Faster, higher, stronger—and way more fun. The Olympics are back.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. MILAN—For an entire decade, the Olympics couldn’t stop getting it wrong. The Games were held in the middle of autocracies, the middle of pandemics and the middle of nowhere.

They burned money organizing events that no one attended. They installed them in time zones where no one could see them. Athletes were miserable.

TV ratings plummeted like ski jumpers. The whole enterprise of the Olympics risked sliding into irrelevance. But ever since a pair of Italian ski legends lit the cauldron in Milan, just 18 months after the summer fête of Paris, the decline of the Games has felt like a distant memory.

Ratings have surged. Crowds have roared to life. The inevitable scandals aren’t about state-sponsored doping schemes but cheating curlers and a philandering biathlete.

Halfway through Milan Cortina, it’s clear that the biggest comeback at the Olympics is the Olympics itself. “On all accounts, the Olympics are back," said Christophe Dubi, the executive director of the Olympic Games. “The world needs events like this one." Over the past decade, this event coincided with disease, geopolitical hostility and even the occasional threat of nuclear war.

It took the one-two punch of Paris and Milan to restore the luster of the Olympic rings. Overall viewership for Milan Cortina has doubled the putrid Beijing numbers of four years ago, according to NBC, setting up these Winter Games to be the most-watched in a decade. Americans who didn’t know the Olympics were happening last week have become obsessed.

And the International Olympic Committee only expects that wave to keep rolling as it prepares on two fronts for Los Angeles 2028. “One is the logistics. Pretty boring," Dubi said.