Advertise on podcast: Olympics.com Podcast

We're officially just days away from kicking off the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026, with competition set to get underway on 4 February - and the Opening Ceremony scheduled for the 6th. With that in mind, host Nick McCarvel is joined by fellow Olympics.com reporter ZK Goh to talk about some of the big must-know storylines ahead of the Games, including "Quad God" figure skating star Ilia Malinin, the comeback of Lindsey Vonn, the USA-Canada women's hockey rivalry, cross-country skiing great Johannes Klaebo and much, much more. Nick also gets audio dispatches from a handful of his other Olympics.com colleagues on the story they're most excited for - from ski jumping to Brazilian skeleton to the NHL's return to the Games and beyond. Plus, three-time Olympic snowboard champion Shaun White describes why, exactly, the Olympics are just so extraordinary for the athletes themselves in a blurb from his exclusive interview with reporter Annie Fast. 

There might be no story more awe-inspiring at Milano Cortina 2026 than that of Deanna Stellato-Dudek, a 42-year-old figure skater who left the sport for 16 years - only to return, and then win a world title. The Chicago native, who now competes for Canada, is the subject of a new Olympic Channel documentary called Deanna's Dream, which is available to stream for free now on Olympics.com. "This story is way bigger than me," Stellato tells host Nick McCarvel in the latest episode of the podcast, which dives deep into Deanna's journey and the documentary surrounding it. "It's about all women at any age of life who feel like they want to change something and make something more of themselves." "I always think that my age provides me with a power," she adds, before laughing: "The only thing is that I have to put more work than my 20-year-old counterparts into just showing up the next morning." Stellato-Dudek and partner Maxime Deschamps are competing this week (9-11 January) at the Canadian Championships, where the duo is aiming for a fourth consecutive national title - and a berth to the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026. You can stream Deanna's Dream on Olympics.com now - for free.

Executive producers Malala Yousafzai and Arian Moayed sit down to discuss the film, Champions of the Golden Valley, and its many themes as the documentary is now streaming exclusively on Olympics.com. "This such a powerful story about the people of Afghanistan and how much they desire peace in their community," Nobel Peace Prize winner and human rights activist Malala tells host Nick McCarvel on the pod.  "And how skiing, a sport, can give hope to our community." Yousafzai and Moayed also hit on the refugee experience, the power of sport for girls and women internationally, the IOC Olympic Refugee team and much more in a wide-ranging conversation. You can also stream Champions of the Golden Valley now, available for free on Olympics.com.

There is set to be just one new sport added to the Olympic programme for Milano Cortina 2026, but it is one with historic roots in the Italian Alps. Ski mountaineering will feature both a sprint and mixed relay event in its Winter Olympic debut, and on this episode of the podcast, host Nick McCarvel dives deep - or rather, scales the mountain - to understand this fascinating sport, often set in the most picturesque of outdoor courses. Skimo stars Emily Harrop, Cameron Smith and Johanna Hiemer help to explain the sport and its many challenges in exclusive interviews on the pod, while Olympics.com producers Nadine Regel, Guillaume Depasse and Annie Fast lay out the many storylines to watch out for, including French superstar Thibault Anselmet and the Spanish duo of Ana Alonso Rodriguez and Oriol Cardonna Coll - among others. You can explore skimo even more with the new Olympic Channel documentary, Into the Unknown, which is out now exclusively on Olympics.com.

For the first time in four Winter Olympic cycles, alpine skiing is making a return to some of its most famed downhill tracks. Tucked in the Italian Dolomites, Cortina (women) and Bormio (men) will host Milano Cortina 2026's downhill competitions. In this episode, Nick McCarvel is joined by Olympics.com skiing expert Alessandro Poggi to break down just what that means to the athletes ahead of February. Nick and Ales also discuss some of the biggest storylines of the alpine skiing Olympic season, and then turn the episode over to the athletes, with exclusive interviews featuring American superstars Lindsey Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin, Brazil's trailblazer Lucas Pinheiro Braathen and Aleksander Aamodt Kilde of Norway.

