One year to the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics: Twenty athletes from Team USA to watch

1-2) Madison Chock and Evan Bates Figure skating

The longtime ice dance partners, together on skates from 2011 and married since last year, finally broke through for their first world championship after years of near-misses in 2023, then went back-to-back last year in their adopted hometown of Montreal. Known for their deep chemistry, bold storytelling and technical brilliance, they are coming off a record-tying sixth US title in January and will be hotly tipped to complete the first ice dance three-peat at worlds in 28 years next month in Boston. On current form they’re the team to beat in Milan with the team event offering the potential for double gold.

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3) Ryan Cochran-Siegle Alpine skiing

As the son of 1972 Olympic slalom champion Barbara Cochran, the 32-year-old Vermonter carries on his family’s deep-rooted skiing tradition, which began at the small Cochran’s Ski Area about 15 miles outside Burlington. Despite a series career setbacks, including a severe knee injury requiring multiple surgeries and a broken neck, the one-time giant slalom specialist has established himself as one of the more consistent speed skiers on the sport’s top flight, with 28 top-10 finishes across super-G and downhill. Not long after winning his first World Cup race in 2020 – in his 101st career start – Cochran-Siegle’s perseverance further paid off when he flew to Olympic silver in the super-G in one of the shocks of the Beijing Winter Games. All three of his World Cup podiums have come on Italian snow.

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4) Jessie Diggins Cross-country skiing

No woman from outside Europe had ever won the overall crystal globe, cross-country skiing’s biggest prize, until Diggins four years ago. Then last year the Minnesota native won it for a second time and now she appears on course for a third by the end of March. Known for her vibrant personality, trademark glitter-flecked cheeks and appetite for pushing herself to the absolute limit in races, the 33-year-old from the tiny St Paul suburb of Afton (population: 2,951) has also become a fierce advocate for mental health awareness and eating disorder recovery, sharing her struggles to help others. Her success has been nothing short of transformative for US cross-country skiing, proving that Americans can compete with the traditionally dominant Nordic countries.

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5) Korey Dropkin Curling

John Shuster has been the face of American curling since the day he skipped the United States to their first ever Olympic title in Pyeongchang seven years ago. But Dropkin – along with Thomas Howell, Andrew Stopera and Mark Fenner – managed to end Shuster’s nine-year unbeaten run at the US curling championships last week in Minnesota. It was a fairytale outcome for the 29-year-old from Massachusetts, who moved to Duluth for college with a dream of curling at the highest level. Shuster can still become the second American to compete in six Winter Games after Nordic combined skier Todd Lodwick at next year’s Olympic trials, but Dropkin’s Young Bucks have signaled for a changing of the guard.

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6) Laila Edwards Hockey

Since becoming the first Black woman to be selected for Team USA in 2023 – which earned her a name-check from fellow Cleveland Heights native Travis Kelce – the 21-year-old forward from the University of Wisconsin has wasted no time making an impact. Less than one year after her senior international debut, Edwards finished with six goals and two assists in seven games at her first world championships to become the youngest ever tournament Most Valuable Player winner, despite the United States’ overtime loss to Canada in the final. Now the 6ft 1in Edwards, the current top goalscorer in Division I, is making the transition from forward to defense for international duty.

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7) Alex Ferreira Freestyle skiing

The son of former River Plate forward Marcelo Ferreira, the 30-year-old halfpipe skier has one goal: to win gold and retire on top. The two-time Olympic medalist, who took silver in 2018 and bronze in 2022, is coming off a historic season where he won every halfpipe competition he entered – the first clean sweep in the sport’s history – thanks in part to upgrading his run with a second double cork 1620. With plans to boost difficulty even further, Ferreira is keen to capitalize on what he believes will be his last shot at Olympic gold. He may be even better known as the star of Hotdog Hans, a popular hidden-camera video series where he disguises himself as a washed-up octogenarian skier before surprising unsuspecting onlookers with gravity-defying tricks.

