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The athletes and teams to watch at the 2026 Winter Olympics

The athletes and teams to watch at the 2026 Winter Olympics

From the greatest Alpine skier of all time to a former plumber making her Olympic debut, here are 15 athletes and teams to follow at this year’s Olympics.

United States' Lindsey Vonn speeds down the course during an alpine ski, women's World Cup super-G in Val d'Isere, France, Sunday, Dec. 21, 2025.
United States' Lindsey Vonn speeds down the course during an alpine ski, women's World Cup super-G in Val d'Isere, France, Sunday, Dec. 21, 2025. | Pier Marco Tacca

The 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics are nearly here.

For two weeks, we’ll huddle around our TVs. Overcome with chills, we’ll watch heroes and underdogs achieve their lifelong dreams while others fall short. Lives will be forever changed by whatever happens in Italy.

The next two weeks are guaranteed to be filled with compelling and inspiring storylines from the thousands of athletes competing in the 2026 Winter Games.

From the greatest alpine skier of all time looking for redemption to a former plumber making her Olympic debut, here are 15 athletes and teams to follow at this year’s Olympics.

Lindsey Vonn

The first name on this list should be no surprise.

All eyes will be on Lindsey Vonn in Cortina as the 41-year-old attempts to complete her comeback in what the skier says will be her fifth and final Olympics.

A knee injury from a crash on Jan. 30 put Vonn’s Olympics in jeopardy. But in a press conference Tuesday, Vonn announced she would still compete despite a ruptured ACL, as the Deseret News reported.

“My intention is to race everything,” Vonn said.

Vonn retired from skiing in 2019, but after undergoing partial knee surgery, she announced she was coming out of retirement in November 2024, as the Deseret News previously reported.

This season, Vonn has been on a tear, defying all the doubts surrounding her age and health.

In December, the 41-year-old won her first World Cup in eight years, celebrating with tears and a phone call to her dad. She’s made the podium in seven of her eight races this season with her lowest finish being fourth place.

Vonn will attempt to win her fourth Olympic medal at the same course where she has trained or raced 65 times and won 12 times, according to SKI Magazine.

Alysa Liu

U.S. Championships Figure Skating
Alysa Liu skates during the "Making Team USA" performance at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, in St. Louis. | Stephanie Scarbrough

Vonn isn’t the only American making an Olympic comeback this year.

In April 2022, 16-year-old Alysa Liu walked away from figure skating. Already the youngest woman to win the U.S. figure skating championships at age 13 and a 2022 Olympian, Liu felt “so satisfied with how my skating career has gone,” she said in an Instagram post announcing her retirement, per NBC Sports.

“Now that I’m finally done with my goals in skating I’m going to be moving on with my life,” Liu said.

But after two years away from the sport, Liu rediscovered her passion for skating on the ski slopes, she told U.S. Figure Skating. The then-teenager realized she hadn’t felt that same adrenaline since her skating career.

Liu announced her return to competitive figure skating in March 2024. A year later, Liu won gold in both the short and free programs at the 2025 World Figure Skating Championships, per Golden Skate.

In January, Liu placed second at the U.S. figure skating championships and earned a spot on the 2026 Olympic team, where she will be a gold medal favorite.

If Liu does win gold, it would be historic. The last American woman to do so was 16-year-old Sarah Hughes at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics.

Mikaela Shiffrin

Czech Republic World Cup Alpine Skiing
United States' Mikaela Shiffrin celebrates winning an alpine ski, women's World Cup slalom, in Spindleruv Mlyn, Czech Republic, Sunday, Jan. 25, 2026. | Giovanni Auletta, Associated Press

Mikaela Shiffrin’s greatness is already indisputable.

Shiffrin is the all-time winningest World Cup skier with 108 wins. That’s 22 more wins than the next closest skier (Ingermar Stenmark, 86) and 24 more than the third-place Vonn, according to Olympics.com.

The 30-year-old skier has won three Olympic medals — two gold and a bronze — and eight of her 15 World Championship medals are gold.

But after a frustrating 2022 Beijing Olympics, Shiffrin is looking to add to that list.

In 2022, Shiffrin failed to win a medal with three DNFs in her five individual events.