If you fall in love with the world of figure skating every four years, this episode is for you. Host Nick McCarvel and fellow Olympics.com producer Lena Smirnova sit down to discuss the biggest storylines in the sport ahead of February's Winter Olympics at Milano Cortina 2026. And there's a lot of them! From the "Quad God" Ilia Malinin's dominance to the fascinating story of 42-year-old Deanna Stellato Dudek to the surprise comebacks of Olympic medallists and more, Nick and Lena bring reporting and insights into the must-know stories ahead of the Games. Lena also pulls the curtain back on the Olympics.com series Ink on Blades, which dives into the artistic process that Olympic programs go through before being presented to the world. Plus, hear from Malinin and fellow top American Isabeau Levito on everything from how they package their programs to creating a community of support among their fellow skaters.

Believe it or not, the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 are only 100 days away! Host Nick McCarvel is joined by Olympics.com colleagues ZK Goh, Chloe Merrell and Nischal Schwager-Patel for a special countdown roundtable, focusing in on their Winter sports: Ice hockey, curling and ski jumping, respectively. They preview the top storylines in those disciplines and beyond, including the NHL’s return to the men’s hockey event, the inspiring story of the Filipino curling team, a 44-year-old Swiss ski jumper and much more. Plus, Nick speaks one-on-one with U.S. women’s hockey legend Kendall Coyne Schofield, who has returned to the Team USA roster after giving birth to a son in 2023. The goal? Gold. “That is absolutely correct,” she laughed.

For the first time since last year's Paris Olympics, the biggest stars in gymnastics are set to gather in one place - this time for the 2025 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships - held in Jakarta, Indonesia. "It's going to be interesting to see some of these new talents and how they step up into the spotlight," says Olympics.com gymnastics producer Scott Bregman, who joins host Nick McCarvel to help preview the event. Bregman is referring to an open opportunity for the women in attendance as Simone Biles, Rebeca Andrade and reigning U.S. champion Hezly Rivera are all set to miss the competition. Bregman breaks down the big storylines to watch out for, including the return of another American, Skye Blakely, who has proven resilient after injury prevented her from making the U.S. Olympic team - twice. On the men's side, Scott says it could be a three-way race among 2021 world champion Zheng Boheng and the two most recent Olympic champions, Oka Shinnosuke (2024) and Hashimoto Daiki (2021). Don't sleep on Filipino Carlos Yulo, either, who will have plenty of support at the first-ever Gymnastics Worlds held in Southeast Asia.

With World Mental Health Day set for October 10th, this episode of the Olympics.com podcast checks in on the mental health movement in the Olympic space - which has morphed by leaps and bounds over just the last five years.  In a roundtable discussion, Olympic figure skating medallist Gracie Gold, an IOC Mental Health Ambassador, is joined by Scott Sloan, the IOC's senior project manager for mental health, in conversation with host Nick McCarvel. "When we say mental health, it's about aspiring to have good mental health... something in the shift there [that] I think is important," says Sloan about the changing mental health world. "I think athletes are [now] feeling more comfortable to say like, 'There's this problem and I don't know how to fix it,'" added Gold, who wrote a memoir that detailed - in part - her own mental health journey. Now, she says, the response is: "'Let's just continue to find the answers. And knowing that while it's okay to not know the answer, it's not okay not to do anything about it."

There will never be another Olympian quite like Carl Lewis - on or off the track. The athletics superstar is a nine-time gold medallist, and navigated a nearly two-decade-long career that was full of headline-grabbing controversy. It’s all featured in a new Olympic Channel documentary, I’M CARL LEWIS!, which is out now and available for viewing in the USA and Japan. Lewis joins Olympics.com producer Scott Bregman for a discussion on the documentary, his reflections on his historic career, his turn as a pop culture phenomenon, as well as his thoughts on fellow Olympic 100m champion Noah Lyles, teenage sensation Gout Gout - and much more. Find the full documentary on Olympics.com now.