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8) Red Gerard Snowboarding

It’s been seven years since a 17-year-old snowboarder from Rocky River, Ohio, overslept on the morning of his Olympic debut before coolly soaring to slopestyle gold in the Taebaek Mountains of South Korea. That made Gerard the youngest snowboarder ever to medal at the Winter Olympics, the youngest American man to win gold in 90 years and the second-youngest man to top the podium in any individual event after Finland’s Toni Nieminen, who was 16 when he won the large hill event in ski jumping in 1992. Now 24, and having finally won the X Games crown that had long eluded him, Gerard is eager for more Olympic hardware after a fourth-place finish in Beijing marred by controversial judging.

9) Amber Glenn Figure Skating

It’s been a sensational late-career revival for the pride of Plano, Texas, who skated in her first world championships at 23, won her first US national title at 24 and her first Grand Prix event at 25 and is all but a lock to make her Olympic debut next year at 26. Nearly a decade after she started competing as a senior and having overcome injuries, depression, ADHD and an eating disorder that almost derailed her career, the LGBTQ+ role model has gone more than a year since losing in a competition, a rich vein of form including the defense of her US national title last month after becoming the first American to win the prestigious Grand Prix final in nearly 15 years.

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10) Alex Hall Freestyle skiing

Born in Alaska to an American father and Italian mother, the freestyle skiing prodigy spent most of his early life in Zurich before moving back to the United States when he was 16 on a training invite from the US freeski team. Seven years later, he delivered on his long-held promise by flying to slopestyle gold at the Beijing Olympics, putting down a spectacular opening run – including a final double cork 1080 into a 900 – for a score of 90.01 that none of his rivals could approach. Now the Park City resident will be among the favorites to retain his Olympic title in the homeland of his mother, who was born in Bologna.

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11) Erin Jackson Speed skating

The former roller derby jammer from the unlikely speed skating hotbed of Ocala, Florida, surged to Olympic glory in the women’s 500m in Beijing, making history as the first Black woman to win gold in any individual event at the Winter Games. Roughly six years after stepping on ice for the first time in her life, Jackson completed the all-out sprint in a time of 37.04sec, ending the United States’ extended medal drought in a sport it once dominated and earning her the title of fastest woman on ice. Now 32, America’s first sprint queen since Bonnie Blair has backed up her claim as the world’s best at 500m on the World Cup circuit with a pair of season-long titles.

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12) Chloe Kim Snowboarding

The 24-year-old from Long Beach first shot to global stardom in Pyeongchang, when she became the youngest female athlete to secure Winter Olympics gold on snow with a transcendent halfpipe performance. She quickly found the trappings of fame – gracing the fronts of cereal boxes and magazine covers, getting shouted out in Frances McDormand’s Oscar speech – were dwarfed by her yearning for a normal life as a student at Princeton. After nearly two years off the mountain Kim picked up right where she left off, winning a world title before retaining her Olympic gold in Beijing. With her Milano Cortina prep in full swing on the World Cup circuit, Kim will go off as the hot favorite to complete an Olympic halfpipe treble.

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13) Ilia Malinin Figure skating

The Quad God roared to his first world championship last March in Montreal with a star-making long program set to music from Succession that was immediately hailed as the greatest athletic display in the sport’s history. Malinin became the second person ever to land six quadruple jumps in a single program, and the first to do it with a quadruple axel, the heart-stopping four-and-a-half-revolution jump that had never been landed in competition until he came along. He’s since added a newly sanctioned backflip while flirting with the once-fathomable quint. The clear favorite to retain his world title next month in Boston, it’s difficult to foresee anyone passing him before Milan.

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14) Auston Matthews Hockey

NHL players are back in the Olympics for the first time since the 2014 Sochi Games and the California-born, Arizona-raised Matthews will lead a stacked United States side hoping to win the country’s first men’s international tournament since the World Cup of Hockey in 1996. The 24-year-old Toronto Maple Leafs center, a former No 1 overall draft pick and the league’s top goalscorer last season, was recently named captain for this month’s 4 Nations Face-Off, where the Americans will face Canada, Finland and Sweden in the first international tournament featuring the NHL’s best players since 2016.

