UR MAG

MILAN –Vera Wangis best known as an iconic fashion designer. But she's at the2026 Winter Olympicsbecause of her love of something else.

Almost 60 years ago, Wang was at the height of her figure skating career, competing at the 1968 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in junior pairs with partner James Stuart, according to U.S. Figure Skating.

More:Vera Wang predicts US women's figure skating results, hopes Blade Angels skate free

Wang's fashion career began after she let go of her dream of competing in the Olympics, although she has not let go of figure skating.

"That probably is the love of my life, even more than fashion," Wang, who is in her mid-70s, told Brian Boitano of figure skating on the Milan Magic podcast. "I don't get to say that often, but that's the truth."

As a designer, Wang has worked with Olympic gold medalists such as Michelle Kwan, Madison Chock, Nathan Chen and Evan Lysacek.  She speaks with passion not only about the outfits she designed, but also her days as a competitive skater.

Not all of those days were as elegant as her fashion designs, according to Wang.

She shared a recollection of an incident she said took place at the Philadelphia Spectrum when she was practicing for a pairs competition and her partner dropped her onto the rink ice.

"We were going for a kick, cartwheel lift," Wang said. "I was in the air…at about 25 mph, and he tripped going forward. I fell, flew across the ice and landed on my left side, kicked my blade into my rear."

Wang said she was bleeding and blacked out before seeing coaches come on to the ice to get her.

Vera Wang watches figure skating at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan

Heart beating as judges watched

Wang also shared memories of her experience with compulsory figures — the figure eights and circles skaters must trace over during competitions.

Under the scrunitizing eyes of judges.

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"On the ice, right around you, and watch you tracing figures on a blade this thin. And you had to create these beautiful shapes on the ice."

Circles. Loops. Counters.

"And you have to go and tiptoe to the center to where you would start your figures," Wang said.

She recalled her heart beating and feeling like she was in a court of law as she was scrutinized by the judges.

She recalled holding up under the glare. For her compulsories, Wang said, she'd won gold medals.

'Wisp of an ice ballerina'

Wang suggested no one alive knows about her skating career because her coaches have passed away. But some of her feats have been documented.

On March 3, 1962, the New York Times published a story that opened as follows:

"Vera Wang, a 12-year-old wisp of an ice ballerina, won the junior ladies singles title in the Middle Atlantic figure skating championships last night. The tiny youngster, whose daily routine includes an hour and fifteen minutes of skating practice before school, triumphed over eleven rivals at the Iceland rink atop Madison Square Garden."

The story also noted Wang was born in New York, the daughter of parents who immigrated from China after World War II. And that she wore a big smile after assuming the lead at those Middle Atlantic figure skating championships in the compulsory school figures.

She and Stuart competed twice at the U.S. Championships, for the final time in Philadelphia in 1968.

"I'm not an Olympian, by I tried to be," Wang said as her interview on the Milan Magic podcast came to a close. "My closing sentence is that I never made it, but my clothes did."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Vera Wang faced figure skating judges before fashion critics

CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — Jadin O'Brien thought she was being scammed.

Milan Cortina Olympics Bobsled

TheMilan Cortina Olympics— and the sport ofbobsled, for that matter — were not anywhere near O'Brien's radar a couple years ago, when the Notre Dame track and field star saw that someone sent her a direct message on Instagram. The message was ignored.

Several months later, the same person slid into O'Brien's DMs again. "We would love to have you tryout for bobsled!!!" That was the entirety of the message.

O'Brien, finally, was intrigued. She replied and asked for information. A month and a half later, in mid-August of last year, she drove 12 1/2 hours from Notre Dame to Lake Placid, New York, to see what bobsled was all about.

And now, she's an Olympian.

It is a story perhaps like none other in these Olympics: A rookie, who has raced only twice in her career, is going to compete on the sport's biggest stage with a very real chance of finding her way to the Olympic medal stand. O'Brien will push forOlympic monobob gold medalistElana Meyers Taylor — the person who sent those DMs — on Friday and Saturday in the two-woman competition at Cortina.

"It has really been a roller-coaster of events," O'Brien said. "Everything's happened so fast, but ... I've kind of been conditioned to be able to handle new things very, very fast and then perform despite a lack of experience. So, it has been a whirlwind. I could never have predicted my life would turn out this way, but I'm incredibly grateful and I've loved every second of it."

