Speedskating Into 2026 With U.S. Olympic Trials

Just days after ringing in 2026, U.S. Speedskating hosted the long track Team USA Olympic Trials at The Pettit National Ice Center in the Milwaukee suburb of West Allis. 

Nestled beside the snow-covered Wisconsin State Fair Park, The Pettit sold out three of the four competition dates Jan. 2 to 5, with thousands of fans -- including multiple Olympic champions who reside and coach locally -- in attendance.

Though I previously attended Olympic speed skating (domestically it's one word but in the IOC world it's two) starting with Salt Lake 2002 then again at Vancouver 2010 and Sochi 2014, and though my first visits to The Pettit spanned early 1995 through 2015, the 2026 gathering was my first Olympic Trials. 

It was also the first time with media access thanks to Kevin Butler of The Pettit and Alysha Rummler of U.S. Speedskating's media team, who hosted several dozen reporters including WTMJ-TV and crews from Chicago, USA Today, The Athletic, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and NPR affiliates. 

A typical reporting session involved:

• Viewing the races from grandstand seating or standing room credential-access sections on the ends of the skating oval
• Keeping an eye on the top finishers to wrap up their national NBC interviews and change out of their skates in the center of the venue
• Hustling to the under-track maze of corridors, locker rooms and workout spaces to the "mixed zone" at which athlete:media conversations took place in short post-race or post-ceremony intervals

In no particular order, Olympian interviews took place with Erin Jackson, Brittany Bowe, Jordan Stolz and Conor McDermott-Mostowy, who each entered the trials as favorites. 

Surprise conversations also took place with newly-designated Olympians, most notably Greta Myers, who became the buzz of the Trials when she crossed over too close to Bowe on one of the last straightaways in their 1500 race, forcing a disqualification while creating an opportunity to race again for an Olympic spot. 

Though skating solo and exhausted from the original race only an hour earlier, Myers finished with a faster time to seal her Milan Cortina travels. Here's one of the athlete conversations: 

The full U.S. Speedskating roster for Italy is available with bios here. 

At one point over the weekend, I spotted Olympic champion Shani Davis speaking with NBC's reporting team. Later near the merch tables, he shared a few stories from his Olympic experiences (we had previously crossed paths at a restaurant near the 2018 PyeongChang Olympic Village at that Games) and we talked pin collecting, an aspect of the athlete experience he seemed to appreciate. Nice guy! 

With only minutes to spare before my Jan. 5 sprint to rental car return and fly home from Mitchell Field MKE, my all-time favorite skater Bonnie Blair -- who resides not far my ex-girlfriend's home in Delafield, Wis. -- shared a few minutes about skating at the Olympic Trials in Milwaukee when the ice oval was outdoors (BRRRRR) circa 1988. 

Inspired by the Team USA Trials, I secured tickets to three of the speedskating finals (so far) in Milan, where its reported the Americans have a shot at sharing the podium with Team Netherlands and their entourage including Femke Kok (the ice answer to my other favorite Femke). 

See you soon at Milano Speed Skating Stadium!

Photos by Nicholas Wolaver

 

Frank Gehry Dies at 96, But His Barcelona Olympic and Global Architecture Masterpieces Shall Endure

News of Frank Gehry's passing today was another 2025 kick to the gut. What an imaginative, original creator he was.

As of this post, The New York Times obit team is still tweaking their tribute under the working headline Frank O. Gehry, Titan of Architecture, Dies at 96 with sidebars of sweeping images for Top 12 Works and an extensive appraisal. 

My earliest Gehry encounter was in the mid-1990s, spotting the gleaming, then recently opened Weisman Art Museum, aka WAM, on the Mississippi River hillside of the University of Minnesota campus. 

Sunlight glistened from the building's stainless-steel coating, with different effects from midday to sunset, much like the 2009 photo (right).

Exploring its galleries, finally visited years later (in 2004 or 2005) proved reminiscent of trips to another architect Frank -- specifically, Lloyd Wright's -- Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan with its nontraditional spaces and oblong or curvy rooms.

Speaking of Guggenheims, I distinctly recall clipping photos of Gehry's Bilbao masterpiece during the early days of my first PR job at Matlock (fall 1997) when my morning routine included mandatory reading of The Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for client or related industry news. 

On one of the morning reads around the October museum opening, photos from Spain's Guggenheim jumped off the page, and a visit to experience that building instantly entered my international travel wish list at a time when my first passport had not yet been stamped.  