After skiing out in the slalom, the world watched her ski off to the side of the course, sit down and cry.

“Everybody experiences the hard days when it’s difficult to keep a positive attitude, and you just kind of need to sit down and cry,” Shiffrin told ELLE that summer. “Except, for me, it all became a very public thing.”

But Shiffrin found a way to inspire the nation and world even while falling short. Shiffrin was vulnerable even on the world’s biggest stage.

“I mean, I have Olympic medals,” she said, per Olympics.com. “Personally, I would say it was worth it, but it feels certainly like ... I feel like a joke, I still do. You can fail and not be a failure, and I have won in my career and I’m going to win again.”

Shiffrin enters the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics fresh off World Cup win No. 108 and her ninth Crystal Globe as she looks to put Beijing behind her.

Ilia Malinin

U.S. Championships Figure Skating
Ilia Malinin skates during the "Making Team USA" performance at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, in St. Louis. | Jeff Roberson

Ilia Malinin will finally get his Olympic moment in the spotlight.

Malinin missed out on competing at the 2022 Beijing Olympics despite a second-place finish at the U.S. figure skating championships.

Now, the “Quad God” — a nickname given to him for his historic ability to land quadruple jumps — will make his Olympic debut in Italy, where he will likely leave as a household name.

Nine months after his Olympic snub, Malinin was the first figure skater to land a quadruple axel, which is four and a half rotations in a single jump, at an international competition, according to NBC Sports.

And Malinin was just 17 years old.

The now 21-year-old certainly has a résumé deserving of it. Since his second place at the 2022 U.S. championships, Malinin has won the title every year.

The figure skater has won the respect and admiration of 1992 Olympic gold medalist Kristi Yamaguchi, who told King 5 Seattle on Jan. 27 that Malinin has “just changed the game.”

“You sit down with some of my other fellow gold medalists like Brian Boitano, Dorothy Hamill, Meryl Davis, Charlie White, we, I don’t think, ever fathomed we would see a quad axle in our lifetime, and here is Ilia Malinin doing it almost with ease, and so that blows us away. And he has definitely lived up to his name as ‘Quad God’ and the gold is really his to lose,” Yamaguchi said.

Malinin has Olympic heritage as both his parents competed in a combined four Olympics for Uzbekistan, according to The Athletic.

Maxim Naumov

U.S. Championships Figure Skating
Maxim Naumov skates during the "Making Team USA" performance at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, in St. Louis. | Stephanie Scarbrough

Maxim Naumov doesn’t need to win a medal to win the country’s and world’s hearts. He already has.

Whatever he accomplishes in Milan will only further endear him to Americans.

One year ago, Naumov’s parents, Vadim Naumov and Evgenia Shishkova, were among the members of the figure skating community who died in the D.C. plane crash that killed 67 people.

At the U.S. figure skating championships in early January, Maxim Naumov held a photo of his parents while awaiting his score and then kissed it after hearing his performance gave him the lead.

Maxim Naumov finished third at the U.S. figure skating championships, which earned him a spot on Team USA for his Olympic debut.

“I really hope that my mom watched because she never used to watch me skate. But they’d say, ‘We’re proud of you, but job’s not finished. We’re just getting started,’” he said after making the Olympic team.

Eileen Gu

The title of breakout star of the 2022 Beijing Olympics belonged to Eileen Gu.

At just 18 years old, Gu won gold in both the freeski big air and halfpipe as well as silver in the women’s freeski slopestyle for host country China.

Gu, who was born in San Francisco, will represent her mother’s native China again — a decision that sparked backlash in 2022.

The decision, Gu recently told Time Magazine, was rooted in the opportunity to inspire a new generation of skiers in China.

“The U.S. already has the representation,” she said. “I like building my own pond.”

Gu made history in 2022 as the first action-sports athlete to win three medals at the same Olympic Games, according to Time.

She’ll look to add to her medal count as a favorite to defend her Olympic champion titles.

Chloe Kim

At the 2022 Beijing Olympics, Chloe Kim defended her 2018 Pyeongchang gold in the halfpipe.

