CORTINA — One person habitually returns to the Olympic Games not in pursuit of personal achievement, nor to compete, spectate or even support fierce competition. Instead, he returns to observe and create.
At the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics, French painter Marc Ahr marks his 17th appearance as the self-described “unofficial painter of the Games.”
While most eyes remain fixed on the events themselves, Ahr approaches the Games through a different lens.
“Every day you have people who are happy because they won, and every day you have people who cry because they lost,” Ahr said as he set up his easel, sketching not the competition, but the human responses surrounding it. “It’s the Olympic Games. It’s not Olympic work.”
His presence is not defined by medal count, but by his desire to create a connection by using art to capture the emotional landscape that unfolds beyond the arenas as joy, loss, and anticipation surface among the spectators.
This distinction is what continues to draw him back. His repeated return to the Games is less about profitability or professional pursuit, and more about intimacy.
“I prefer the Winter Olympics because they are smaller,” he said. “When it’s smaller, you can meet the people again.”
Tim Puttre, an Olympic spectator, made his return to Ahr’s street gallery. Puttre had been sketched into one of Ahr’s works in a prior year, but later misplaced the painting. When the two reconnected, Ahr adjusted his new drawing to include the familiar face, recreating a moment that had once been lost.
For Ahr, encounters like these outweigh the scale of the event itself.
“Maybe the painting is for just one person, but this person is so happy that I will remember that he was happy,” Ahr said.
He drew groups of people walking the streets of the mountain village, kids playing in the snow, couples chatting. Many groups approached Ahr to see what he was up to, particularly when they realized he looked their way as he sketched. He even added their names next to their portrait.
After attending 17 Olympic Games, Ahr says the results matter less to him than what happens around them. He documents how spectators experience the Games together, capturing moments that might otherwise go unnoticed.
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