against Kim Mulkey. We also have MiLaysia Fulwiley who left South Carolina after two seasons and transferred to LSU last off-season. Moving on to NCAA hockey, number 2 Ohio State hosting number 3 Minnesota.

Alex: Here’s a new one that I did not know about that we might have to check in on, the WTA 1000 in Doha. And then the first round UEFA Women’s Champions League knockout phase playoffs. Wolfsburg playing Juventus at 11:45 AM on Thursday the 12th. And then Atleti playing Man United at 2 PM on Thursday. These are on Paramount Plus or the DAZN network.

Caitlin: I did see before we got on to record tonight for those local to the Minneapolis area, A Bar of Their Own. It’s a women’s sports bar. Go find a spot to watch the game and go support a local business.

Weekly Winners and Losers: LPGA, Chicago Sky, and Lindsey Vonn

Caitlin: My loser is every single person who has decided that they need to comment on what Lindsey Vonn is or isn’t doing with her body or her skiing.

Alex: I think I had two losers. The LPGA, just that whole thing from a different angle this week. You’re the commissioner, you had no contingency plan. But then the other one was the Chicago Sky stuff, just seems like not the right time to do that right now. Devaluing the franchise, not a good time.

Caitlin: Go look at how Lindsey Vonn has responded to some of these people. She’s had a couple where she’s like, you don’t know me, get out of my space. And she’s done it with such grace and poise, but a little bit of bite because these people deserve a little bit of bite. So winner for that and holding her ground. She is truly an inspiration.

Alex: I had the Denver Summit FC and their 40,000 ticket sales. That is phenomenal. To sell out for a new team anywhere to have 40,000 in your first game ever.

Caitlin: Yeah, that’s a huge win. Love to see all the momentum. We will be back next week.