What best exemplified fair play during the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan Cortina, Italy?
The International Fair Play Committee, along with the International Olympic Committee, is asking the public to choose which of six “acts of sportsmanship, integrity and solidarity” that occurred during competition should win the Fair Play Award.
Votes can be cast online here through Tuesday for the following nominees:
- Amber Glenn, U.S. figure skater: Glenn shielded Japanese silver medalist Sakamoto Kaori’s tears over her performance from cameras, later posting on social media that “they will get all up in your business even when you clearly need space,” according to People magazine.
- U.S. and Italian women’s curling teams: During their match, U.S. players acknowledged a likely infraction and the Italian team chose to work with them to find “the fairest possible” solution.
- Canadian women’s ice hockey team: Rather than seek a forfeit when norovirus struck the Finnish team, the Canadians instead postponed their Olympic opener.
- Ilia Malinin, U.S. figure skater: Despite dropping from first to eighth place after falling during his own performance, Malinin celebrated the gold medal win of Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov.
- Julie Zelingrova, Czech Republic curler: Zelingrova, a member of the youngest pair in the mixed doubles competition, is credited with choosing “personal honesty over an easy advantage” by self-reporting what was described as a “nearly invisible rule violation”
- Kagiyama Yuma, Japanese figure skater: Kagiyama, the men’s silver medalist, reacted to teammate Shun Sato coming in third with an “exuberant, heartfelt celebration,” showing “that friendship and genuine joy for a peer can bridge the gap of any rivalry.”
The final results of the vote are expected to be announced shortly.
The Switzerland-based fair play association noted this year’s awards are “returning to the homeland of their first-ever recipient,” legendary bobsledder Eugenio Monti, a six-time Olympic medalist, including at the 1956 Winter Games, also hosted by Cortina, Italy.
Monti won the inaugural Fair Play Award in 1964, for providing a replacement bolt to British rivals Tony Nash and Robin Dixon at that year’s Winter Games in Innsbruck, Austria, allowing them to compete and ultimately win gold, while Monti and his teammate earned bronze.
The Italian bobsledder’s decision is viewed as “one of the defining moments of Olympic sportsmanship” by the fair play committee, established by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization along with international sports organizations.
The committee seeks to highlight actions at the Olympics that promote the values of “fair competition, respect, friendship, team spirit, equality, sport without doping, respect for written and unwritten rules such as integrity, solidarity, tolerance, care, excellence and joy.”
Past winners have included the DJ at the Eiffel Tower site for beach volleyball at the 2024 Summer Games in Paris. Antonio “Tony” Rojas helped calm tensions during a match by playing John Lennon’s peace anthem, “Imagine,” sparking a singalong by spectators.