The 2026 Milan Winter Olympics kick off on Friday, February 6, and once again, Coloradans can boast that we sent the most athletes of any state to the Winter Games. From alpine skiing and figure skating to bobsled and new-this-year ski mountaineering, you’ll be able to cheer on hometown heroes in nearly every event.

Below, we dive into the background of every Olympian with Colorado ties that will be competing in Milan. We suggest bookmarking this handy webpage to consult while you watch.

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The 2026 Winter Paralympics begin on March 6. Return in early March to learn more about the Coloradans competing.

Alpine Skiing

River Radamus

River Radamus
Photo by Steven Kornreich, courtesy of U.S. Ski and Snowboard
  • Hometown: Edwards
  • Birthdate: February 12, 1998
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 1
  • Discipline: Alpine skiing
  • Probable Events: Men’s Super-G (Feb. 11), Men’s Giant Slalom (Feb. 14), Men’s Slalom (Feb. 16)

The son of longtime ski coaches, River Radamus claims he learned to ski before he could walk. He came painfully close to Olympic glory four years ago in Beijing, finishing fourth in the giant slalom and missing out on the medal stand by just 0.26 seconds. While training for his shot at redemption, he’s remained busy with Alpine Racing Career Opportunities, a three-year-old foundation he launched to improve access and affordability to the notoriously expensive sport of ski racing. —Craig Meyer

Read More: River Radamus Doesn’t Care if He Wins an Olympic Medal

Kyle Negomir

Kyle Negomir in a downhill ski race
Photo by Millo Moravski/Agence Zoom/Getty Images
  • Hometown: Littleton
  • Birthdate: Oct. 3, 1998
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 0
  • Discipline: Alpine skiing
  • Probable Events: Men’s Downhill (Feb. 7), Men’s Super-G (Feb. 11), Men’s Giant Slalom (Feb. 14)

Had it not been for an ill-timed injury, you likely would’ve learned the name “Kyle Negomir” four years ago. After winning both the team event at Junior World Championships and the NorAm Overall Championship in 2019, Negomir suffered a season-ending crash during a training session in 2020 that left him with a broken right hand, multiple torn ligaments in his knee, and an injured shoulder. It took the Littleton native two years of rehab—and sitting out of the 2022 Beijing Olympics—to fully recover. Now, he finally gets the chance to compete on the world’s biggest stage. —CM

Mikaela Shiffrin

Mikaela Shiffrin
Getty Images
  • Hometown: Edwards
  • Birthdate: March 13, 1995
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 3
  • Discipline: Alpine skiing
  • Probable Events: Women’s Team Combined Downhill and Slalom (Feb. 10), Women’s Giant Slalom Runs 1 and 2 (Feb. 15), Women’s Slalom Runs 1 and 2 (Feb. 18)

With the headlines Mikaela Shiffrin has been generating lately—breaking the record for the most alpine World Cup wins in March 2023; announcing her engagement to fellow ski champion Aleksander Aamodt Kilde in April 2024; launching a podcast, What’s the Point with Mikaela Shiffrin, this past October—it’s easy to forget that for the greatest ski racer of all time, the last Olympics did not go all that great. Shiffrin left Beijing without a medal and didn’t finish three of her races. In the time since, she’s been open about her mental health struggles, from processing the grief after losing her father in 2020 to her post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis after a crash in a giant slalom race in November 2024. In October, the 30-year-old told Olympics.com that Milano Cortina is “not so much about unfinished business, but it’s more about making peace.”

Shiffrin plans to compete in slalom, giant slalom, and the new team combined event (a two-person relay) and may tack on super-G. “I don’t want Beijing to be the reason that I’m scared of the Olympics,” she told Olympics.com. “And for the past few years, it has been a little bit. But right now I’m pretty optimistic about the season.” She has reason to be: At press time, the Olympic favorite had won six of her seven World Cup slaloms. —JL

Lindsey Vonn

Lindsey Vonn
Photo by Dustin Satloff, courtesy of U.S. Ski Team
  • Hometown: Vail
  • Birthdate: October 18, 1984
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 4
  • Discipline: Alpine skiing
  • Probable Events: Women’s Downhill (Feb. 8), Women’s Super-G (Feb. 12)

Lindsey Vonn may be from Vail, but one of the main reasons the 41-year-old came out of a five-year retirement in November 2024 with an eye on the 2026 Games is a kind of home court advantage—her familiarity with the Olympic course in Italy. “I wouldn’t even try this if it wasn’t in Cortina,” Vonn, the most dominant speed racer in the sport’s history, told Olympics.com in December. “It’s a very meaningful place to me. It’s where I got my first podium. I broke the women’s World Cup win record there, I’ve had a couple of wins there.”