The Olympics have been on her wish list for a while.

The Winter Olympics, not so much.

How she got here

The 23-year-old O'Brien was a star at Notre Dame — the 2023, 2024 and 2025 national champion in the indoor pentathlon, a five-time All-Atlantic Coast Conference first team pick, a 10-time All-American and a winner of at least a half-dozen All-Academic honors along the way. She was 12th in the Olympic heptathlon trials for the Tokyo Games in 2021 and seventh in the trials for the Paris Games in 2024.

Last summer, she was fifth at the U.S. championships. Two days later, she started training for bobsled. She wound up making that drive to Lake Placid, hit the push track and was pushing with — and in some cases, better than — the team's best in less than two weeks.

A star was born.

"It was insane," Meyers Taylor said. "Not to get too patriotic or whatever, but I think bobsled is one of those traditionally American stories, American dream kind of stories because you can come from nowhere and come in and make an Olympic team. You could come from whatever background and have an opportunity to live your Olympic moment. That's not true in a lot of sports."

Oh, O'Brien has a story. It was not always a fairytale. Far from it, actually.

Around the age of 5, the entire demeanor of a bubbly little girl — whose mother, a track coach, would set up makeshift hurdles in the basement of their Wisconsin home and watch Jadin leap over them with ease, clearly suggesting she had serious track potential — changed. And nobody knew why.

She couldn't run. She couldn't smile. She didn't want to be around other kids. Anxiety took over, her mind often drifted to the darkest possible places such as her own death or the deaths of those around her. Her family, devout believers in their Catholic faith, even enlisted the help of an exorcist from their Archdiocese. It took years to figure out the cause.

In time, she was diagnosed with Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections — a rare syndrome known as PANDAS. When she was 10, life started to get normal again.

"My story, with everything I've gone through, is one of resilience," O'Brien said. "I know I have the drive and the willpower to do some amazing things, and I try to glorify God while doing it."

There's been a lot of winning over O'Brien's life. But overcoming PANDAS doesn't mean the road has been easy. Her college career was marred by a series of injuries and challenges — badly torn quadricep muscles, hamstring issues, a stress fracture in her leg, a sprained hand (which isn't ideal for someone who needs to throw a shot put in competition), even food poisoning on the eve of an NCAA championship meet.

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And then, last month in St. Moritz, Switzerland, her bobsled career took its first very bad turn.

A bad crash nearly changes everything

O'Brien's first crash came in January, during a training run in St. Moritz. She and Meyers Taylor were a few days away from their World Cup race when their sled toppled. All bobsled crashes are severe, on some level.

This one was worse than most.

The front axle came off the sled, all control was lost and Meyers Taylor and O'Brien were being thrown around like crash test dummies. O'Brien remembers not being able to move for a few moments, wondering if she was critically injured. Her season — her Olympic shot — could have ended right there.

They raced four days later.

O'Brien isn't sure how; her back was still extremely sore, and the back is sort of important for a bobsled push athlete.

"It was not easy getting back on the line to race in St. Moritz after that," O'Brien said. "We were both very, very beat up. I decided to put my body on the line for E because I felt that I had the best chance of getting her a top-10 finish. And I said, 'You know what? Regardless of this helps or hurts me when it comes to Olympic decision-making, who's on the team, I'm not going to let a regret linger in my mind.' And so, I chose to compete."

A week later, the U.S. selection committee met to decide who would race in Cortina. The pilots — Meyers Taylor, Kaillie Humphries Armbruster and Kaysha Love — were all Olympic locks. A pair of push athletes — Jasmine Jones (who'll race with Humphries Armbruster) and Azaria Hill (who'll race with Love) — were pretty much considered to be locks as well. That left three women for one push spot, and O'Brien got the nod.

"I had no idea that I was going to be named to the team. I really didn't," O'Brien said. "And I remember sitting there and just praying, 'Lord, if this is your will, please let it happen.'"

Inside a conference room at an airport hotel in Munich, U.S. bobsled coach Chris Fogt announced the pairings. Humphries Armbruster and Jones were the first duo he revealed. Hill and Love were next. And then he said, "Elana and Jadin."

