Olympians embrace the mystery of their devotion; the Milanese might understand it better than most

Chris Jones reports from Milan.

When Milan isn’t hosting the Winter Olympics, one of its principal attractions is Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, his fresco inside the monastery of the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Visitors lucky enough to see it bear witness to more than one kind of miracle.

Leonardo finished it in 1498. His perfectionism had its costs: He painted on dry plaster rather than wet, the way frescos were traditionally done, so that he could work more slowly, more meticulously, labouring over each pained expression, each piece of fruit.

His paint didn’t hold, and one of his most fragile masterpieces began to fade.

By 1977, after centuries of neglect, humidity, bomb damage, and misguided preservation attempts, the fresco was nearly unrecognizable. That’s when a 52-year-old woman named Pinin Brambilla saw it, became obsessed with it, and began a restoration that would consume more than 20 years of her life.

Devotion is hard to measure. It is more than an expression of ordinary affection. Devotion is a demonstration of extraordinary love, a level of passion that people who don’t have it, who have never felt it, struggle to understand.

It can be mysterious even for the people who do feel it.

Courtney Sarault won four short track medals here. She is a pure athlete, good at many sports. Soccer fell away. Hockey fell away. Speed skating was the one that stuck.

“There was something inside me … I just could not let go of speed skating,” she said. “I don’t know why. I can’t replicate the feeling I get on the ice anywhere else in my life. It’s hard to explain, but I’m sure anyone who’s ever been an athlete understands the feeling. It’s a feeling that’s hard to describe, but I love that feeling. That’s