With an additional 12 pounds of muscle and titanium implants in her right knee, Vonn has established herself as a downhill frontrunner this World Cup season, winning 2025’s first race in St. Moritz, Switzerland; she’s also reached the podium multiple times in super-G. It’s a feel-good comeback story, but Vonn has been clear that she’s after hardware on the course she estimates she’s skied 40 to 50 times, “definitely way more times than any of the other girls,” as she told Olympics.com. “Everyone knows how competitive I am, and you could probably guess what I’m aiming for.”

But despite her impressive season, Vonn may not even get a chance to race for the podium in Milan. The skier suffered a knee injury in a downhill race just one week before the Olympics. Her team is currently “discussing the situation,” but Vonn insists her “Olympic dream is not over.”  —JL

Hockey

Jaccob Slavin

Jaccob Slavin
Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
  • Hometown: Erie
  • Birthdate: May 1, 1994
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 0
  • Discipline: Hockey
  • Probable Events: USA vs. Latvia (Feb. 12), USA vs. Denmark (Feb. 14), USA vs. Germany (Feb. 15)

Your first clue that Jaccob Slavin is a different kind of hockey player? He has beautiful teeth—and, as far as we can tell, all of them. Maybe they’re veneers. Or maybe the 31-year-old Erie native owes his intact orthodontia to a playing style that’s best described as “courteous”: He’s twice won the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy, which goes to the nicest player in the NHL that season, becoming only the fourth defender (a position synonymous with goonery) in league history to earn the honor. It would be a mistake, however, to see weakness in that Crest-commercial grin.

Since joining the Carolina Hurricanes out of Colorado College in 2015, Slavin has become one of the sport’s most respected defenders, earning an All-Star Game nod in 2020 and a $51 million contract in 2024. He made his debut with the national team at last year’s 4 Nations Face-Off, which pitted teams from Finland, Sweden, Canada, and the United States against one another in a pre-Olympics smackdown. Slavin averaged more than 23 minutes across the United States’ four games as part of the squad’s first-choice defensive pairing (along with the Minnesota Wild’s Brock Faber), and opponents only scored twice while he was on the ice. In America’s two games against eventual winner Canada—and its offensive stars Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid, and the Avalanche’s Nathan MacKinnon—our northern rivals didn’t manage a single goal during Slavin’s shifts.

This season, injuries limited Slavin to just five games for the Hurricanes through December. That didn’t stop USA Hockey from naming him to the roster for Milano Cortina, where opponents can expect to see plenty of Slavin’s sparkling smile—but little of the net behind him. —Spencer Campbell

Snowboarding

Lily Dhawornvej

Lily Dhawornvej
Photo by Brandon Enouf, courtesy of U.S. Ski and Snowboard
  • Hometown: Frisco
  • Birthdate: August 14, 2009
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 0
  • Discipline: Snowboarding
  • Probable Events: Women’s SBD Slopestyle Qualification (Feb. 16), Final (Feb. 17)

Dubbed “slopestyle snowboarding’s bright future” by Forbes this past February, 16-year-old Lily Dhawornvej got a taste of the podium when she took bronze in snowboard Knuckle Huck (a freestyle, non-Olympic event) at the 2025 X Games in Aspen. It was a big moment for her entire family, who moved to Frisco from Littleton so she could train at Copper Mountain.

The second-generation Thai American brings a fearless style and next-gen energy to her slopestyle and big-air competitions as well as her commitment to uplifting the Asian American snowboarding community through her support of Soy Sauce Nation, an organization that connects underrepresented groups through snowboarding. “I kind of just feel like I’m me,” Dhawornvej told Forbes. “But I love representing and being a role model for little girls that look like me.” At Milano Cortina, she just might get a chance to do it on her sport’s biggest stage. —JL

Maddy Schaffrick

Maddy Schaffrick
Photo by Isami Kiyooka, courtesy of U.S. Ski and Snowboard
  • Hometown: Steamboat Springs
  • Birthdate: April 29, 1994
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 0
  • Discipline: Snowboarding
  • Probable Events: Women’s Snowboard Halfpipe Qualification (Feb. 11), Final (Feb. 12)

When Maddy Schaffrick dropped into the halfpipe in Secret Garden, China, in December 2024, she hadn’t competed in a World Cup event in a decade. Burned out at age 20 in 2015, the Steamboat Springs native left the sport. She did odd jobs, even apprenticing as a plumber, and eventually took a gig coaching seven-to-nine-year-olds with the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club to score a free ski pass. “Working with those kids fully reconnected me to my love for snowboarding that was so separate from competition,” Schaffrick says.

