The 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics begin on February 6 in Italy, featuring around 230 Team USA athletes across various winter sports. Prominent competitors include alpine skiers Mikaela Shiffrin and Lindsey Vonn, alongside emerging talents in snowboarding and biathlon. Viewers can follow events on NBC channels and Peacock streaming.
The 2026 Winter Olympics, hosted in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, open on Friday, February 6, and run through February 22. Team USA, with a history of 330 Winter Olympic medals through 2022, sends a strong contingent aiming to challenge Norway's dominance across 116 events. Athletes from states like Oregon, Vermont, and Washington highlight the roster's diversity, bringing personal stories of perseverance and achievement to the global stage. In alpine skiing, 30-year-old Mikaela Shiffrin, a Burke Mountain Academy graduate with Vermont ties, seeks more medals in slalom, giant slalom, and possibly the new women's team combined event. She holds 108 World Cup wins, the most in alpine skiing history. Shiffrin told Vermont Public she plans to focus on fewer events for better training. Fellow Vermonter Ryan Cochran-Siegle, 33, from Starksboro, returns for downhill, super-G, and team combined after earning silver in super-G at Beijing 2022, 50 years after his mother Barbara Ann Cochran's gold. Lindsey Vonn, 41, makes a comeback for her fifth Olympics despite a recent ACL rupture, set to compete in women's downhill on February 8 wearing a brace. She assured fans on social media, 'This is a very difficult outcome one week before the Olympics… but if there's one thing I know how to do, it's a comeback.' From Oregon, 33-year-old Jackie Wiles of Aurora targets her best finish in downhill at Cortina, a venue where she earned World Cup points in 2014 and second place in 2024 after overcoming severe injuries including a 2018 leg crash and later knee tears. In biathlon, Vermont's Deedra Irwin, 33, a Vermont Army National Guard specialist, aims for America's first medal after finishing seventh in Beijing 2022, the best U.S. individual result ever. She reflected to CBS News, 'We've trained so much throughout our lives to just get to this stage… it means a lot of, like, community and family and friends.' Cross-country skier Jessie Diggins, 34, training with Vermont's Stratton Mountain School team, is a medal contender in all six women's races and the team sprint with Julia Kern. Snowboarder Red Gerard, 25, returns for his third Games after gold in slopestyle at PyeongChang 2018. He told CBS News, 'There is no stage bigger than the Olympics.' Oregon's 17-year-old Alessandro Barbieri, from Portland, debuts in halfpipe qualifying on February 11, known for landing the first triple cork 1440 by an American. These athletes embody Team USA's blend of veterans and newcomers, with events broadcast on NBC, Peacock, and NBCOlympics.com.