Unknowingly, in November that year, on a first overseas visit to Barcelona, another of Gehry's icons appeared while touring the coastal 1992 Olympic Village, where his Peix (fish) structure is proudly perched (no pun intended) adjacent to the two towers built to house athletes. Even at night it twinkled, but I did not recognize it as Gehry. 

It took 21 years, but a visit to Guggenheim Bilbao was a "must" in a summer 2018 Spain-France-Andorra-Spain road trip with Valentina -- it took most of the day to explore every corner and curve, still marveling from all angles on an evening riverside walk and from atop the city's funicular-access cliffs (photo below left was museum view from hotel). 

Over the years, experiencing Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles -- a likely Cultural Olympiad venue for LA28 -- as well as The Stata Center in Boston, Chicago's Pritzker Pavillion and neighboring Pedestrian Bridge (featured in Chicago's 2016 Olympic bid), Manhattan's IAC Building and skyscraper on Spruce Street, each came into view. 

The 2017 IOC Commission Visit for the Paris 2024 Olympic bid was also punctuated by the committee's daytime visit (see photo right) to what became my second-favorite Gehry, the astounding Foundation Louis Vuitton, which last year hosted the Torch Relay and one of the biggest pre-Games galas. 

Valentina and I enjoyed an after-hours visit to the museum's showstopping exhibition of Jean-Michel Basquiat in Oct. 2018 (yes, we could not get enough of France that year) -- in many ways, Gehry's design was the best possible venue to experience the young painter's work. 

At the end of the aforementioned Spain road trip, we swam in the shadow of Gehry's Olympic fish while guests of the Barcelona '92 athlete housing-turned-hotel (we also could not get enough of Spain). 

Reflecting on Gehry's passing, this afternoon brought realization that around each of his creations, I was never the only passerby who stopped in their tracks, awestruck by the designs, or who lingered as participants on Slow Art Day, studying each line and curve. 

Even this past May, in Prague for the 2025 World Olympic Collectors Fair, spotting Gehry's "Dancing House" (right) co-designed with a Czech architect was ab exciting part of the weekend. 

It's unclear to me why Gehry did not contribute more to Olympic venue design, but then, sports arenas are not part of his extensive CV. The website of his firm is sparse on such information.

Though his Guggenheim Abu Dhabi opening date is yet unknown, I'll rest tonight dreaming of a future visit to this and other Gehry destination designs. 

Image credits: Top photo Getty via BBC; WAM photo via Wiki; headshot via this biography page; Peix with pool via this Port Olympic Barcelona page; exterior of Eight Spruce Street from The New York Times by Piotr Redlinski via this archive link; Foundation Louis Vuitton photo and Dancing House photo by Nicholas Wolaver. Guggenheim Bilbao photo with red bridge and photo below by Nicholas Wolaver. 

Beehive State Counts Down 2,999 Days Remaining for Rebranded Utah 2034 Organizing Committee

Call this post for what it is: A day late and a dollar short. 

After all, there's no money in blogging, and it was yesterday -- the 3,000 Days milestone for the start of the next Winter Olympic Games on U.S. soil -- when organizers in the Beehive State announced new branding as "Utah 2034" at ceremonies inside the international airport coded SLC. 

Busy bees, indeed. And their news got its share of buzz. 

Here's a look at how Salt Lake City's NBC affiliate KSL covered the festivities including an unveiling by the state's governor:

Watching the news via YouTube livestream inspired both waves of memories from Salt Lake 2002 and optimism for what's ahead for Utah 2034. 

Curiosity was instantly piqued as to responses as compared to mine. This USA Today response includes a quote Lindsey Vonn shared when I asked about her 2034 role during the recent Team USA Media Summit. 

Just over 30 hours since the first impression, the distinct Utah 2034 logo and theme grew on me, though it took a view or two of the explanatory video, which sheds light on how the state's topography informed the original font:

According to the committee's press release, the new "wordmark" (not a word in any dictionary I checked) for Utah 2034 accompanied the unveiling of state-shaped public art in the airport (see photo via the Deseret News) and the launch of merchandise "... giving fans access to gear more than eight years ahead of the Games" with some revenue shared with LA28.

At a glance, the "A" is a nod to the Delicate Arch. Not as obvious: the symmetrical typeface spacing is a riff on the capital city's urban maps, while the curves celebrate rivers and Native American petroglyphs. 

The media kit for the unveiling further explains the branding's special font. 

