There were romantic pairings and marriage proposals, tender kisses and tears. Like Olympics competitions of years past, the Milan-Cortina Winter Games were part international sporting event, part love-fest.
The ice dancing competition brimmed with real-life couples from Sweden, Italy, Georgia and Canada. Madison Chock and Evan Bates, who married in 2024 and whose love story was detailed in soft-focus segments on NBC, won silver for the United States.
The two-week event in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo also signified the full emergence of something relatively new on the sporting scene: the male equivalents to the high-profile wives and girlfriends of star athletes, a cohort called WAGs by the London tabloids.
Call these men HABs. There was, for starters, the influencer and pugilist Jake Paul, who was seen sobbing in the stands after his fiancée, the Dutch speedskater Jutta Leerdam, won gold in the women’s 1,000-meter race.
“From now on, call me Jutta Leerdam’s fiancé,” Paul wrote in a post for his 29 million Instagram followers. The accompanying video shows him on a sun-splashed tarmac with Leerdam. As if to remind viewers of his strength, Paul casually hoists her onto his shoulders and carries her to the staircase attached to the private jet awaiting them.
Another member of the HABs brigade was the N.F.L. player Myles Garrett, of the Cleveland Browns. He shared a public kiss with Chloe Kim, the American snowboarder, after she took silver in the women’s halfpipe competition. Garrett was also spotted wearing a zip-up jacket with a large photograph of Kim on the front.
Perhaps the most attention-grabbing specimen of this new type was Connor Watkins, a construction manager in Salt Lake City, who met the American skier Breezy Johnson on Bumble two and a half years ago.
In Cortina, four days after Johnson won gold in the downhill event, Watkins was among the spectators who watched her crash out of the Super-G race. Once he determined that she was all right, Watkins placed a knee on the snow and, in front of friends, fans and at least one NBC camera, asked Johnson to marry him. She said yes, and they shared an embrace.
A photo of the couple in that life-changing moment soon appeared on their joint Instagram account. “Hey guys … meet Connor!” Johnson wrote. “My ex-boyfriend! And current fiancé!!!” The post quickly drew a reply from Taylor Swift: “CONGRATULATIONS!!!” (Watkins had inscribed the ring box with a reference to Swift’s song “The Alchemy.”) The newly engaged couple then made an appearance on NBC’s “Today” show.
Away from the HABs, a more private proposal took place on Wednesday, when Hilary Knight, a star of the U.S. women’s hockey team, proposed to her longtime girlfriend, the American speedskater Brittany Bowe. Their courtship began at the 2022 Games in Beijing. In the wake their engagement, Knight summed it all up on Instagram: “Olympics brought us together. This one made us forever.”
But love did not conquer all in Milan and Cortina. Moments after winning bronze in the men’s 20-kilometer biathlon, Sturla Holm Laegreid of Norway decided the time was right to confess to having cheated on his ex-girlfriend in a television interview. If Laegreid hoped to win her over — he described her, through tears, as “the most beautiful and kindest person in the world” — his plan backfired like a rusty muffler.
Laegreid’s ex-girlfriend, who has not been publicly identified, told the Norwegian publication NG that his infidelity was “hard to forgive, even after a declaration of love in front of the whole world.” Laegreid later apologized for having drawn the spotlight away from the event and his fellow athletes. “I am not quite myself these days,” he said.
Jaime Bronstein, a licensed relationship therapist and author, said of Laegreid: “I do understand how, if he was thinking that he had nothing left to lose, he wanted to show the world how much he still loves her. But it was kind of a selfish thing. His girlfriend was already devastated, and she’s like, ‘This is how you think you’re going to get me back?’”
Plenty of amorous activity took place away from public view. An initial batch of about 10,000 condoms provided to Olympics participants was quickly exhausted because of “higher-than-anticipated demand,” according to organizers.
“Anytime you get a bunch of young people together, things are going to happen,” Bronstein said. “Especially with the backdrop of Italy. Oh, my God.”
Granted, Olympic-branded condoms are a popular souvenir. But the disappearance of so many worked out to nearly four per athlete before the first restock.
“It clearly shows that Valentine’s Day is in full swing in the village,” Mark Adams, an Olympic spokesman, said during a news conference, “and I don’t think I can add very much more to that.”
Scott Cacciola writes features and profiles of people in the worlds of sports and entertainment for the Styles section of The Times.
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