To that end, LVMH not only had its logo splashed around various Olympic venues like the usual sponsors, but many of its brands took center stage. Chaumet redesigned the Olympic medals. Louis Vuitton designed the trunks for the medals and the Olympic torch. Berluti outfitted the French team for the opening ceremony, and Dior dressed Celine Dion, Lady Gaga and Aya Nakamura for their performances.

Given that Milan, like Paris, is a global fashion center and one of the big four fashion week cities, you’d think they might have taken a page from the last Games and tried to get a fashion sponsor, too. But, no brand apparently ponied up, maybe because the Winter Olympics offers less opportunity for creative dressing, maybe because the uncertain global economic climate has rendered major sponsorships less attractive, or maybe because the Winter Olympics are traditionally less popular among viewers (and potential consumers) than the Summer Games.

That doesn’t mean there are no big fashion names involved, but their participation is on a smaller team or individual level.

It’s too bad. Given the increasing interdependence of sports and fashion, and the fact that increasingly, sports stars are more effective brand ambassadors than movie stars, it seems like a missed opportunity.

Leading up to the 2022 Beijing Games, the Omicron variant of the coronavirus was quickly spreading across the world. China responded by barring foreigners, and most local spectators, from Olympic events. Only specially invited and screened Chinese visitors could attend, leaving most of the venues almost vacant.

Friends and family members of the Olympians had to stay home and watch them on TV.

“I think it was kind of the same for a lot of athletes,” Bowe said at a news conference on Wednesday in Milan. “It’s like, you’ve accomplished this thing you’ve been working for all your life, but you don’t have the people that you love and care about the most to share it with.”

Now Bowe and other athletes who competed in Beijing can’t wait for fans to start filing in. These Olympics, which officially open on Friday, will be the first Winter Games since Pyeongchang in 2018 with paying fans in attendance.

Casey Dawson, one of Bowe’s teammates in Beijing, is looking forward to “a little extra noise” coming from the stands. He said that the sound of cheering helps block out the pain he feels in his legs during races. (In speedskating, a sport that requires incredible cardiovascular endurance and lower body strength, that’s a legs-on-fire kind of pain.)

“I feel like the crowd almost carries you through the finish line,” Dawson said. He won a bronze medal in Beijing, in the team pursuit, after missing the 5,000-meter event and showing up just 12 hours before the 1,500 because he had tested positive for Covid weeks earlier and needed two negative tests to enter China.

He took 45 tests before he could get on a plane. Even then, his luggage did not make it, and he had to compete on borrowed skates.

“The whole Covid-19 pandemic tainted the experience,” he said on Wednesday.

The few spectators allowed in Beijing had to follow strict rules that left many venues in near silence. They wore masks and were told not to cheer so they wouldn’t spread the virus if they had it. They could applaud. But even that didn’t happen as it should have.

Spectators at some events, including ice hockey, seemed unfamiliar with the sport they were watching. So they clapped at the wrong moments, or didn’t clap at all.

The Beijing Games were stressful and, in many ways, lonely. There was the monotony of daily Covid tests, and the fear of testing positive and being thrown into isolation for weeks at an undisclosed location. Traveling outside the Covid-free bubble was forbidden, with everyone taking buses from their housing to the venue and back — and nowhere else.

Madison Chock and Evan Bates, the reigning world ice dancing champions and U.S. champions, said they felt grateful that those Games had not been canceled. Now, in Milan, at their fourth Olympics skating together, they are going out of their way to meet athletes from other countries, a usual highlight of the Olympics that barriers and masks had diminished in Beijing.

Chock and Bates, a married couple, also came prepared to mingle and trade pins with other competitors, an Olympic tradition. They brought 100 pins custom-made with the likenesses of their toy poodles, Henry and Stella.

“This is just the most incredible experience so far, and being able to socialize with other athletes, trade pins freely and openly without having to worry so much about Covid or bubble restrictions, has just been incredible,” Chock said. “You see the buzz, the excitement amongst the athletes, and it’s so beautiful because that’s what the Olympics is about, it’s about uniting people.”

Bowe, 37, is excited to have her family and friends in Milan, especially because she has said this will be her final Olympics.

Four years ago, they watched her compete from more than 7,000 miles away, on a big-screen TV at a watch party in Ocala, Fla., her hometown.

Now they will watch in person, with her mother, Debbie, wearing her usual blue knit gloves with alternating red and white pompoms on each finger. They are the same gloves she has worn again and again, all over the world, at her daughter’s events, so Brittany can easily spot her.

Over the years, Olympic torches have come in various forms and sizes. Some have been ornate, others curved. The 2026 torch design goes back to basics with a sleek, metal rod, which is named “Essential.”

Carlo Ratti, who was responsible for the design, said the name reflected the hallowed sense of the torch and its ancient role.

“The flame is a sacred thing, not an object,” he said, so the designers opted for “an essential shape around the technical core to put the emphasis on the flame.” He added that it was the lightest torch ever made, weighing just over a kilogram, or roughly two pounds, when the gas canister is empty.

Last year, Ratti curated the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale, and that, too, informed the design of the torch in terms of “sustainability and how can we use materials in a more effective way,” he said in a telephone interview.

The torch is made from recycled and recyclable materials, including aluminum and brass. For the core, Ratti partnered with Cavagna Group, which he described as a company typical of Italy’s industrial fabric, “a niche company that is a world leader in something very specific.” Cavagna came up with the engineering for the burner, which is powered by a biofuel produced from food waste. The burner is refillable and can be used up to 10 times.

He said the design team “fell in love with the mechanism” and wanted to share it with the world. As a result, a window in the torch allows viewers to see the moment of ignition as well as the flame inside. The outer finish is made of a material that acts as a mirror, reflecting the surrounding environment.

“We took a different approach” from the design of past torches, Ratti said, adding that the torch was usually about “covering and adding and we worked by subtraction and revealing.”

“Ultimately, the torch is a symbol, and what is important are the values it conveys,” he said.