A local dog made a surprise appearance during the women’s cross-country free sprint qualification event at the ongoing 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy. The dog playfully chased athletes, a remote-controlled camera, and even snapped a finish line pic before being caught by officials.
On Wednesday morning, the biggest star of the Winter Olympics wasn’t a skilled athlete but instead a good doggo. According to NPR, the local canine is a two-year-old wolfdog named Nazgul who escaped from his nearby home and crashed the qualifying event on February 18. In the process, he quickly caught the attention of the internet. In clips that went viral online, Nazgul can be seen running at full speed behind skiers during the qualifying event in front of an amused crowd before crossing the finish line. He also chased a broadcast camera running on a track.
NPR reports that Nazgul was quickly wrangled by local officials without harm or incident and taken back to his home at a nearby bed-and-breakfast.
“He was crying this morning more than normal because he was seeing us leaving—and I think he just wanted to follow us,” Nazgul’s owner told NPR. “He always looks for people.” The owner also described the Czechoslovakian wolfdog as “stubborn, but very sweet.”
“I was like, ‘Am I hallucinating?” said Tena Hadzic, a 21-year-old Croatian skier who shared the track with the dog. “I don’t know what I should do, because maybe he could attack me, bite me.”
Shortly after his appearance at the event, Nazgul became popular online, with people sharing clips of his antics on Bluesky, Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, and elsewhere. Of course, because the people in charge of the Olympics don’t realize we live in 2026, all of the media related to the event and the dog are tied up behind various regional blocking nonsense and other restrictions that make it hard for me to embed anything here. But they can’t stop me from sharing this photo of Nazgul as he sprinted across the finish line, and the OMEGA finish camera snapped his amazing effort.