LIVIGNO, Italy — Nothing will quite top the spectacle that was the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, where not even a significant rainstorm withered the parade down the Seine River.
The 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics have a much different reality to confront. With three separate clusters and six total competition sites across northern Italy, from the Alps to the Dolomites to Milan, these Games are the most spread out ever, which NBC made clear at the top of the broadcast, and made the show, naturally, difficult to conjoin.
The network was looking to bounce back after Peyton Manning and Kelly Clarkson stepped all over the Paris opening ceremony broadcast and made a mess of it, clouding what was a special scene. This time, there were no celebrity guest hosts, as the network had to look at its talent bench with most of its sports broadcasting group, including Olympic host Mike Tirico, in Northern California for NBC’s Super Bowl 60 production Sunday.
Savannah Guthrie was scheduled to co-host alongside Terry Gannon but had to step aside as she and her family deal with the disappearance and suspected kidnapping of her 84-year-old mother, Nancy.
Mary Carillo filled in admirably on short notice. She and Gannon adequately addressed Guthrie’s absence during the 20 minutes between NBC going on air and the ceremony starting.