"The Utah 2034 Wordmark is inspired by Utah's varied landscape, where desert buttes, mountain peaks and winding rivers create a sense of constant movement and transformation."

OK. Still more from the press kit:

"[The Games] are rarely awarded nearly a decade before the event. To help host regions build early awareness and momentum, the IOC allows "Transition Logos" to be created long before the full Brand Identity" ... limited to typography--without symbols or icons--reserving the full creative expression for the official Games emblem release closer [to the Olympiad]."

This graphic illustrates these details: 

So anyone who is critical of the new look for Utah 2034 can breath easy ... a replacement is on the horizon in, say, 2,000 days or so. 

Meanwhile, in France, the organizing committee for the 2030 Winter Olympic Games does not seem to yet have a website let alone a wordmark. 

Methinks executives in that alpine host region near coastal Nice -- with just over two months before their handover ceremony from Milan-Cortina -- yesterday uttered of Utah 2034 things like sacrebleu or putain de merde or even pourquoi n'y avons-nous pas pense? in response to the retailed-centered motivation americaine.

Merci, Google Translate.

Through an informal poll of family and friends via my personal Facebook page and the page for this blog, an Oklahoma cousin was first to chime in "... it's difficult to read." 

Other feedback ranged from "cool" and "love it" to "on par" with Games branding then "it's junk" or "messy" and reminiscent "of an obstacle course." My favorite comment so far, it's a "little Klingonish" (another new word for moi). 

Fun fact: I'm no Trekkie, but even "Star Trek" had an Olympic Class of starship fleets. You can beam, err, look it up!

I'm awaiting some expert input from a fellow International Society of Olympic Historians board member who literally wrote the book on brand identity in the Olympic Movement. My guess is someone in the next paragraph perused its pages during the Utah 2034 process, and I wrote to ask them just that. 

A pleasant surprise from the press kit is that a team of four Team USA Paralympians collaborated with chief brand consultant Molly Mazzolini, who sports some serious creds in an out of the Olympic Family, and pros from Works Collective, Boncom and the Utah Office of Tourism. 

A less pleasant realization: Not all of the unveiled merch for Utah 2034 is yet available online. Though it was easy to discover the Paralympian input-inspired black and white logo pins, the polos and hats remain in an undisclosed warehouse and/or sales link. 

The bottom line is I rather like Utah 2034 and it will be interesting to see how the 2030 Winter and Brisbane 2032 organizers respond, or don't, with their own wordmarks. 

And for anyone in SLC feeling miffed by the state-inclusive rebrand, your city still has one of the best Tony-winning Broadway musical songs to celebrate (a personal, albeit distant longshot, wish list tune for the opening ceremony in 2,999 nights). 

Image credits: Airport press conference photo via Deseret News' Scott G Winterton; handout images via Utah 2034; archived photo from 2002 by Brian Bahr; "Star Trek" images via this page.

Olympic High Jumpers Earn Medals, Chart Courses for LA28 at Tokyo 2025 World Championships

The best quote heard in the media mixed zone at Tokyo 2025 came from Ukraine high jump phenom Yaroslava Mahuchikh on the event's closing night. 

Carrying her rain-soaked sleeping bag less than an hour after earning a shared World Athletics Championship bronze with Serbia's Angelina Topic, and still dripping from the downpour that added tense competition delays and several inches of water to the landing pit, Mahuchikh spoke only of the good perceived from defending her 2023 Budapest and Paris 2024 golds (she also earned a bronze at Japan National Stadium at the Tokyo Olympics).

Paraphrasing here, "This gives me incentive to work toward [the next championships] and LA28." 

No tears. No frustration. No vent. Just focus on the lessons learned and what's next, spoken like a true champion. 

"I will learn from this," the world record holder added. 

Though she was calm and confident at the same media row at Tokyo, first-time and fellow bronze winner Topic -- who left Budapest in seventh and qualified for the Paris finals but no results due to injury -- was a tearful ball of nerves during the "excruciating" wait for the evening's last jumps. 

From my second-row seat near the trackside spot where Topic consulted her coach between leaps, by the middle of the first cloudburst she was pacing and paused to clasp her hands and stare sideways as though mimicking "Mater Dolorosa" (right) spotted the previous evening in Japan's National Museum of Western Art. 

When the scoreboard finally revealed bronze was secure, she fell to her knees with relief. 

"It was the most stressful two hours of my life," Topic said. "I was sitting with [Nicola] Olyslagers from Australia, and she was holding me like a baby."

