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To the layperson, biathlon may be the strangest sport in the Winter Olympics. Most of the sports in the Games involve athletes testing the limits of the human body vis-á-vis gravity (e.g.: big air, ski jumping), sliding (curling, speed skating), or gravity and sliding (figure skating), emphasizing in the process the wintry specificity of it all. Say what you want about curling—and I will: It's fine!—but you cannot dispute that it is a game that takes place on ice. Biathlon, on the other hand, is an ungainly and somewhat seasonally ambiguous combination of cross-country skiing and shooting stuff with a gun. What does one have to do with the other? It took an athlete like Julia Simon for me to see what makes biathlon cool. A brief note on the history of biathlon: It is the modern evolution of the military patrol event (scratch anything at the Olympics hard enough and you'll see the muscular nationalism beneath), wherein teams of skiers would ski some distance to a range, shoot some targets, then ski away. Switzerland won gold at the 1924 Olympics in Chamonix, and while the event was held thrice more, it was only as a demonstration sport. The IOC reintroduced military patrol as modern biathlon in 1960 at the Lake Tahoe Olympics, and gradually added more individual and team events with each passing decade. The Soviets (and their successors), Germans, and Norwegians dominated it for the next eight decades. What makes a great biathlete is balance. There are surely better cross-country skiers and probably better shooters, but to excel at both the seemingly contradictory skillsets of the two sports, it takes a special athlete, someone prepared for both the exertive and meditative aspects of competition. In other words, it takes someone like Julia Simon. With 10 World Championship gold medals to her name, a silver at the 2022 Beijing Games in mixed relay, and several World Cup first-places, the 29-year-old Frenchwoman entered these Games as a favorite across the various disciplines—but nobody was talking about that in the months preceding her trip up to Cortina. They were talking about suspended sentences, lacrimal apologies, and credit-card fraud.

The biathlon encourages athletes to balance two things at once. A competitor must be able to ski a great distance at an immense speed, and then, as if turning off a light switch, lower their heart rate, aim a gun, and shoot six tiny targets, before returning to skiing around really quickly. But after winning the bronze medal in the men's 20km biathlon Tuesday morning, Norwegian biathlete Sturla Holm Lægreid admitted, for no reason at all, to another kind of balancing act: cheating on his damn girlfriend. After winning bronze, Lægreid gave an interview to the Norwegian broadcaster NRK in which he immediately broke down in tears, and revealed all the details of his personal life to the entire country of Norway. "Last night, I had a kind of revelation that I should drop this bomb ... then we'll see what happens. I have nothing to lose," he told NRK. You would think that an athlete who spends a lot of time regulating his heart rate would have a little more self-control, but no! He spilled all the details of this unexpected variety of Olympic cheating scandal. "There is something I want to share with someone who may not be watching today," the 28-year-old Lægreid said as he cried. "Half a year ago, I met the love of my life. The world’s most beautiful and nicest person. Three months ago, I made the mistake of my life and cheated on her, and I told her about that a week ago. This has been the worst week of my life."

Asked what advice she’d give Tennessee head coach Kim Caldwell after the Lady Vols’ 93-50 loss to South Carolina on Sunday, a diplomatic Dawn Staley demurred: “I probably wouldn’t say it publicly.” That makes one! Caldwell, at her postgame press conference, had a lot to say publicly in the wake of the worst loss in program history. “We just had a lot of quit in us tonight, and that’s been something that’s been consistent with our team,” Caldwell said. “When we’re not comfortable and things don’t go our way, I have a team that’ll just quit on you. And you can’t do that in big games—you can't do that any time in the SEC, but you certainly can't do that at a program like this.”  It was only a year ago that things were looking up for Tennessee and a just-hired Caldwell. Last February, the Lady Vols beat UConn to end an 18-year drought in their rivalry series. The win seemed to validate athletic director Danny White’s decision to hire someone with no prior connection to the program. Since Pat Summitt’s death, Tennessee had only considered and hired former players and assistants of hers. Caldwell, previously the coach at Marshall, was hired for her distinctive system, which focuses on creating as many offensive possessions as possible by forcing turnovers with a press, and shooting early in the clock. To keep the team in shape for this brand of play, Caldwell uses hockey-style line substitutions. 

Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it. Today, we're talking about halls of fame, Chuck Klosterman, taxes, how to lose your virginity at 50, and more. Before I get to your emails, let’s address the Super Bowl. Yes, the game was boring. Yes, the redemption arc of Sam Darnold is one of the better football stories in recent memory. Also, the Seahawks may have been one of the greatest teams in league history if you go by DVOA, but they didn’t have enough brand names on the roster to keep casual fans and postgame shouters from accusing them of Tim Duncanism. You’ve already scavenged those narrative morsels from the game’s carcass. But I’d remiss if I didn’t personally take a moment here to shine the brightest of lights on the greatest of Sunday’s failures… Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

Apologies to all otters, ferrets, badgers, ferret-badgers, weasels, fishers, polecats, wolverines, martens, and grisons, but the mustelid of the moment is the stoat. The mascots of the 2026 Winter Olympics are a pair of sibling stoats named Milo (short for Milano) and Tina (short for Cortina). Tina is white, just like stoats in the winter, and Milo is brown, just like stoats in the summer. Milo, the Paralympic mascot, was born without a leg and learned to use his tail as a substitute. Per official Olympics lore, Milo and Tina parted ways as they grew up—Tina moved to the city and Milo stayed in the mountains—but the two reunite each year in the winter in their childhood den. Also per the lore, Milo and Tina are "the first openly Gen Z Mascots," implying the existence of closeted Gen Z mascots—may they one day feel secure enough in their generational identity to come out on the world stage. Those unfamiliar with mustelids may be curious to know what the deal is with stoats, which are also called ermines. The first and most important thing to know is that they are extremely, undeniably cute. Come on!!!

Not so long ago, a contest against the Charlotte Hornets was not likely to meaningfully raise the heart rate of anyone on the opposing side. Maybe the sight of LaMelo Ball's unpleasant red tattoos would cause a moment's perturbation, but nothing acute, nothing to flush the face or crease the forehead. The basketball would be easy enough: For the most part you could wait around for the Hornets to defeat themselves. Not lately! Charlotte entered Monday night's home tilt against the Detroit Pistons having won nine straight and 12 of 15, and with a couple of eye-popping demolitions scattered in there. These are not the Hornets of yesteryear: These guys—healthy for what seems like the first time in 1,000 years—are athletic, feisty, and organized. They demand attention. The Pistons treat everybody rudely. They might be the NBA's roughest bunch, and some of the league's also-rans seem to shrink from their snarling physicality. The Hornets did not. In the third quarter, with the Pistons leading by eight points, things were getting angsty. Following a Jalen Duren offensive foul, Ball threw some moves at Detroit's Duncan Robinson and drove to the lane, but lost his dribble and then was annoyed into a three-second penalty by the digging and swiping of Robinson and Duren. Ball complained and the crowd booed. On Detroit's next possession, Cade Cunningham tried to feed Duren in the paint but Moussa Diabate bumped Duren and batted the ball away, and the Pistons settled for a lousy Tobias Harris mid-ranger, which missed. The ball squirted out of bounds and Detroit kept possession. Duren and Diabate, both pretty fired up, chirped back and forth, and the Hornets broadcast chose a good time to talk about Detroit's bullying style. On the inbound, Duren threw a mean forearm into Diabate's chest, then popped to the wing to gather the ball. Duren then attempted to drive at and through Diabate. Diabate, who looks very skinny next to Duren but I guess is pretty sturdy, stoned Duren at the edge of the paint. Duren lurched into an off-balance jumper and Diabate committed a dumb foul, grabbing onto his man's shoulder and tugging him down. The two squared up, with Duren's face crashing into Diabate's and then Diabate pushing his forehead into Duren's. This is when all hell broke loose.

Imagine the training for the Olympics. All the work, the anxiety, the parties missed, and the mornings you'd rather have spent in bed. The money spent on training, equipment, travel, all of it. You sacrifice so much because you are single-mindedly focused on becoming the best. You make it to the Olympics, where you represent your country on the international stage, and for one shining moment, all those sacrifices seem worth it. Now imagine that this is the photo of that moment that lives on in the collective memory, in the form of your top Getty Images search result:

