It’s About Time the Olympics Return to Its Horny Roots

Even though I usually write about dragons and nerd culture, I don’t hate sports. Basketball, baseball, and even football (Taylor’s Version) are all in rotation in my home. That’s especially true when a big event transcends the sport and crosses into a cultural moment; for March Madness, I’ll have a competent bracket filled out. Come June, I plan to be parked at some vaguely English bar, cheering like a hooligan during the World Cup.

But the Olympics have simply never done it for me, doubly so for the Winter Games. There’s less drama, the storylines are hard to follow, and the stars rarely seem to transcend the competition (figure skating being the one occasional exception). That said, ever since the Olympics announced that Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams—the stars of HBO’s Heated Rivalry, a steamy romance about two closeted, pro hockey players—would serve as torchbearers for the 2026 Milan Cortina Games (they carried the torches on Jan. 25), I have hope that the Olympics are beginning to figure out how to draw in mild haters like me: make the Games hot.

You’ve probably heard that, in the original Greek Olympics, competitors were naked. It’s a fact kind of like, “Hey, did you know pee is sterile?” Something you file away under “Interesting, not useful.” And, sure, ancient athletes were nude (and, for wrestlers, also covered in oil) because it made the sport easier; one can run faster and punch harder without clothes. But am I to believe that athletic prowess was the only reason the ancients greased up the fittest among them and made them wrestle naked under the warm Athenian sun? Please, I beg you, get real. Sexiness is in the DNA of the Olympics.

Eventually, we made our Olympians wear clothes—but the smutty spirit of the Olympics endured.

The modern Olympics are an enormous, behind-the-scenes fuckfest; athletes themselves have talked about this for years. In 2024, the Paris Olympics made headlines for distributing 300,000 condoms throughout the Olympic Village. Gay dating/hookup app Grindr literally changes its settings ahead of the Games to protect gay athletes—a cool and supportive, if depressingly necessary move. It’s also evidence that a lot of gay athletes will be using Grindr. And yet all we, the common folk, are hearing about from the vast majority of mainstream outlets is who won and who lost.

But I think the NHL’s quick embrace of Heated Rivalry as a “unique driver for creating new fans” can serve as a guiding light here. I believe the Olympics—or, at the very least, NBC, as its American broadcaster— has the opportunity to also create a “unique driver” for new fans and craft a few adult storylines of its own.

The events themselves already bring in plenty of viewers, but what if there are legions of yet-to-be-mined curling or bobsledding fans who just need a little will-they, won’t-they gossip injected into their play-by-plays? What if the color commentary included things like, “See how tightly the French bobsledders’ thighs grip one another? That is NOT normal,” or “I hear the Latvian captain has been curling up with a certain Canadian figure skating legend?” Suddenly, I’m Googling “thigh grip normal bobsled” and “what is curling.” I’m invested.

Does everyone remember ice dancers Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir from the 2018 Games? I remember nothing about the 2018 Olympics except these two; I don’t even know where the Games were. But the internet collectively melted down over their insane chemistry, refusing to believe that they weren’t sleeping together in real life (they denied it and have since married other people). Ice dancing, a sport that requires partnership and puts raw, shared emotion on display, has long provided some of the most memorable Olympic storylines. These pairs are thrilling, these stories are sexy. And it’s what the rest of the Games should strive to be, even just a little.

Maybe it’s too much to ask Olympic coverage to go full frontal; the Games serve a global audience with wildly different social mores to navigate. But at the very least, we deserve some slightly sexed-up coverage of Team USA. We can start with our NBC correspondents and have them dump the Ralph Lauren Americana fashion aesthetic. I got depressed watching Adam Rippon unbox his network-approved wardrobe full of cable-knit crewnecks and puffer vests. Who decided that the official look of our former-athletes-turned-correspondents should be “Connecticut PTA meets the least interesting Kennedys”? At one point in his video, Rippon comments that the look, of course, “isn’t SKIMS.” (Only the athletes get Nike and SKIMS hauls) OK, but…why not? For every five ski jackets and two lifeless beanies, could we add one garment with a discernible shape?

But more tragic than the yawn-inducing wardrobes are the same old tried-and-true storylines. Here is a list of the top NINETEEN stories to watch heading into the Olympics, as defined by NPR. It’s a whole bunch of wholesome with a side of deep despair: heroic comebacks, moms winning medals, and how much everyone hates ICE. Yes, we love these stories. They’ve always been the meat and potatoes of Olympic coverage. But my god, can we get a single glass of spicy wine to wash them down with?

I’m not suggesting that anchors go full Gossip Girl and start ruining people’s lives just for hooking up. Nor am I advocating for objectifying bodies instead of praising a lifetime of athletic achievement. But give me an Olympic DeuxMoi segment. Give me a few reported pieces about the logistics and etiquette of hooking up in the Olympic Village. If the popularity of Heated Rivalry has taught us anything, it’s that the people yearn for fewer crewnecks; more smolders, stares, and lightly-informed romantic speculation.

The world is bleak, and for some, sports are an escape. But for lots of us, sports alone are not enough. The IOC took the first step by naming our favorite fictional hockey players as torchbearers. Now it’s up to NBC to take the torch and bring it on home.

---