“Coming back to an Olympics, having people here, not having a partition in the dining hall, not having a COVID test every morning, you remember some of the aspects of the Olympics that we lost in Beijing,” said Evan Bates, a U.S. ice dancer, at a press conference in Milan leading up to the opening ceremonies. “The energy in the [Milan Olympic] village is incredible. ... People are excited, people are pin trading maskless. Those things, I think, are an integral part of the Olympic Games.”