Blink and you might not have caught it. On Monday, Guillaume Cizeron and Laurence Fournier Beaudry took to the rink and staked their claim to the ice dancing gold medal. Dancing to Madonna's "Vogue," complete with Blond Ambition–inspired costumes and voguing arms, their routine already is popular online. But the performance isn't the thing you might have missed. It was the explanation beforehand, from NBC's Terry Gannon, about the formation of the new skating partnership that was notably brief for all it conveyed. Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry are a relatively new duo, formed less than a year ago. Recently, Cizeron's former partner, Gabriella Papadakis, published a memoir in which she called him "controlling, demanding, and critical," Gannon said. As for Fournier Beaudry, her former partner, Nikolaj Sørensen, was "suspended in a sexual maltreatment case that is still not resolved," Gannon said. The broadcast then segued to the natural conclusion: They are the biggest challenge to the United State ice dancing team for first place. These type of glancing summaries are typical of how, if at all, figure skating coverage has discussed what brought Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry together. They might or might not mention how Cizeron's former partner with whom he won gold, Papadakis, was dropped by NBC for what she said. Or how the sexual misconduct case against Sørensen, Fournier Beaudry's longtime boyfriend and former partner, has been dragging on for more than two years, and how Fournier Beaudry has defended Sørensen through it all. The closest thing to a person with a big platform speaking out is retired U.S. figure skater Adam Rippon in the Netflix documentary Glitter & Gold: Ice Dancing—he tells us "there is some sinister energy around the partnership"—before the show has both skaters suggest to us that they are really victims.

There are many reasons why the Seattle Seahawks comfortably dispatched the New England Patriots in Super Bowl 60. The Seahawks offense, led by Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker III, was able to do enough against a very game Pats defense to never feel pressured into taking any major risks. After a turnover-free Super Bowl, Seattle finished with zero playoff giveaways, an incredible feat. Seahawks punter Michael Dickson was a machine when the offense did get stopped, putting three punts inside the 20-yard line, two of them within the 5. Kicker Jason Myers was flawless, hitting five field goals and two extra points right down the middle. After a beating that thorough, you might imagine that it would be hard to point to one specific factor that really swung the game in Seattle's direction. But in this case, the culprit was obvious: the Battle of Cannae–style L the Pats' offensive line suffered. https://twitter.com/NFLBrasil/status/2020649033480441893

The Super Bowl halftime show is a giant, overstuffed program that is about celebrating its own overstuffedness. It's a maximalist entertainment spectacle set in the middle of the most maximalist entertainment spectacle in sports, where football is stretched out over five hours in order to show people commercials where society's most famous people hawk society's worst products. Thus it makes sense that halftime performance duties are usually bestowed upon the biggest pop stars of the moment, though assigning that title has become more difficult in our fractured and fractious culture. What made Sunday's event so interesting is that, for the first time in a couple of years, there actually was no doubt that the Super Bowl halftime show was performed by the biggest pop star in the world. Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican rapper, singer, and all-around superstar, has become the biggest artist in a global cultural zeitgeist no longer dominated exclusively by English-language music. He is extremely popular all over the world, including right here in the U.S., a country traditionally dismissive of artists that don't conform to a straitjacketed idea of "Americanness." The strain of all these tensions was evident the moment Bad Bunny was first announced as this year's performer. The usual suspects in the culture war pounced on the choice, accusing the NFL of the capital crime of felony wokeness, robbing these true patriots of the chance to celebrate "real America." This reaction was best encapsulated in two things: firstly, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson wondering aloud why the NFL couldn't have settled instead on a performer like Lee Greenwood, the octogenarian singer best known for 1984's "God Bless the USA"; and secondly, the decision by Turning Point USA, the right-wing dumbass debate club, to program an alternative halftime show headlined led by spiritually octogenarian rapper-turned-country-artist-turned-MAGA-mascot Kid Rock. Not exactly finger-on-the-pulse stuff. Meanwhile the NFL was itself stuck in its own cycle of nostalgia, opening Super Bowl 60 with multiple renditions of the national anthem and a Green Day performance of "American Idiot," to remind us, even in protest, that we are trapped in the Bush era redux. But for all the contrived controversy over the presumed America-bashing act of singing in Spanish, Bad Bunny's night was one of celebration. It was a culmination of his ascendence as the biggest star of his generation. He turned the 49ers' field, previously the site of what had been an almost unwatchably bad half of football, into a fantasia of Puerto Rican and Caribbean culture, traversing between sugar cane fields, storefronts based on real businesses like LA's Villa's Tacos and NYC's Caribbean Social Club, men playing dominos and women at nail salons. Through elaborate stage design and intense choreography, the performance presented a people's history of the Caribbean, with both intellectual rigor and visceral, joyful exuberance.