Team USA stars to know as the 2026 Winter Olympics begin

Team USA isn’t exactly known for its Winter Olympics domination, but the Americans hope to change the narrative when it comes to the 2026 Milan Cortina Games.

The Americans finished third in the medal table at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and fourth in the 2018 Pyeongchang Games. The U.S. finished with the most medals in the 2010 Vancouver Games but only had nine gold medals to show.

The Team USA roster will look to change their fortunes in this year’s Games and, somehow, finish ahead of Norway, Germany and Canada. 

Team USA will fight hard to get the gold. The Olympics will begin on Friday. Read below for some of the athletes to keep a keen eye on.

Alysa Liu

Alysa Liu will be looking to reach the Olympic podium for the first time in her career. She will be competing in the women’s singles event with Amber Glenn and Isabeau Levito. She finished sixth in the 2022 Olympics, but she was only 16 at the time.

Now, at 20, Liu is entering the Winter Games after having a successful 2025 campaign. She won gold medals at the World Championships and the Grand Prix Final. Liu also picked up silver medals in 2025 and 2026 at the U.S. Championships.

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Chloe Kim

Chloe Kim has wowed audiences in the halfpipe snowboarding event and will look to continue her dominance at the event in 2026. Kim debuted when she was 17 years old at the 2018 Olympics, becoming the youngest woman to win an Olympic snowboarding gold medal. She followed that up in 2022 when another gold medal.

Kim is going for her third consecutive gold medal but under tougher circumstances. She dislocated her shoulder three weeks before the Milan Cortina Games. She said she was “good to go” for the Olympics and will look to push through the injury.

Elana Meyers Taylor

Elana Meyers Taylor is back in the Olympics and is looking to make more history in her fifth Winter Games. She will compete for the U.S. bobsleigh team in the monobob competition. In 2022, she picked up her fifth Olympic medal of her career becoming the first Black woman to achieve the feat.

This month, she hopes to return to glory as Team USA tries to put on a dominant display in Italy.

Erin Jackson

Erin Jackson made history in 2022 when she became the first Black woman to medal in speed skating. She didn’t only medal, but she picked up gold in the 500-meter race. Jackson is back on Team USA and looking to pick up another medal.

Jackson will participate in the 500-meter race again with Sarah Warren. She will also race along with Brittany Bowe in the 1,000-meter race.

Lindsey Vonn

Lindsey Vonn qualified for the Winter Olympics this year and is set to compete in the downhill alpine skiing event. She won two World Cup downhill races and was set to compete in her fifth Olympic Games, until Friday when she suffered a devastating injury.

Vonn hasn’t said whether the injury will keep her from competing in Milan Cortina, but vowed that her Olympic dream wasn’t over.

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She has one gold medal and two bronze medals on her resume.

Hilary Knight

Hilary Knight is one of the most recognizable faces on the U.S. women’s hockey team. She’s been with the U.S. as a teenager and was on the team that won the silver medal in the 2006 4 Nations Cup.

Knight picked up a gold medal when the women’s team won in 2018 in Pyeongchang. She has three silver medals, including the 2022 Games in Beijing. The team lost to Canada in the matchup. She said that the 2026 Winter Olympics will be her final Games.

“I have grown up in this program and it’s just given me so much. I’m at peace. And I’m grateful that, hopefully I can stay healthy, I can go out when I’d like to be done. That is such a privilege,” she said, via Olympics.com.

Madison Chock & Evan Bates

Madison Chock will compete with Evan Bates in the ice dance discipline of the figure skating competition. The husband-and-wife duo were a part of the gold-medal winning team event in 2022 and will look to lift the U.S. back to first place in 2026.

Chock and Bates have never medaled on the Olympic stage but the two took home gold medals in the last five U.S. Championships and the last three Grand Prix Finals.

This could very well be their year to get Olympic gold around their necks.

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Maxim Naumov

Maxim Naumov overcame an extremely difficult year to earn a spot on Team USA’s roster for the men’s singles figure skating competition. Naumov’s parents were passengers on a commercial flight that collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter in Washington, D.C.

“They were beautiful people. They were so incredibly kind,” he told NBC’s “TODAY” last March. “The only way out is through. There’s no other way. There are no options but to keep going. I don’t have the strength or the passion or the drive, or the dedication of one person anymore. It’s three people.”

He returned to skating on March 2 and pushed toward making the Olympic team. He won a bronze medal at the U.S. Championships and was named to the Olympic team.

Mikaela Shiffrin

Mikaela Shiffrin had a tough 2022 Winter Olympics to say the least. She was the favorite to bring home some gold for the U.S. but she picked up a did not finish the giant slalom and slalom and later ninth in the super-G.

She has since rebounded and is gearing up for a podium push this year. She won gold medals in the 2023 World Championships in the giant slalom and in the team combined in the 2025 World Championships. In 2021, she won a gold, silver and two bronze medals in Cortina d’Ampezzo.

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NHL stars

For the first time in over 10 years, NHL stars will return to the ice to represent the U.S. in men’s hockey at the Winter Olympics.

The U.S. roster includes goalies Jeremy Swayman, Jake Oettinger and Connor Hellebuyck, forwards Brady Tkachuk, Jack Eichel, J.T. Miller, Matt Boldy, Vincent Trocheck, Matthew Tkachuk, Dylan Larkin, Brock Nelson, Auston Matthews, Jake Guentzel, Tage Thompson, Kyle Connor, Jack Hughes and Clayton Keller and defensemen Zach Werenski, Brock Faber, Noah Hanifin, Charlie McAvoy, Quinn Hughes, Jacob Slavin and Jake Sanderson.

The U.S. made their presence known last year in the 4 Nations Face-Off as a bitter rivalry with Canada was ignited. The team is set to start group play on Feb. 12 against Latvia and may nont meet Canada until the knockout phase.

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