"My mouth, like, dropped," O'Brien said.

The track star with the U.S. flag on the wall of her apartment in South Bend, Indiana — someone who spent years dreaming of a Summer Games medal — was headed to the Winter Olympics.

The future

Whatever happens this weekend — a medal is absolutely within O'Brien's reach, especially with Meyers Taylorcoming off the monobob gold— the track star expects to go back to track, at some point.

She plans to continue in bobsled as well.

It's amazing how much things have changed for O'Brien in the span of about six months. From answering that DM from Meyers Taylor, to making the Olympic team, to watching her pilot win gold and now getting the chance to compete, it has truly been a whirlwind she never saw coming.

And now, she hopes, it's time to win.

"We have a job to do and so I think once the job is done, once we accomplish what we came here to do, then it'll sink in," O'Brien said. "I'm very much an advocate for not getting carried away with excitement and staying level. Once we finish our job, then I think it'll hit way more than it is now."

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

One day afterTony Clark's surprise resignation amid a reported inappropriate relationshipwith his sister-in-law, the Major League Baseball Players Associationelected Bruce Meyer as its interim executive director, the union announced Wednesday.

The vote was reportedly unanimous for Meyer, who was previously serving as deputy executive director. Matt Nussbaum, the union's general counsel, was promoted to interim deputy executive director.

Meyer was the natural choice, as Clark's No. 2 and the union's lead negotiator with MLB.He spoke earlier Wednesday about the importance of the union remaining united in the wake of Clark's ouster.

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According to ESPN's Passan, Clark resigned on the heels ofan internal investigation that revealed an inappropriate relationship with his sister-in-law, who worked for the union beginning in 2023. The union held an emergency meeting Tuesday afternoon but did not vote on an executive director until Wednesday.

The news comes less than 10 months before the current CBA is set to expire on Dec. 1. The union and MLB owners are expected to engage in a furious labor battle ahead of a new CBA, which many expect could lead to a lockout extending into the 2027 MLB season. There is speculation that the owners will push hard for a salary cap, something the players have opposed for years.

Meyer joined the MLBPA in 2018 and played a central role in the previous CBA negotiation as well as the 2020 agreement to play baseball amid the COVID-19 pandemic. This election confirms he'll be at the table for the upcoming negotiation.

Clark also played a role in helping negotiate previous CBAs for the players. He reportedly took an active part in negotiations as a player before being hired by the MLBPA in 2010. He was initially a director of player relations before he was hired as the union's executive director in 2013. He oversaw negotiations ahead of the 2016 CBA and the contentious 2022 lockout, which resulted in Opening Day being postponed by a week as negotiations extended into March.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Tariffs paid by midsized U.S. businesses tripled over the course of last year, new research tied to one of America's leading banks showed on Thursday — more evidence that PresidentDonald Trump's push to chargehigher taxes on importsis causing economic disruption.

The additional taxes have meant that companies that employ a combined 48 million people in the U.S. — the kinds of businesses that Trump had promised to revive — have had to find ways to absorb thenew expense, by passing it along to customers in the form of higher prices, employing fewer workers or accepting lower profits.

"That's a big change in their cost of doing business," said Chi Mac, business research director of the JPMorganChase Institute, which published the analysis on Thursday. "We also see some indications that they may be shifting away from transacting with China and maybe toward some other regions in Asia."

The research doesn't say how the additional costs are flowing through the economy, but it indicates that tariffs are being paid by U.S. firms. It's part of a growing body of economic analyses that counter the administration's claims thatforeigners pay the tariffs.

The JPMorganChase Institute report used payments data to look at businesses that might lack the pricing power of large multinational companies to offset tariffs, but may be small enough to quickly change supply chains to minimize exposure to the tax increases. The companies tended to have revenues between $10 million and $1 billion with fewer than 500 employees, a category known as "middle market."

The analysis suggests that the Trump administration's goal of becoming less directly reliant on Chinese manufacturers has been occurring. Payments to China by these companies were 20% below their October 2024 levels, but it's unclear whether that means China is simply routing its goods through other countries or if supply chains have moved.

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The authors of the analysis emphasized in an interview that companies are still adjusting to the tariffs and said they plan to continue studying the issue.