With her passion rekindled and an identity outside of snowboarding, she returned to the pro circuit simply hoping for a clean halfpipe run. “My last three years competing before I retired…it was like as soon as the judges were watching, I would crumble and kind of disassociate,” Schaffrick says. In Secret Garden, “I felt all the same feelings; I realized I might have a different outlook and new mental tools and more maturity, but those thought patterns were ingrained deep in me.” Instead of checking out, however, Schaffrick chose to trust herself and her training—and finished in third place.

Since then, she’s had a likely Olympic-qualifying World Cup run, including a second-place showing in Aspen in early January. “My goal has been to go on the same journey I went on before, that felt like it broke me,” Schaffrick says, “but to do it again with a belief in myself.” —JL

Stacy Gaskill

Stacy Gaskill competing in snowboard cross
Photo by Nisse Schmidt/Agence Zoom/Getty Images
  • Hometown: Golden
  • Birthdate: May 21, 2000
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 1
  • Discipline: Snowboarding
  • Probable Events: Women’s Snowboard Cross Qualification and Final (Feb. 13)

Stacy Gaskill began skiing when she was just two years old, but turned to snowboarding six years later and never looked back. The 25-year-old finished seventh in snowboard cross at the 2022 Beijing Games, but she’s back to chase the podium in Milan. The good news? It’s in her genes. Gaskill’s mother, Martha, earned a bronze medal at the 1988 Paralympics in Calgary. —CM

Red Gerard

Red Gerard
Photo by Isami Kiyooka, courtesy of U.S. Ski and Snowboard
  • Current Town: Silverthorne
  • Birthdate: June 29, 2000
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 2
  • Discipline: Snowboarding
  • Probable Events: Men’s Snowboard Big Air Qualification (Feb. 5), Men’s Snowboard Big Air Final (Feb. 7), Men’s Snowboard Slopestyle Qualification (Feb. 16), Men’s Snowboard Slopestyle Final (Feb. 18)

In 2018, America fell in love with Red Gerard when the then-17-year-old won the United States’ first gold medal at Pyeongchang in slopestyle—reportedly after staying up late watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine on Netflix, oversleeping, and misplacing his Team USA jacket—and promptly dropped an f-bomb on live TV. The circumstances gave the Ohio native, whose family moved to Silverthorne when he was seven, the reputation of a laid-back goofball.

But after disappointing fourth- and fifth-place finishes in Beijing and taking a year off to film snowboarding movies, Gerard told Olympics.com that he discovered he’s actually very competitive: “I don’t know if I started that way in snowboarding, but it’s at the point where I’m at now that I really want to win slopestyle competitions, fighting in that final to be on the podium.” The shift in mindset seems to be working, as Gerard took first place in the event at the 2024 and 2025 X Games. “I feel like I just want it more,” Gerard said. “I’ve tried to improve lots of little areas but at the end of the day, there’s a sense of wanting to win another Olympics. I want another shot, you know?” He’ll get it, after becoming one of the first American athletes to qualify, back in April 2025. —JL

Cody Winters

Cody Winters
Photo by Steven Vargo, courtesy of U.S. Ski and Snowboard
  • Hometown: Steamboat Springs
  • Birthdate: April 20, 2000
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 1
  • Discipline: Snowboarding
  • Probable Events: Men’s Snowboarding Parallel Giant Slalom Qualification and Finals (Feb. 8), Men’s Snowboard Cross Qualification and Finals (Feb. 12)

If Cody Winters ends up making history as the first American to compete in both alpine snowboard and snowboard cross in a single Games, he’ll have the dirty windows of Steamboat Springs residents to thank. For the past seven years, the 25-year-old has run Winters Window Washing in his hometown to help him cover the equipment and travel costs of a professional snowboarding career, including a trip to Beijing to compete in parallel giant slalom in 2022.

