JD Vance, Marco Rubio no distraction for U.S. women's hockey team in opening win over Czechia

Chris Jones reports from Milan.

The Americans, represented by their fearsome women’s hockey team, took the spotlight in Milan on Thursday in a game against Czechia. If the nearly capacity crowd at Rho Arena proves representative, their reception at these Olympics won’t be as frosty as many believed.

There has been speculation that U.S. athletes could endure a hostile response at Friday’s Opening Ceremony, given U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade tactics and Greenland ambitions, and local anger over the deployment of ICE agents in Italy.

That seems less likely given Thursday’s uneventful American debut.

No anthems are played before Olympic events — they’re reserved for the medal ceremonies — but when the U.S. women took to the ice for their warmups, they were met by cheers from the hundreds of Americans in attendance and silence from the thousands of others.

Some conspicuous reinforcements arrived midway through the first period when a small army of Secret Service agents escorted Vice-President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to a section of reserved seats, along with Vance’s wife, Usha, and their children.

They were joined by Tilman Fertitta, the billionaire U.S. ambassador to Italy, and former U.S. Olympic hockey players Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson and her sister, Monique Lamoureux-Morando, advocates for the exclusion of trans women in women’s sports.

The crowd murmured, but the reaction was mild enough for the players not to notice.

“I had no idea they were here,” Kendall Coyne Schofield said after the game, which the U.S. won 5-1. “I think our focus was on the ice.”

John Wroblewski, her coach, also failed to pay any mind, but was more animated when he learned about Vance’s and Rubio’s presence.

“It’s