The Trump administration has been adamant that the tariffs are a boon for the economy, businesses, and workers. Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, lashed out on Wednesday at research by theNew York Federal Reserveshowing that nearly 90% of the burden for Trump's tariffs fell on U.S. companies and consumers.

"The paper is an embarrassment," Hassett told CNBC. "It's, I think, the worst paper I've ever seen in the history of the Federal Reserve system. The people associated with this paper should presumably be disciplined."

Trump increased the average tariff rate to 13% from 2.6% last year, according to the New York Fed researchers. He declared that tariffs on some items like steel, kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities were in the national security interest of the country — and declared an economic emergency to bypass Congress and impose a baseline tax on goods from much of the world last April at an event he called "Liberation Day."

The high rates provoked a financial market panic, prompting Trump to walk back his rates and then engage in talks with multiple countries that led to a set of new trade frameworks. The Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on whether Trump surpassed his legal authority by declaring an economic emergency.

Trump was elected in 2024 on his promise to tame inflation, but his tariffs have contributed to voter frustration over affordability. While inflation has not spiked during Trump's term thus far, hiring slowed sharply and ateam of academic economists estimatethat consumer prices were roughly 0.8 percentage points higher than they would otherwise be.

Thursday Olympics live coverage|Medal count|Skating or hockey?

Hi there! Welcome to the Daily Briefing. Here's what to know:

• The reward in the search for Nancy Guthrie was increased.

• A women's basketball player faces four felony charges.

• A former Disney Channel star has cancer.

Nicole Fallerthere, bringing you the news to know on Thursday, from an exclusive interview with Maryland's governor to the arrest of a former royal. Plus: An Olympian champions grief and gets a gold.

Maryland governor punches back on Potomac

Maryland Gov. Wes Moorehas a messagefor President Donald Trump after a collapsed sewer pipecaused wastewaterto spew into the Potomac River: "Please start doing your job."

Trumpput the blame on Democratssuch as Moore for the spill that's polluted the river that cuts through Washington, D.C. and is near the White House. Trump, in a set of incendiary social media posts, hasexcluded Moore froma bipartisan event for the nation's governors.

In anexclusive interviewwith USA TODAY,the Maryland governor fired back, arguing that the break was in a DC pipe on federal land.

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"How Maryland gets caught up in this, I have no idea. That is just some very creative facts from the president of the United States," Moore said to USA TODAY.

More news to know now

• A former prince arrested. British police arrested Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on Thursday on suspicion of misconduct in public life, according to multiple news outlets in the United Kingdom. The former prince has faced intense scrutiny over his friendship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein

• Why did skiers go? A backcountry avalanche disaster is being called the deadliest avalanche in the U.S. in four decades. Several of the victims who died in California's Lake Tahoe Region were members of an elite skiing academy. As families grieve and crews come up with a plan to remove the bodies from the mountain when it's safe, the guiding company is facing a tough question: Given the known dangers, why did they still go?

• MTG v. Trump looms. President Donald Trump is headlining a rally Thursday in Georgia's 14th Congressional District, where he hopes his preferred candidate — Clay Fuller, a state prosecutor — pulls off a dominant performance on March 10 in a special election to replace former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

2026 Winter Olympics

Grief and a gold

Mikaela Shiffrin wanted to win Olympic gold in women's slalom on Wednesday as much as she feared it.A feeling she's resisted every day since her father died in 2020. After she crossed the finish line, 1.50 seconds ahead of the next closest skier — an eternity in the sport — she dropped her chest to her knees and her head in her lap.

Health & Wellness

She won a discrimination lawsuit for endometriosis

Christian "Cece" Worley in 2025won the first casein North Carolina to recognize endometriosis, an inflammatory disease where tissue similar to the uterine lining grows outside of the uterus, as a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Worley, 27, reached a near six-figure settlement in her disability discrimination lawsuit against the North Carolina Department of Public Safety (NCDPS). She represented herself in court. The verdict surprised everyone.

Before you go

• Your coffee brew could make cholesterol worse.

• Don't book the loud cruise cabin.

• We're reading Lisa Rinna's memoir.

Have feedback on the Daily Briefing? Shoot Nicole an email at NFallert@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Daily Briefing: Poop, the Potomac and politics