In 2025, Winters reached the podium with third-place finishes at World Cup events in both disciplines early in the year. Should Winters replicate those successes in Italy, maybe he’ll finally be able to hang up his squeegee. —JL

Jake Pates

Jake Pates in a snowboarding training run in Milan
Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images
  • Hometown: Eagle
  • Birthdate: July 30, 1998
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 1
  • Discipline: Snowboarding
  • Probable Events: Men’s Snowboard Halfpipe Qualification (Feb. 11), Final (Feb. 13)

This year will mark a return to the Olympics for Jake Pates, who finished eighth in the halfpipe in the 2018 Pyeongchang Games. That trip came after an accomplished youth career in which he won gold medals in the halfpipe and slopestyle at the 2016 Youth Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway. Despite appearing to be on a superstar trajectory, Pates announced his retirement in 2021 following a concussion at the Mammoth World Cup. But thanks to the support and friendship of fellow snowboarder (and, technically, rival) Ayumu Hirano, Pates found his way back to the competitive circuit and earned a spot on the 2026 Olympic team. —CM

Jake Canter

Jake Canter rides a rail on a snowboard at the X Games
Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images
  • Hometown: Silverthorne
  • Birthdate: July 9, 2003
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 0
  • Discipline: Snowboarding
  • Probable Events: Men’s Snowboard Slopestyle Qualification (Feb. 16), Final (Feb. 18)

A first-time Olympian, Jake Canter’s journey to Milan was arduous. In 2016, he suffered a severe head injury while practicing on trampolines at Copper Mountain that put him in a medically induced coma and left him permanently deaf in his right ear. Miraculously, he returned to competition the following year, and a win at the U.S. Grand Prix in Aspen in January earned him a spot on the Olympic team. —CM

Chase Blackwell

Chase Blackwell does a snowboarding trick
Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images
  • Hometown: Longmont
  • Birthdate: Feb. 27, 1999
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 0
  • Discipline: Snowboarding
  • Probable Events: Men’s Snowboard Halfpipe Qualification (Feb. 11), Final (Feb. 13)

At 26 years old, Chase Blackwell will be competing in his first Olympics after an accomplished career on the international stage. Over the years, he has secured 11 top-10 finishes in the World Cup, highlighted by a podium appearance in 2023. Growing up, his interest in the sport intensified after attending the X Games with his father in Aspen, where he watched Shaun White and other top snowboarders compete. —CM

Oliver Martin

Oliver Martin competes in the big air competition
Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images
  • Hometown: Wolcott
  • Birthdate: June 15, 2008
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 0
  • Discipline: Snowboarding
  • Probable Events: Men’s Snowboard Big Air Qualification (Feb. 5), Men’s Snowboard Big Air Final (Feb. 7), Men’s Snowboard Slopestyle Qualification (Feb. 16), Men’s Snowboard Slopestyle Final (Feb. 18)

Oliver Martin became the youngest male rider to win a World Cup slopestyle event when he earned a victory at the Calgary Snow Rodeo in February 2025 at just 16 years old (during his debut season, no less). He followed it up with bronze medals in slopestyle and big air at the 2025 World Championships in Engadin, Switzerland, raising expectations for what he might be able to do in Milan Cortina. If Martin does perform well enough to land on the podium, he won’t be able to celebrate with a bottle of bubbly. The 17-year-old phenom will be just shy of Italy’s drinking age. —CM

Ski Jumping

Annika Belshaw

Annika Belshaw ski jumping
Photo by Yong Teck Lim/Getty Images
  • Hometown: Steamboat Springs
  • Birthdate: June 13, 2002
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 0
  • Discipline: Ski Jumping
  • Probable Events: Women’s Normal Hill (Feb. 7), Women’s Large Hill (Feb. 15)

Although Annika Belshaw moved to Norway three years ago to surround herself with ski jumping, she was introduced to the sport when she was just nine years old at Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club—and has excelled in the air ever since. During the 2024-’25 season, she earned 14 top-30 finishes and was 29th in the World Cup overall standings, the highest placement for an American woman in years. In January, Belshaw clinched seventh place in the Ljubno Ski Jumping World Cup, the first time an American woman has cracked the top 10 since 2017. —CM

Jason Colby

Jason Colby in a helmet, goggles, and holding skis
Photo by Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images
  • Hometown: Steamboat Springs
  • Birthdate: March 30, 2006
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 0
  • Discipline: Ski Jumping
  • Probable Events: Men’s Large Hill (Feb. 14)