The opportunity to defend that title again and be the three-time consecutive Olympic champion was almost put in jeopardy when Kim announced on Jan. 13 that she was dealing with a torn labrum.

Kim “can’t snowboard until right before the Olympics,” she said, but she “will be good to go for the Olympics.”

If Kim wins gold again, she will be the first woman to win three Olympic gold medals in the halfpipe.

She already is the youngest snowboarder to win Olympic halfpipe gold, which she did at just 17 years old, according to Olympics.com.

Canadian skeleton team scandal

On Jan. 11, the Canadian skeleton team created a scandal that cost an American a spot in what would have been her sixth Olympics.

American Katie Uhlaender won last month’s Lake Placid North American Cup, and under normal circumstances, it would have been enough for Uhlaender to punch a ticket to the Olympics.

Instead, she came up 18 points short. Why?

Uhlaender should have earned 120 points for the win but only won 90 because right before the race, the competition pool dropped from 23 to 19, resulting in the 25% reduction in points.

Before the race, Canadian coach Joe Cecchini told Uhlaender that he would be pulling four of his athletes from the race to ensure Canada kept its two quota spots, according to The Athletic.

Uhlaender recorded her phone call with Cecchini after he texted saying he had bad news for her. NPR obtained the recording.

In the recording, Uhlaender asks Cecchini, “So you’re going to make sure it’s not full points today?”

The coach responds by saying, ”That’s where I stand today. I’ll have two girls race. I’ll keep it (the total number of athletes competing) at 19.”

The International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation found that Cecchini’s benching was “intentional and directed to reducing the points available to athletes,” according to NPR.

But the ruling didn’t give Uhlaender the points she needed for Milan-Cortina. On Friday — a week before the Opening Ceremony — Uhlaender filed an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which was denied by the court on Monday.

The court ruled that it was out of its jurisdiction, meaning the “qualification places for the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 remain unchanged,” a court official said, per NPR.

How will Canada’s Hallie Clarke and Jane Channell perform with their team and head coach under scrutiny?

USA vs. Canada hockey rivalry

For the first time in 12 years, NHL players will return to the Olympics, including four players from the Utah Mammoth: Clayton Keller (U.S.), JJ Peterka (Germany), Karel Vejmelka (Czechia) and Olli Määttä (Finland).

And if these Olympics are anything like last year’s 4 Nations Face-off, viewers have a lot to be excited for, especially if the U.S. and Canada meet again.

The teams are in separate groups and wouldn’t face each other until later in the tournament.

But the U.S. women and Canada are both in Group A. The Canadian women have dominated the Olympics, winning gold in five of the last six Winter Games.

The American women have won gold twice, including in 2018 when they beat Canada in a dramatic shootout 3-2. These Olympics will also be the last for U.S. hockey great and captain Hilary Knight.

Jordan Stolz

Four years ago, 17-year-old speedskater Jordan Stolz finished 13th in the 500-meter and 14th in the 1,000-meter in Beijing.

Flash forward to 2026, the 21-year-old from Wisconsin is a favorite for gold, and he’s drawing comparisons to Summer Olympics great Michael Phelps from 2006 Torino Olympics 500m gold medalist and NBC Sports analyst Joey Cheek.

“Watching Jordan Stolz develop has felt like I imagine it felt watching a young Michael Phelps,” Cheek said in December aheadof the 2026 U.S. Olympic Speed Skating Team Trials. “He can win at multiple distances, under wildly varying conditions. When he’s at his worst, he still wins medals, and when he’s at his best, he’s unbeatable.”

Stolz won the 2023 and 2024 world titles in the 500m, 1000m and 1500m. He lost his title of world champion in 2025, but Stolz still won two silvers and a bronze while recovering from pneumonia and strep throat, according to Team USA.

At the Milan-Cortina Winter Games, Stolz could be the first American athlete in 46 years — and second ever — to win three gold medals at a single Winter Olympics since speedskater Eric Heiden did so in the 1980 Lake Placid Games when he won five, per NBC Sports.

Stolz will have four chances to win gold in Milan in the 500m, 1000m, 1500m and mass start events.

Nick Goepper

American freeskier Nick Goepper medaled at the last three Olympics — two silvers and a bronze — in freeski slopestyle.