It's been a big season on the track for athletics stars Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Kenny Bednarek of the USA. McLaughlin-Levrone is the two-time reigning Olympic champion and world record holder in the 400m hurdles, but has thrown her version of a curve ball at the sport - switching events to the 400m flat. Bednarek, meanwhile, claimed his first-ever American title, winning the 100m last month before finishing runner-up to rival Noah Lyles in a heated final metres in the 200m, the two exchanging words after. Both McLaughlin-Levrone and Bednarek sit down with Olympics.com podcast host Nick McCarvel to discuss their respective successes, their memories from Paris 2024 and what's changed this season - all in the lead-up to the 2025 World Athletics Championships, which begin 13 September in Tokyo.

The US Open tennis tournament is underway in New York City - where some of the biggest stars, like defending champions Jannik Sinner and Aryna Sabalenka are aiming for the year's final Grand Slam. But there are plenty of players who are looking for their next big breakthrough, too. Enter 23-year-old American Emilio Nava, son of parents who met at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul and enters the event at a career-high world number 101. The Southern California native joins host Nick McCarvel to discuss what it was like to be raised by not one but two Olympians, then discusses what he took from four years of training in Spain under the eye of former world No.1 Juan Carlos Ferrero - and alongside Carlos Alcaraz. While Nava would like to finally break into the world's top 100, he doesn't want to stop there: "My goals and my dreams are definitely a little bit bigger than that," he told us. One of them? To compete at LA 2028 for Team USA. "That's the absolute goal," he said of what would be a home Games for him - right where he grew up. 

"There were a lot of intense emotions that went with it," says gymnastics superstar Simone Biles when recounting her triumphant return to the Olympic stage, just over a year ago at Paris 2024. "There was always a part of me that thought, 'What if?' And I think that was my anxiety talking. So if I could lower that voice, then I felt more comfortable competing." We all know what happened next: Biles scooped up a second individual all-around gold days after leading the U.S. to the Olympic team title. For this episode of the Olympics.com podcast, she speaks one-on-one with longtime gymnastics reporter Scott Bregman, sharing with him that, yes, she had dealt with cases of the twisties that haunted her at Tokyo 2020 in 2021 ahead of Paris. But she wasn't going to let them get in her way, and cleared her path to success with consistent therapy and strict boundary-setting. Scott also speaks with Tokyo champion Sunisa Lee, who had her own comeback story in Paris after battling a rare kidney disease that threatened to end her career. Host Nick McCarvel gets Scott's perspective on the post-Paris lay of the land for American gymnastics, with the U.S. Gymnastics Championships set for 7-10 August in New Orleans.

July 26th marks one year since the Opening Ceremony of Paris 2024, an eye-popping start to what proved to be an Olympic Games to remember. While household names like Simone Biles, Tom Daley and Katey Ledecky soared, new stars in Leon Marchand, Noah Lyles, Summer McIntosh and Julien Alfred introduced themselves to the global Olympic audience. We dive back into Paris in this special rewind episode, featuring stories you may have not yet heard of - both on and off the field of play. Olympic champions Hamish Kerr (athletics) and Toby Roberts (sport climbing) share what it meant to make history for their countries, and bronze medallist Gaby Dabrowski (tennis) details her journey to the podium - less than four months removed from a breast cancer diagnosis. We also hear from then-IOC President Thomas Bach about his reflections on Paris 2024, check in on the legacy being left behind in France with the IOC's Tania Braga and speak with Jerome Tschupp, one of over 45,000 volunteers from Paris 2024, about his passion for the role - and much, much more. -- Re-live Paris 2024 landing page on Olympics.com: https://www.olympics.com/en/paris-2024-anniversary-relive-with-highlights-and-replays

Having combined for nine Olympic medals at Paris 2024, American swimmers Kate Douglass and Regan Smith deserved a little rest. The close friends join the Olympics.com podcast to discuss their downtime - and why they felt like it was so important as they both set goals ahead of LA 2028 in three years' time. Among other topics, Douglass details an altered training approach at her collegiate alma mater in Virginia in a chat with host Nick McCarvel, while Smith opens up about her rivalry with Australia's Kaylee McKeown with Andrew Binner - and much more. Both women are set to compete at this month's World Aquatics Championships in Singapore, where the swimming gets underway on 27 July.