A 19-year-old wunderkind, Jason Colby picked up his first career national title in the large hill in October and two months later placed seventh at the World Cup in Engelberg, Switzerland, the best finish for an American man in more than 20 years. If he continues his rapid rise in the sport, he’ll soon be living up to his personal philosophy: “Work until your idols become your rivals.” —CM

Figure Skating

Ellie Kam & Danny O’Shea

Ellie Kam & Danny O’Shea
Photo by Melanie Heaney, courtesy of U.S. Figure Skating
  • Hometown: Colorado Springs
  • Birthdates: December 20, 2004, and February 13, 1991
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 0
  • Discipline: Figure Skating
  • Probable Events: Pairs Short Program (Feb. 15)

Athletes generally have the exuberance and physical benefits of youth or the resilience and perspective that come from years of training and competition. The Colorado Springs–based duo of 21-year-old Ellie Kam and 34-year-old Danny O’Shea have both. They may be an odd couple, as far as figure skating goes, but their meeting feels like kismet. By the fall of 2022, O’Shea had retired after a decade of pairs competition and was helping train single women in the sport; Kam had split from her partner midway through their first season. O’Shea stepped in to help Kam keep training, but their chemistry was quickly evident, and after just a few days of skating together, O’Shea started working on a short program. “Ellie didn’t know it at the time, but I was definitely interested in skating with Ellie, having watched her perform,” O’Shea said in a 2023 U.S. Figure Skating interview.

Since then, the veteran and the rookie have helped one another reach new heights, including a national title at the 2024 U.S. Figure Skating Championships and a trip to Milano Cortina, where they’ll take on their first Olympic Games—together. —JL

Cross-Country Skiing

Hailey Swirbul

Hailey Swirbul
Photo courtesy of U.S. Ski and Snowboard
  • Hometown: El Jebel
  • Birthdate: July 10, 1998
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 1
  • Discipline: Cross-Country Skiing
  • Probable Events: Women’s Skiathlon (Feb. 7), Women’s 10km Free (Feb. 12)

When Hailey Swirbul retired from the World Cup circuit in March 2023, at age 24, the cross-country community was understandably surprised. The Eagle County native, who grew up in the Aspen Valley Ski & Snowboard Club before skiing for the University of Alaska Anchorage, seemed to be on a glide path to a long career in the sport. She’d won two individual world junior medals; she helped the 4x5km relay team to a sixth-place finish in the Beijing Olympics; and in January 2023, she swept the U.S. National Championships, winning all four individual titles.

But, burned out from the pressures of COVID-19 isolation, the Olympic cycle, and living on the road, Swirbul decided it was time to discover who she was outside of chasing World Cup podiums across Europe. After selling most of her gear, she took a job at an engineering firm and served on a Colorado ski patrol before moving into coaching at the Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Center. There, she began working—and training—with the club’s elite team. She announced her return to professional skiing this past September.

“I plan to continually remind myself that I get to be doing this, not that I have to be, and that it’s kind of incredible to even get this opportunity given the circumstances of the experimental comeback season,” says Swirbul. Her decisive victory (by more than 30 seconds) in the 10km Classic National Championship in early January means she’ll very likely get to test her new outlook in Italy. —JL

Lauren Jortberg

Lauren Jortberg cross-country skiing
Photo by Jean-Christophe Bott/Keystone via AP
  • Hometown: Boulder
  • Birthdate: Sept. 28, 1997
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 0
  • Discipline: Cross-Country Skiing
  • Probable Events: Women’s Sprint Classic Qualification and Final (Feb. 10)

Lauren Jortberg was a three-time All-American at Dartmouth College before a crash sidelined her for her senior season and forced her to undergo back and ankle surgery. Two years later, she made her World Cup debut and during a decorated 2024 campaign, she picked up her first World Cup top-20 finish, multiple U.S. National Championships podium finishes, and a SuperTour Finals team sprint championship. —CM

Freestyle Skiing

Tess Johnson

Tess Johnson
Photo by Logan Swney, courtesy of U.S. Ski and Snowboard
  • Hometown: Vail
  • Birthdate: June 19, 2000
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 1
  • Discipline: Freestyle Skiing
  • Probable Events: Women’s Moguls Qualification (Feb. 10–11), Women’s Moguls Final (Feb. 11)

Many athletes remember the Beijing Games as isolating, thanks to COVID-19 restrictions. But for Tess Johnson, who competed in Pyeongchang at age 17, the experience was especially lonely. The Vail native just missed making the moguls team, instead traveling to China to sit sequestered, with food poisoning, in a hotel room as the first alternate.

