2026 Winter Olympics

by Milan Riley

The Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina, Italy were a huge success for the United States. In the 17 day span between February 4 to February 22, our American athletes brought home 33 medals:12 gold, 12 silver, and 9 bronze from 11 different sports. This year marks not only our country’s largest delegation to the Winter Olympics with 232 athletes, but our athletes also broke the record for the most gold medals the U.S has ever earned at the Winter Games!

Let’s take a look at the journeys of some of our most notable athletes:

Figure Skating: Ilia Malinin & Alysa Liu

Starting with our rising stars, the entire nation was excited to see what Ilia Malinin, age 21, and Alysa Liu, age 20, could achieve in figure skating.

Ilia Malinin is known as the “Quad God” because he lands the sport’s most difficult trick - the quadruple axle jump - with ease. But if he landed his signature jump on this international stage, it would’ve been the first in Olympic history. Being the two-time reigning World Champion, Malinin was the favorite to win gold, especially as he led the points going into the final event: the free skate. Unfortunately, perhaps due to the pressure of an Olympic debut, Malinin’s final performance couldn’t match the heavy expectations: he backed out of two planned quad jumps and fell twice. This turned the dream for gold into an 8th place finish, far from the podium. Despite the disappointment of not getting to see his best, the country is rallying in support of Malinin, who expressed the overwhelming pressure of the Olympic Stage in his heart-wrenching post-competition performance “Fear” at the Exhibition Gala.

Malinin performing “Fear” at the Exhibition Gala

Meanwhile, Alysa Liu has amazed the nation with her ability to handle pressure. With her distinctive smiley piercing and multicolored “halo hair,” Liu had already made history by winning the 2025 World Championship, the first time in19 years for the United States in women’s figure skating. The same carefree yet hard-fought mentality led Liu to winning gold in the 2026 Winter Olympics, too! This marks the first individual gold medal in 24 years of the event for the United States. Liu credits her mental strength to reaching her goal: after leaving skating for two years at the age of 16 due to the intense pressure of competition, she had arrived at a place where she just wanted to have fun out on the ice and her new approach paid off big time.

Alysa Liu shows off her signature “smiley” as she bites her gold medal

Although Malinin and Liu had opposite individual Olympic stories, together with other American athletes, they both took home gold for the United States in the team figure skating event!   

The U.S. figure skating team

Downhill Skiing: Lindsey Vonn

Competing at 41 years old, there may not have been a greater story of persistence than the one Lindsey Vonn created at the 2026 Olympics. All of the odds seemed to have been against her: she had recently come out of a 6 year retirement since early 2019, only returning in 2024 to train for the Olympics. Then, in late 2024, she had a partial knee replacement to address the chronic pain in her right knee. If her returning from retirement and surgery at nearly 13 years older than the average athlete in her event wasn’t impressive enough, Vonn then completely ruptured her left knee’s ACL in a crash just 9 days before her Olympic race. 

At this point, many would assume that would be the end of her 2026 Olympic journey. But Vonn didn’t give up. With a torn ACL, she stabilized her knee with a brace and announced she’d still compete in 9 days. Then came the day of the event.

Thirteen seconds into her Olympic run, Lindsay Vonn clipped a gate with her arm, throwing herself off balance and causing a devastating crash. She overcame her knee injuries, but this tiny mistake resulted in a complex tibia fracture in her left leg that required an emergency surgery to save the limb from potential amputation due to compartment syndrome, a dangerous condition caused by high pressure building up within muscle compartments that restricts blood flow and damages nerves and tissues.

Lindsay Vonn’s crash at the 2026 Winter Olympics

We extend our greatest hopes for Lindsay Vonn’s recovery. Thankfully, Vonn has been released from hospitalization in Italy and has started rehabilitation in America. Though her 2026 Olympic journey did not end the way fans hoped, Vonn’s perseverance is admirable and will surely help in her recovery. 

Hockey

Perhaps the most well-known American performance at the 2026 Olympics was our sweeping success at hockey. Both the men’s and women’s teams took gold by remaining undefeated in the international tournament. We won against our historical hockey rival, Canada, with an identical overtime victory of 2-1 in the gold medal matches. This marks the first time in Olympic history that the U.S won both hockey gold medals in the same year, with the men winning for the first time in 46 years and the women for the first time in 8 years. This success gained presidential attention, too, with both teams being invited to the State of the Union Address and the men’s team making an appearance. The nation also saw both teams appear on Saturday Night Live, showing how much Americans have cheered on their wins! 

The women’s hockey team skating with gold medals and the U.S flag

Overall, America always shows unity and patriotism when it comes to the Olympics. Everyone can agree it ignites our competitive spirits, so thank you to every athlete who did their best to represent our country. Let’s see if we can build on this success and turn the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles into one to remember!