With Topic and Mahuchikh each soaring 1.97m, it was Olyslagers who brought home gold at 2m as her follow up to Olympic silver last year and bronze at Budapest 2023. 

Poland's Maria Zodzik surprised herself and the world by winning silver with her personal best jump (also 2m -- my seatmates from Warsaw were over the moon). All four medalists competed at Japan National Stadium previously at the 2020 Olympics. 

Also impressive: Three-time Olympian and Paris bronze medalist Eleanor Patterson (AUS), Yuliia Levchenko (UKR) also a three-time Olympian, 2024 Olympian Christina Honsel (GER), thrice Olympian Morgan Lake (GBR) and Paris Olympian Elena Kulichenko, the recent University of Georgia grad/NCAA champ jumping for Cyprus who answered questions after the mid-meet qualifier.  

For all the rain-soaked drama, check out this NRG Sport roundup for the women's high jump final (the last photo at the base of this post is a screen shot of this blogger seated at Mahuchikh's penultimate jump).

Photo credits: Top image by Ashley Landis/Associated Press; Yaroslava and Angelina rain photos by Louise Delmotte/Associated Press; painting by Carlo Dolci via Japan National Museum of Western Art; tearful Angelina Topic with hands via Serbian Times; all photos in Tokyo 2025 mixed zone and trackside photos (below) copyright Nicholas Wolaver not for use without written permission. 

Bringing Home the Beacon: Day One in Wonder City

Home 3.5 weeks since Tokyo, jetlag looms but experiences resonate from eight days and nights in the flowery city. 

With thanks to the team at HITO-Communications Inc. for their generous hospitality, my first full date in Japan (17 Sept.) included a half-day trio of tourism experiences designed for international media registered with World Athletics. 

After boarding our bus at Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium--site of 1964 Olympic gymnastics, 2020 Olympic table tennis and our World Championships accreditation pickup--the tour entourage with about 20 journalists from Australia, U.K., Slovakia and USA set out for Takarayu, which we learned is one of six remaining sento public bathhouses in the capital and 430 nationwide (down from 2,600 in 1968). 

Nestled in a low-rise residential area near barber shops and small markets, the family-owned business' name means "treasure hot spring" according to handout materials, from which the following details were also noted.  

Currently operated by the founder's grandsons, great-granddaughter and other employees with tenures over 70 years, the sento's current shrine-inspired building opened in 1938, now with features including:

• 
  A wrap-around veranda overlooking an Oniwa Japanese garden featuring dozens of koi and seasonal hydrangeas, a lovely place for tea and meditation before or after the bathing experience

• Numerous carvings, sculptures and paintings--including panoramic murals over the bathing areas--featuring guardian deities or award-winning likenesses of Mt. Fuji and its neighboring lakes

• 
  Nods to nostalgia, like yellow buckets known as "icons of the sento" popularized by a Japanese pharmaceutical company, or imported touches like a spa from Finland installed in 1986

While walking together barefoot was the closest our group got to nudity, sento tradition calls for all patrons to don their birthday suits in gender-specific sections of the venue (our blended tour was on the men's side). 

With some post-visit research inspired by the owner's presentation, I learned this comfortable group nudity is a form of camaraderie or "skinship" as "everyone is equal" in the sento scene, aka hadaka no tsukiai. For a thrill, a few of us dipped our arms to the elbows, immersing them in a low voltage "electric bath" in which pulses of electricity visibly vibrated the skin with current strong enough to buzz one's bones along the edge of discomfort. Coincidentally, the electrified tub resided near the floor-to-ceiling "Hell Painting" in vivid red hues. 

With our group photo and brief return-to-bus hike complete, tour stop two brought us to the 27 level Asakusa View Hotel and its top floor "Musashi" Sky Grill Buffet restaurant, a sumptuous experience blending Asian and Western cuisine (my cousin tells me the name refers to a famous warrior and subject of a fresh National Geographic article). 

I made a point of trying the exotic-to-me jellyfish salad (gooey with some zing) and a grilled kebab of octopi (chewy) but avoided a few mystery dishes (even the English descriptions spelled too much risk for my palate). Also, fell in love with the fresh juice bar with acai smoothies, a sweet and tasty Brazilian treat last enjoyed during the Rio 2016 Games. 