To process her grief, the daughter of a Beaver Creek ski patroller (dad) and instructor (mom) turned to another family member for inspiration: her grandfather, William Oscar Johnson, who covered ski racing for Sports Illustrated. She penned a raw essay for People about how she overcame her disappointment: “Today I can start dreaming my 2026 Olympic gold medal dreams. Besides, I hear the food is better in Italy.”

Four years later, Johnson is well positioned to chase that goal, having kicked off her 10th World Cup season with a win in Finland. “Anything that is hard in life, there are going to be really low moments,” says Johnson, who currently lives in Salt Lake City while she trains. “But personally, I wouldn’t change any of mine, because it’s led me to where I am today, and it will lead me to where I’m going in the future.” That just might be a new Olympic event: dual moguls, which puts the classic sport of bumps and aerial tricks into a head-to-head, knockout format. “Speed is more of a factor,” Johnson says, “and therefore, people send it more.” —JL

Elizabeth Lemley

Elizabeth Lemley skiing moguls
Photo by Alexis Boichard/Agence Zoom/Getty Images
  • Hometown: Vail
  • Birthdate: Jan. 22, 2006
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 0
  • Discipline: Freestyle skiing
  • Probable Events: Women’s Moguls Qualification (Feb. 10-11), Women’s Moguls Final (Feb. 11), Women’s Dual Moguls (Feb. 14)

Since making her World Cup debut in 2022 at 15 years old—one of the youngest competitors on the circuit—Elizabeth Lemley has amassed 14 top-10 finishes. Although this will be her Olympic debut, she’s already stood atop the podium against some of the world’s most talented athletes. Lemley took home the gold in team dual moguls at the 2024 Youth Olympic Games. She flies on more than just the slopes, too. After growing up riding on her father’s plane, Lemley has her pilot’s license, allowing her to fly four-seaters and prop planes. —CM

Alex Ferreira

Alex Ferreira
Photo by Mark Clavin, courtesy of U.S. Ski and Snowboard
  • Hometown: Aspen
  • Birthdate: August 14, 1994
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 2
  • Discipline: Freestyle Skiing
  • Probable Events: Men’s Freeski Halfpipe Qualification (Feb. 19), Final (Feb. 21)

This is a story about Hotdog Hans—the bane of the Aspen Police Department and, maybe, the best freeskier in the world. That’s because Hans is really Alex Ferreira, an American who won a silver and a bronze in the 2018 and 2022 Olympics, respectively. Ferreira created his online criminal alter ego, whose YouTube channel has more than 237,000 subscribers, in 2019.

Don’t be fooled, though: Ferreira is serious about his sport. The Aspenite won every halfpipe competition he entered during the 2023-’24 season and hopes to round out his medal collection with a gold at Milano Cortina, in what some think is the 31-year-old’s last chance. But don’t be surprised to see Ferreira dropping into the halfpipe in the French Alps come 2030. As the narrator in one Hotdog Hans video intones: “Everything has an end. Except for hot dogs. They have two.” —SC

Charlie Mickel

Charlie Mickel at the 2026 Olympics athlete welcome
Photo by Joe Scarnici/Getty Images
  • Hometown: Durango
  • Birthdate: July 6, 2004
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 0
  • Discipline: Freestyle skiing
  • Probable Events: Men’s Moguls Qualification (Feb. 10-12), Men’s Moguls Final (Feb. 12)

Charlie Mickel learned to ski at Durango’s Purgatory Resort when most kids were still learning to walk. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he defeated two U.S. Ski Team members to win his first senior national championship at just 17 years old in 2022 (and earned himself a spot on the team). Mickel is coming off a hot 2024-’25 season, picking up nine top-10 World Cup finishes and moving from 34th to ninth in the world rankings. Keep an eye on Mickel in Milan to see if his ascent continues all the way to the podium. —CM

Landon Wendler

Landon Wendler trains double moguls
Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images
  • Hometown: Steamboat Springs
  • Birthdate: Oct. 12, 2000
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 0
  • Discipline: Freestyle skiing
  • Probable Events: Men’s Moguls Qualification (Feb. 10–12), Men’s Moguls Final (Feb. 12), Men’s Dual Moguls (Feb. 15)

