Free from 'sports prison,' winter athletes get chance to enjoy Olympics without a COVID lockdown

In some ways, the goals Canadian snowboarder Mark McMorris set for the Milano-Cortina Olympics are the same ones he set in his three previous appearances at the Games.

"Landing when it matters, landing how I want to, landing my hardest tricks and walking away with some hardware," he said.

But this time, McMorris listed one other element that no Olympian on the ground four years ago in China will ever take for granted again: "To enjoy it with my friends."

The last time the Winter Olympians convened, the COVID-19 pandemic was still raging. The Games were forced into sterilized bubbles with athletes facing daily tests; in most cases, at checkpoints where workers stuck swabs up their noses. Every swab brought with it the specter of a positive test, with could mean days or weeks of quarantine that would wipe out an athlete's ability to compete.

McMorris, the 32-year-old slopestyler who won his third straight bronze medal at those Games, summed up the experience by famously calling his stay in the mountains something like a trip to "sports prison."

"What I can tell you with absolute certainty is that I am really excited to compete in this Games without COVID tests every 24 hours and just the pandemic breathing down our necks," said Mikaela Shiffrin, who went without a medal in Beijing. "It's a very, very different situation to go into this Games and that's a wonderful thing."

Short track speedskater Andrew Heo, whose first Olympics were in Beijing, said getting back to a "real, live Games" was one of his biggest motivators over the past four years.

"The Beijing Olympics was cool in itself, because I didn't have any prior experience," Heo said. "But so many people told me: This is like nothing compared to what an actual