Italians collect medals on a feel-good first day for the hosts at the Milan Cortina Olympics

MILAN (AP) — The 2026 Winter Games are off to a promising start for host nation Italy with gold, silver and bronze on the first day of medal events.

But it was Switzerland’s Franjo Von Allmen who captured the first gold medal of the Milan Cortina Olympics on Saturday.

There were no Americans on the podium, though Lindsey Vonn impressed in her second training run ahead of the women’s downhill on Sunday.

Italian speedskater Francesca Lollobrigida celebrated her 35th birthday by winning the host nation's first gold medal of these Olympics — in the 3,000 meters. It's also Italy’s first gold in women’s speedskating at any Winter Games.

Competing in her fourth Olympics, Lollobrigida outskated Ragne Wiklund of Norway for her first Olympic gold after winning silver and bronze in Beijing four years ago.

Her great aunt was the late Gina Lollobrigida, a star actress of the 1950s and ’60s.

Italy had a strong day on the slopes, as well, with Alpine skiers Giovanni Franzoni and Dominik Paris taking silver and bronze, respectively, in the men’s downhill — the first medal event of the Games.

However, neither could beat Von Allmen’s time of 1 minute, 51.61 seconds in Bormio.

The 24-year-old Swiss skier was the leader after his downhill run, but the wait for his rivals to finish was nerve-racking.

“I tried to enjoy the moment, but I didn’t quite realize what was going on today,” von Allmen said after his first Olympic race.

Paris, 36, was delighted with his bronze after coming away empty-handed in his four previous Olympics.

“It’s my fifth Olympics, and getting the first medal in front of the home crowd, that’s really special,” Paris said.

In Cortina, Lindsey Vonn completed another downhill training run and was set for Sunday's medal race despite tearing her left ACL a little more than a week ago.

The 41-year-old American crossed the line in third position and told The Associated Press “all good.”

She has been wearing a large brace on her injured knee.

Yuma Kagiyama landed near-perfect quads and scored 108.67 points in his short program to help Japan put pressure on the defending champion U.S. in the figure skating team event.

Malinin, the two-time reigning world champion, was second with 98.00.

But a brilliant free skate by Madison Chock and Evan Bates pushed the U.S. score to 44 points — five more than Japan ahead of the men’s, women’s and pairs free skates to decide the medals Sunday.

Jessie Diggins, the most decorated American cross-country skier ever, finished eighth in the 20-kilometer women’s skiathlon in Tesero. She finished more than 2 minutes behind winner Frida Karlsson of Sweden.

“I had a crash on the first lap, where my tip just disappeared in the slush, and unfortunately it was a tough spot where you lose all your momentum," the 34-year-old Minnesota native said.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance sat with influencer and boxer Jake Paul as they watched the U.S. women’s hockey team beat Finland 5-0 on Saturday. Paul’s fiancee, Jutta Leerdam, is a speedskater for the Netherlands.

Finland played two days after the team’s game against Canada had to be postponed because of a stomach virus affecting players. Switzerland played Canada a day after announcing that one of its players tested positive for the norovirus. Canada won 4-0.

Norway — the nation with the most medals in Winter Olympics history — got its first gold of the Games in the women's ski jumping. It was unexpected.

Anna Odine Stroem of Norway won the normal hill competition ahead of Slovenian favorite Nika Prevc, who has dominated the sport this season. Nozomi Maruyama of Japan won bronze.

Kira Kimura won Japan's first gold medal at these Games — in men’s snowboarding big air in Livigno. His teammate, Ryoma Kimata, picked up the silver medal.

Defending champion Su Yiming of China took bronze, keeping 17-year-old American Oliver Martin off the podium.

Big air consists of one single jump off a huge ramp, where the rider varies spins, flips and holds of the board.

AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

Madison Chock and Evan Bates of the United States compete during the figure skating ice dance team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

Francesca Lollobrigida of Italy celebrates with her gold medal on the podium of the women's 3,000 meters speedskating race at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

Jake Paul, left, and Vice President JD Vance attend a preliminary round match of women's ice hockey between the United States and Finland at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)

Jessie Diggins of the United States catches her breath after crossing the finish line in the cross country skiing women's 10km + 10km skiathlon at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

United States' Lindsey Vonn in action during alpine ski women's downhill training, at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Switzerland's Franjo von Allmen celebrates at the finish area of an alpine ski men's downhill race, at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Bormio, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

Gold medallist Francesca Lollobrigida of Italy celebrates with the Italian flag after the women's 3,000 meters speedskating race at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

NEW YORK (AP) — More than a dozen millennials gathered in a brownstone apartment in Brooklyn and placed their phones in a metal colander before two hours of reading, drawing and conversation — anything but staring at screens.

