The opening ceremony of the 2026 Winter Games in Milan, Italy, is on Feb. 6, and we're so ready. While sports like curling may barely register on our radar most of the time, there's something about the Olympic broadcast that suddenly makes us care deeply about that slow-moving stone gliding across the ice.
If you're the type to get invested in the Olympics, there are a few shows and specials you might want to watch to get in the spirit before the action kicks off in Milan. A new Netflix series, Glitter & Gold: Ice Dancing, has just arrived, introducing viewers to the couples competing in ice dancing at this year's games. And the streamer also carries a documentary about the US men's hockey team that beat the odds -- and the Russians -- on the ice in 1980.
If you love some drama in the juiciest sense of the word, there are also a couple of great shows on Peacock that dig into two of ice skating's biggest scandals: Meddling and Nancy & Tonya. Both are great examples of just how dramatic things can get off the ice. (And if you need more drama in and out of the rink, there's always Heated Rivalry on HBO Max...)
Glitter & Gold: Ice Dancing is a new three-part series arriving on Netflix on Feb. 1, just in time to watch before the opening ceremony. The series follows three of the world's best ice dance pairs as they prepare for this year's Winter Games, including Americans Madison Chock and Evan Bates, Canadians Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, and Guillaume Cizeron and Laurence Fournier Beaudry of Team France. This topical series delivers tons of glitz and drama, preparing you for their performances on the ice in Milan.
The "Miracle on Ice," as it's now known, was one of the biggest, most electrifying Olympic moments for a certain generation. In 1980, the US men's ice hockey team entered the Winter Games as underdogs, expected to lose to the USSR. However, they defied all odds and brought home not just a win in that game, but the gold medal. The team's story has been told a few different times, but this Netflix special features new interviews and never-before-seen footage to help relive the moment that made people believe in miracles.
Meddling is a story of international intrigue set against the backdrop of the 2002 Winter Olympics. In this four-part series produced by Olympic gold medalist Tara Lipinski, you'll learn about the skating scandal that led to a major reform in how skating routines are judged.
The show introduces viewers to Russian skating pair Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, and Canadian skating partners Jamie Sale and David Pelletier, both were expected to do well at the Winter Games in Salt Lake City in 2002. But when Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze were awarded the gold medal after performing a flawed routine (and Sale and Pelletier earned a silver after what many considered a flawless performance), a French judge came under fire for allegedly being pressured to swing her scoring in the Russians' favor. It was such a controversy that Sale and Pelletier were ultimately named co-gold medalists.
In the series, the judge who was at the center of the scandal speaks out, along with the skater involved. And if you can't get enough of the 2002 figure skating scandal, it's also the subject of an episode of the Netflix series Bad Sport.
There may be no Olympic scandal quite as infamous as the attack on Nancy Kerrigan in the lead-up to the 1994 Winter Games. Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding were considered America's best women skaters, but Kerrigan was attacked ahead of the Olympic event, and it was ultimately revealed that Harding's estranged husband hired someone to do it.
The situation became a media spectacle, and Harding's reputation suffered. She was eventually banned from competitive skating. This special rehashes all the details of what was one of the biggest Olympic controversies of all time.
