{"id":710676,"date":"2026-02-06T16:20:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T13:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/five-things-to-know-about-2026-winter-olympics-host-mary-carillo\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T16:20:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T13:20:13","slug":"five-things-to-know-about-2026-winter-olympics-host-mary-carillo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/five-things-to-know-about-2026-winter-olympics-host-mary-carillo\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Things to Know About 2026 Winter Olympics Host Mary Carillo"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tMary Carillo wasn\u2019t supposed to be in the booth for the Milan-Cortina Opening Ceremonies Friday. She was supposed to be prepping some other Olympic segments, or reminiscing about her best\u00a0Real Sports<\/em>\u00a0investigations, or scouting a mixed-doubles tennis tournament in Timbuktu, or whatever it is Mary Carillo does when she\u2019s not in front of the camera.
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Instead, she\u2019ll be in the booth with Shaun White and Terry Gannon, watching the Parade of Nations and commenting on all those Mariah Carey melismas, game<\/a>ly stepping in while original host Savannah Guthrie stays in the US. to attend to the tragic disapp<\/a>earance of her mom.<\/p>\n

Who is Mary Carillo? If you\u2019re a sports fan, you already know. But if you\u2019re one of the millions who\u2019s tuning in Friday just for the pageantry and don\u2019t know your curling from your Kazakh mogul specialists, here\u2019s the skinny on the Brooklyn-born, Florida-residing American treasure.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s mad sardonic<\/strong>. Tennis fans know Carillo for her wry comments, often delivered with a world-class deadpan, leaving only alert viewers to pick up the joke. Once when the Spanish tennis whiz Fernando Verdasco was playing in a Grand Slam match, the ball caught the tape and hung above the net, an event noted by partner John McEnroe. Carillo asked if that meant something was in the air tonight, Fernando. The only thing better than an\u00a0ABBA reference is an ABBA reference you have to pay really close attention to get.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s a former pro tennis player.<\/strong>\u00a0Many tennis commentators were great champions themselves. Carillo had a solid start, winning the mixed-doubles title at the French Open at just 20 (with McEnroe!). But she never cracked the Top 20 as a singles player, and after a host of injuries, retired at just 23. Fortunately for us, she was pretty good at her second career \u2014 she\u2019s been a tennis commentator for nearly 45 years, and fans get visibly excited when they see she\u2019ll be calling a match. Also, she was was a\u00a0Real Sports<\/em>\u00a0correspondent for nearly the entirety of its 29-season run.<\/p>\n

She provided the all-time best three minutes Olympics outside of the Miracle on Ice.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>At the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, Carillo was supposed to give a couple-minute tutorial on badminton, which had been added as a competition sport just a few Games before. She started out doing that, but then somehow, powered along by her own observational skills and suburban-mom frustration, turned it into a Shakespearean monologue about an entire neighborhood piling into her backyard to try to free a shuttlecock from a tree, with everything from javelins to\u00a0 Roller Blades tossed in its direction and very specific children\u2019s names joining the action as they empty out her garage. And then the\u00a0monologue just\u00a0ended. We still didn\u2019t know much about badminton. But we did know Carillo could give Spalding Gray a run for his\u00a0money.<\/p>\n

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