A similar scene played out a few miles away, in an early 20th-century cardboard box factory turned high-end office space. Nearly 20 people in their 30s stared at their cellphones for a few minutes. Then they set them down and looked at their bared palms for a while. Then those of their neighbors.

The exercise was meant to drive home the importance of paying attention to real life, not the gleaming little screens that have taken over our world.

Two decades after Steve Jobs premiered the iPhone, a small but passionate movement — with offshoots in several countries — is rebelling against the omnipresent screen.

“The products have become more insidious and more extractive, exploitative,” said Dan Fox, 38, who hosted the house gathering. Members of the nascent movement “want to start a revolution,” he said.

But can an “attention activism” movement of millennials and Generation Z members break free of the world’s largest companies? The raw numbers say no. But cultural changes start small, and the rebellion is growing against what many call “human fracking.”

Apple and other Big Tech firms say they've taken steps to help users reduce time spent on their devices, including features that track usage and a less enticing gray mode.

Activists say it's not enough.

“They want to take down Big Tech,” says Fox, a stand-up comedian who works in marketing for Brooklyn-based Light Phone, one of several “dumb phones” with only basic functionality.

Unlike most modern products, the company boasts of its phones’ lack of features, like “social media, clickbait news, email, an internet browser, or any other anxiety-inducing infinite feed.”

Fox was inspired to join the movement when he attended a 2015 Tame Impala concert at Radio City Music Hall. It felt as if everyone in the audience was filming the concert on their phones instead of immersing themselves in the music.

“I realized the phones are literally getting in the way of the things I love,” Fox said.

Mobile internet access has so thoroughly permeated modern life that one of the few places in the world where it’s not readily available is wartime Iran, where authorities shut down the internet during mass protests in January.

D. Graham Burnett is a historian of science at Princeton University and one of the authors of “Attensity! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement,” making him a pillar of the growing backlash against the corporate harvesting of human attention.

Along with MS NOW host Chris Hayes’ bestselling “The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource,” his work is part of a growing body of literature calling for people to move away from screens and pay attention to life.

Burnett says the “attention liberation movement” is about throwing off the yoke of time-sucking apps. People “need to rewild their attention. Their attention is the fullness of their relationship to the world.”

The people in Fox's living room started the evening by introducing themselves, as if at a support group.

“I don’t feel good about my relationship with my phone. I feel like an addict,” said Riley Soloner, who teaches theatrical clowning and works as an usher at Carnegie Hall. He arrived with a backpack full of books — the paper kind.

Across the Atlantic Ocean in the Netherlands, people filed into a neo-Gothic cathedral late last month for a meeting of the Offline Club.

“We create our events and gatherings with different themes. One of them is connecting with yourself through creative activities or reading or writing or puzzling,” said co-founder Ilya Kneppelhout. “Really something that makes you slow down and reflect, go inward.”

There are several dozen “attention activism” groups across the United States and Canada, and the movement has also cropped up in Spain, Italy, Croatia, France and England. Burnett said he expects it to spread further.

Members of Oberlin College's Harkness Housing and Dining Co-op decided to run their organization without emails and spreadsheets in January, expanding to a ban on technology in the shared spaces of the 1950s brick building.

“People expressed a feeling of relief about not needing to be checking their emails, or checking their texts or checking the news. That allowed us to spend a lot of time just talking to each other,” said junior Ozzie Frazier, 21.

During the monthlong co-op project, Frazier said, people started checking out CD’s from the library, and enjoying arts and crafts nights, live music and the board game Bananagrams.

“A lot of people felt very connected to each other. Not having the devices gave them some kind of mental space,” Frazier said.

Wilhelm Tupy read “Attensity” after stumbling across it at a Vienna bookstore and visited the School of Radical Attention in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood on a trip last month.

He felt he had found something that united his sporting career as a judo champion — with its need for focused “flow” — and his postretirement work as a business consultant.

“Discipline is not enough nowadays,” he said. “It’s becoming more and more difficult to keep the attention and to keep the focus on goals and whatever you want to achieve and want to do.”

Guests journal and knit together during a weekly phone-free gathering at the home of organizer Dan Fox in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Wednesday, March 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Heather Khalifa)

Guests stretch during a weekly phone-free gathering at the home of organizer Dan Fox in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Wednesday, March 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Heather Khalifa)

Participants take part in a digital detox evening of the Offline Club in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Tuesday, April 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

Guests collect their smartphones at the end of a weekly phone-free gathering at the home of organizer Dan Fox in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Wednesday, March 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Heather Khalifa)