But even the best chef-crafted dishes at Mushashi are upstaged by the dining room's panoramic views facing Tokyo's oldest temple, Senso-ji, and its neighbor Asakusa Shrine (both of which top the to do list for my next Japan visit), with Asahi's beer glass-shaped world headquarters and its distinctive "flame object" (aka "golden turd") also visible from the hotel. My cousin shared that the designer of this Flamme d'or, Phillippe Starck, drew inspiration from an Olympic flame. 

The lunchtime vista also foreshadowed our third tour stop to, and my eyes' first views of, the globe's third-tallest freestanding structure, Tokyo Skytree. 

While my hunch before arrival was that the world's loftiest broadcast tower would be visible from anywhere across Tokyo, that assumption proved untrue. 

Rather, my first sightings of the 2,080-foot/634m building were from the penthouse lunch and from street level a few blocks from arrival, where our driver plunged his vehicle into a subterranean parking lot expansive enough to fit fifty -- that's 50! -- tour buses. Since our party including official Tokyo tourism officials, we parked in space No. 1, naturally). 

Inside the tower's base, I found the cavernous lobby akin to Lower Manhattan's National Sept. 11 Memorial atrium in terms of comfortably accommodating thousands of daily visitors and keeping them engaged whilst waiting in long lines for four custom express Toshiba elevators -- each designed to highlight traditional and elegant Japanese handicrafts celebrating each season -- built to whisk 40 passengers at a time. By the way, advance ticket purchases are very strongly suggested for families, couples and/or solo travelers. 

Our group was treated to views from an "off limits" peek up the tower's frame, an "architectural upskirt view" a U.K. reporter quipped to the groans of some and bewilderment of our hosts. 

Strangely, my ears did not pop when we unloaded on what is named Floor 350 (the levels correspond with meters above terra firma). Our first stop: The W1SH Ribbon monument at which visitors may purchase a gashapon vended bubble enclosing a swatch of colored fabric on which guests write their hopes or dreams for others or themselves. 

It was fun to tether my green-n-Sharpie edition on a branch near Olympic and World Champion Sergei Bubka tied his message the previous day, according to our guide. 

I spent our remaining time at Tembo Deck snapping photos and spotting landmarks across the cityscape. 

One unexpected sight was the outdoor window washers smiling back at dazed tourists. 

Though not as knee-quake terrifying as Chicago's Skydeck, there's also an expanse of glass flooring for those who wish to look at SkyTree's design from up top to bottom (cue the overheard Brit wit comment "downblouse!" views).  

The entourage then ascended to the Tembo Galleria at 450m, which features a wrap-around ramp to reach on foot the tour's apex at 451.2m, Sorakara Point, for more views. 

Sadly, the afternoon sky and horizon was only clear enough to make out the mountain range to our west, but not the all-star attraction, Fujisan. 

But our SkyTree experience did include a view of Mt. Fuji in that to promote the tower's home district and its hundreds of years of cultural history, as well as less-celebrated green initiatives, developers and Tokyo University's faculty of international tourism management collaborated to create "a traditional hands-on craft learning program for our sustainable planet" or #SusPla, from the first three letters of the last two words. 

Our handicraft du jour: Make your own mini screen, offered by Kataoka Byoubu, which enabled each member of our tour to create and take home a Edo keepsake. To recall the day, my screen selection was a semi-glossy version of Red Fuji, the famous woodblock print, and the mini screen now adorns a bedroom bookshelf. 

The hands-on program also offers Kimekomi fabric ball crafting and other cultural experiences. We all had a great time with our glue-coated paint brushes, but none of us were having a ball. 

Each of our tour hosts, from the bus team and guides to the owners of Takarayu and instructors at Kataoka Byoubu, earned sustained ovations and expressions of domo arigato for creating a fantastic introduction to several aspects of Tokyo. 

I also appreciated the Tokyo Metro Government office for providing a helpful brochure for the city, and interesting read during a family cafe meal en route to Japan National Stadium for my first night at the World Championships (more on that in next post to this site).  

A few nights later at another penthouse viewing point I caught my only nighttime glimpses of the SkyTree, brilliantly illuminated in violet for the World Athletics Championships, bringing to mind the tower's Olympic hues during the Tokyo 2020 Games-turned-2021 (see below). 

Tokyo shows the world how to bring home the beacon. 

Image credits: Top photo by Jordan McChesney; most other photos by Nicholas Wolaver except the screen image of Red Fuji via this retail site. Olympic and Tokyo 2025 images copyright Tokyo-Skytree