But in Milan-Cortina, Goepper will compete at the Olympics in the halfpipe for the first time.

These Olympics will also be Goepper’s first since he retired and unretired, according to NBC Sports.

In January 2023 — a year after winning silver in Beijing — Goepper announced on social media that he was retiring “from full-time competition.” But he unretired 10 months later to begin competing in the halfpipe.

And Goepper has high expectations for the 2026 Winter Games. The 31-year-old has his sights set on gold, which would be his first Olympic gold medal.

Need another reason to root for Goepper?

In 2024, Goepper announced in an Instagram video that he had purchased land in Utah where he built what he had named “Rollerblade Ranch” to help him make the switch to halfpipe.

He called it his “secret weapon to winning a gold medal in skiing halfpipe.”

Jessie Diggins

The Milan-Cortina Olympics will serve as a farewell tour for American cross-country skiing great Jessie Diggins.

In November, Diggins announced she would retire at the end of this season. Following the Olympics, Diggins will race one last time at the Stifel Lake Placid Finals in March.

“I hope I’m remembered not just for the pain cave and ability to suffer deeply for a team that I love and a sport I care about so much, but for the joy, sense of fun on snow, heart-on-sleeve racing, deep vulnerability and openness that I’ve brought to everything I do,” Diggins said in a U.S. Ski and Snowboard press release.

Diggins first made the national team in 2011 and would make her Olympic debut at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, but she wouldn’t win her first individual World Cup race until the 2016 Tour de Ski.

In 2018, Diggins made history when she won the U.S. its first Olympic gold medal in cross-country skiing, sliding forward to cross the finish line and win the team sprint by less than a ski.

Rewatching the final 40 seconds of the race is enough to make anyone a cross-country skiing fan if they weren’t already.

When Diggins hangs up her skis this year, she’ll have at least one gold, one silver and one bronze Olympic medal, which she’ll likely add to in this month’s Olympics as the No. 1 ranked skier in the world.

Erin Jackson

Four years ago, a stumble at the U.S. Olympic Speed Skating Trials almost cost American speedskater Erin Jackson a trip to the Olympics.

Jackson, a Salt Lake Community College alum, ended up finishing third, just shy of Olympic qualifying.

But teammate Brittany Bowe, who won nationals and had also secured an Olympic berth in the 1,000-meter, forfeited her spot in the 500-meter for Jackson to make the Olympic team.

Bowe won bronze in the 1,000-meter, and after another spot in the 500 opened up, Bowe was able to compete and finished 16th.

“I won the tournament but I know very well how I stand in the world ranking,” Bowe told Olympics.com. “Erin’s ranked No. 1 in the world and now she’s an Olympic champion. It was the right thing to do.”

Because of her teammate’s selfless act, Jackson competed in Beijing where she won the women’s 500-meter and became “the first Black woman to win an individual gold medal at an Olympic Winter Games,” according to Time.

Jackson, who only began speedskating nine years ago, will now compete in her third Olympics and defend her Olympic medal and look to add another in the 1,000-meter.

“I just hope that I can help other people of color get involved in winter sports and speedskating,” she said, per NBC News. “… It’s really important to see people like you achieving something, because then maybe that can inspire you to try the same things.”

Maddy Schaffrick

Snowboarder Maddy Schaffrick has already won gold for coolest journey to the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics.

At age 14, Schaffrick earned a spot on the U.S. national snowboard team and went on to compete in World Cups and the X Games, according to The Independent.

But six years later, Schaffrick fell out of love with the sport and walked away. Needing to find a new way to help pay the bills, she spent a year apprenticing at her friend’s plumbing and heating company.

“One year of plumbing (was) harder on my body than seven years of professional snowboarding,” Schaffrick recently told the Today Show.

She then returned to the slopes as a snowboarding coach for 7- to 9-year-olds. That led to Schaffrick serving as an assistant coach for the national team in 2022 and later, Schaffrick coming out of retirement and heading to the 2026 Olympics.

“I still feel a little bit in shock because it’s felt like a long journey and I’ve put so much into it,” she told Today.

Follow the Deseret News’ live blog for coverage of the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics.

Category: General Sports

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