Landon Wendler earned his first career World Cup podium in 2024, highlighting a breakthrough season in which he had four additional World Cup top-10 finishes. His interests go beyond the slope. Wendler studied at the Los Angeles Film School and enjoys DJing during breaks in his demanding schedule. —CM

Birk & Svea Irving

Birk & Svea Irving
Photo by Brie Coops, courtesy of U.S. Ski and Snowboard
  • Hometown: Winter Park
  • Birthdates: July 26, 1999, and February 27, 2002
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 1 and 0
  • Discipline: Freestyle Skiing
  • Probable Events: Men’s Freeski Halfpipe Qualification (Feb. 19), Final (Feb. 20); Women’s Freeski Halfpipe Qualification (Feb. 19), Final (Feb. 21)

Anyone with a sibling would recognize the scene: a big brother playfully splashing his little sister, then quickly wheeling away when she returns fire. Few of us have experienced such a moment while standing on a podium. Yet that’s the position in which Birk and Svea Irving found themselves in early January, when the U.S. Freeski teammates grabbed third in their respective halfpipe competitions at the Calgary Snow Rodeo World Cup. They celebrated with Champagne showers—that is, until Birk caught some stray bubbly in the face.

Calgary marked the first podium finish for both Birk and Svea in the 2025-’26 season, though they’re well-versed in the rites of victory. When Birk was 18, the U.S. Freeski development coach hailed his creative style as the “future of halfpipe skiing.” He’s largely delivered on that promise, collecting a silver and bronze in the X Games, four World Cup wins, and a spot on the 2022 Olympic roster (he finished fifth in Beijing).

Svea, a two-time national halfpipe champion, made the top five in every competition she entered during the 2024-’25 season. Their father directs the ski patrol at Winter Park Resort, and their mother is a former alpine racing coach, so skiing runs in the Irvings’ blood—but so does art. Their grandfather is John Irving, who wrote The Cider House Rules, among other best-sellers. Svea recently tapped into that side of her heritage by collaborating on a short film with the director Griffin Glendinning. Stasis conveys Svea’s love of nature and her skills in the halfpipe in a lush, vivid eight-plus-minute highlight reel (think: arthouse Warren Miller). For now, her cinematic dreams are on hold until her Olympic ones come true. —SC

Riley Jacobs

Riley Jacobs jumping in freestyle skiing competition
Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images
  • Hometown: Oak Creek
  • Birthdate: Aug. 14, 2003
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 0
  • Discipline: Freestyle Skiing
  • Probable Events: Women’s Freeski Halfpipe Qualification (Feb. 19), Final (Feb. 21)

Before Riley Jacobs became a force on the halfpipe, she competed in moguls at Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club. Favoring the feeling of flying throug the air, she transitioned to freestyle skiing, which proved to be a wise move. She’s since had nine top-10 finishes on the World Cup circuit and competed in her first X Games in 2024, finishing in sixth place in the superpipe. After tearing her ACL, she returned to competition for the 2025-’26 season as if she never left. Her impressive performance was enough to secure her a spot in Milan for her first Olympic Games. —CM

Biathlon

Joanne Reid

Joanne Reid
Photo by Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images
  • Current Town: Grand Junction
  • Birthdate: June 28, 1992
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 2
  • Event: Biathlon
  • Probable Events: Women’s 15km Individual (Feb. 11), Women’s 7.5km Sprint (Feb. 14), Women’s 10km Pursuit (Feb. 15), Women’s 4x6km Relay (Feb. 18)

When Joanne Reid retired from biathlon in early 2024, she had no plans to return. She’d endured years of sexual harassment and abuse from one of the U.S. Biathlon team’s technicians and having her complaints brushed off by officials. But after the former University of Colorado Boulder cross-country star went public with her story, another half-dozen former Olympians in the sport came forward with similar accounts of misogyny and abuse that spanned three decades. “That’s when it became worth it for me,” Reid says.