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15) Elana Meyers Taylor Bobsleigh

After winning her fourth and fifth Olympic medals in Beijing to become the most decorated Black athlete in Winter Games history – a silver in the inaugural women’s monobob and a bronze with brakewoman Sylvia Hoffman in the two-woman event – the veteran American bobsleigh star hinted at retirement. But after sitting out the 2022-23 season for her second maternity leave, Meyers Taylor returned to become the oldest female driver to win a world championships medal with a monobob silver last year in Germany. The 40-year-old was back in the sled last month in St Moritz, where she took first in a pair of monobob races. Her goal: a fifth Olympic appearance in Italy and the gold medal that’s eluded her in the previous four.

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16) Kristen Santos-Griswold Short track

After finally making her first Olympic team in her third trials aged 27, the late-blooming short track star settled for fourth in Beijing after a heartbreaking crash on the final lap of the 1000m final. The experience made Santos-Griswold think hard about whether she was willing to continue. It’s a good thing she did. At last year’s world championships Santos-Griswold reached the podium in all five events, including her first world title, becoming the first American to win a medal in all three individual Olympic distances (500m, 1000m and 1500m) at a single worlds since short track became an Olympic medal sport in 1992.

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17) Mikaela Shiffrin Alpine skiing

She’s a two-time Olympic gold medalist and five-time overall World Cup champion. But for a vast majority of Americans, the images of a tearful Shiffrin balled up on the south side of Xiaohaituo Mountain at the end of her nightmarish Beijing Olympics – where she skied out of the slalom, giant slalom and the slalom portion of the combined and failed to win an individual medal – are their most recent memory of the Vail native. But she has bounced back with verve, staking her claim as the greatest ever alpine skier by eclipsing Ingemar Stenmark’s record for career victories by a male or female in 2023, then winning a record-tying eighth world slalom title last year despite a six-week injury layoff. The Shiffrin redemption narrative will be front and center of all stateside Olympic coverage by this time next year.

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18) Jordan Stolz Speed skating

A self-effacing Wisconsin native who grew up skating on a frozen pond behind his home has blossomed into the world’s best speed skater over the past two years and has positioned himself to be one of the brightest stars of the entire Milano Cortina Games. The 20-year-old Stolz, who had gone more than a year since losing a race until last weekend’s homecoming meet in Milwaukee, is the two-time reigning world champion in the 500m, 1000m and 1500m and will be favored to win Olympic golds at each of those distances, becoming only the second American to win more than two golds at a single Winter Games after Eric Heiden at the 1980 Lake Placid Games.

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19) Winter Vinecki Freestyle skiing

The first athlete with the first name Winter to compete at the Winter Games, the aerials skier from northern Michigan rebounded from a 15th-place finish in her Olympic debut to win three World Cup events last season and finish a narrow second in the overall standings after adding triple flips to her repertoire. The high-flying Vinecki, an avid outdoorswoman who ran a marathon on all seven continents before her 15th birthday, will take another crack at becoming the first American woman to take home an Olympic gold medal in the aerials individual event since Nikki Stone’s gold in 1998.

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20) Lindsey Vonn Alpine skiing

Nearly six years after retiring due to a battered right knee worn down by a string of gruesome crashes and multiple surgeries, Vonn made a shock comeback annoucement in November on the wrong side of 40 with a knee made of titanium to a high-risk sport where no woman has ever won a top-flight race past 34 years old. But the winner of three Olympic medals and 82 World Cup races has impressed early on: she finished 14th in a super-G at St Moritz, before improving to sixth and fourth in her next two races at St Anton. Incredibly, she says she feels healthier now than when she called time on her extraordinary career in early 2019. And after only three starts, Vonn’s chances of competing in a fifth Olympics seem more than plausible.

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Ten more to know Mac Forehand (Freestyle Skiing); Kaillie Humphries (Bobsleigh); Jaelin Kauf (Freestyle Skiing); Isabeau Levito (Figure Skating); Kaysha Love (Bobsleigh); Lauren Macuga (Alpine Skiing); Maddie Mastro (Snowboarding); Emily Sweeney (Luge); David Wise (Freestyle Skiing); Campbell Wright (Biathlon)