Now living in Grand Junction (for both its proximity to Utah training facilities and its mountain biking trails), Reid quietly began mounting a comeback this past fall; in early January, she secured her Olympic spot during time trials in Italy. “I just want to look back on my performance,” Reid says, “and be proud of it.” —JL

Nordic Combined

Niklas Malacinski

Niklas Malacinski competes in the cross-country leg of nordic combined
Photo by Lars Baron/Getty Images
  • Hometown: Steamboat Springs
  • Birthdate: Dec. 7, 2003
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 0
  • Discipline: Nordic combined
  • Probable Events: Men’s Normal Hill Ski Jump (Feb. 11), Men’s Normal Hill 10km Race (Feb. 11), Men’s Large Hill Ski Jump (Feb. 17), Men’s Large Hill 10km Race (Feb. 17), Men’s Team Large Hill Ski Jump (Feb. 19), Men’s Team Large Hill 2×7.5km Relay (Feb. 19)

Niklas Malacinski’s Olympic dreams were born at the age of seven. After Team USA nordic combined skiers Todd Lodwick, Johnny Spillane, and Billy Demong won a silver medal at the 2010 Winter Olympics, they returned to Steamboat Springs to show off their hardware. “I got to hold their medals,” Malicinski told nbcolympics.com. “I think at that moment I was like, ‘Oh, I want to do high-level sports.’ ” Now 22 years old, Malacinski is ready to chase a medal of his own in Milan, and he’s got the training to back it up. He’s been a member of the Nordic Combined National Team since 2018. In 2024, he secured a gold medal at the U.S. National Championships before adding a career-best 13th-place finish at the World Cup in Ruka, Finland later that season. —CM

Bobsled

Hunter Powell

Hunter Powell and the Team USA bobsled team
Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images
  • Hometown: Fort Collins
  • Birthdate: March 15, 1996
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 0
  • Event: Bobsled
  • Probable Events: Four-Man Bobsled Runs 1 and 2 (Feb. 21), Four-Man Bobsled Run 3 and Final (Feb. 22)

As recently as a few years ago, a trip to the Winter Olympics would have seemed unimaginable for Powell, a former conference champion in indoor heptathlon and outdoor decathlon at Colorado State University who went on to compete professionally until 2024. But at the suggestion of monobob world champion Kaysha Love, his now-fiancée, he made the switch to bobsled and made the national team in late 2024. Powell will be a brakeman for the American team. —CM

Read More: Former CSU Decathlete Hunter Powell Is Finally an Olympian—in Bobsled

Ski Mountaineering

Cam Smith

Cam Smith
Photo by Valerio Pennicino/Getty Images
  • Current Town: Crested Butte
  • Birthdate: September 18, 1995
  • Past Olympic Appearances: 0
  • Event: Ski Mountaineering
  • Probable Events: Men’s Sprints Heats and Finals (Feb. 19)

When Cam Smith and his partner, Anna Gibson, clicked in for their first World Cup mixed relay event in Utah in early December, they were simply hoping to punch their tickets to Milano Cortina. The duo was ranked 13th in the world; the top 12 teams would go to the Olympics. A little over half an hour later, Smith finished the final leg in first place, nearly a minute ahead of the next competitor. “We’ve shown that on our day, we can beat any team,” Smith says. “So, yeah, we’re certainly going there to fight for medals.”

Making its Olympic debut, ski mountaineering involves racing across a snow-covered peak with designated sections for climbing and descending. In the mixed relay, partners alternate turns, totaling four laps. “I think of it like backcountry skiing, but racing,” says Smith, who grew up in Illinois and hardly knew how to ski when he showed up to Western Colorado University in Gunnison. After his older sister talked him into doing the 40-mile Grand Traverse skimo race from Crested Butte to Aspen in 2014, Smith was hooked. “Going from the Midwest to living in this cool new place, it was a way to get out in the winter—to get off the ski area and into the woods and up on the summits,” he says. Soon, he was racing seriously, and in 2022, he became the first American man to finish in the top 10 in a World Cup contest.

Smith and Gibson—an accomplished trail runner who is brand-new to skimo—will have to go through the sport’s dominant Europeans to reach the podium in Italy. But Smith hopes to show American youth that it is possible: “Young people now can see that there’s a future as a competitive athlete in this sport.” Case in point: Smith recently was able to give up his full-time gig at the Adaptive Sports Center of Crested Butte, thanks to increased sponsor support. —JL

This article was originally published in 5280 February 2026.
Craig Meyer
Craig Meyer
Craig Meyer is a Denver-based freelance writer. Before moving to Colorado in June 2022, he spent the previous 10 years as a sports writer with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, primarily covering college basketball and football.
Jessica LaRusso
Jessica LaRusso
Jessica LaRusso is 5280's editor-in-chief.
Spencer Campbell
Spencer Campbell
Spencer Campbell is 5280's Deputy Editor.