U.S. Olympic Medalist Tracker: Their Road to Glory

The 2026 Olympic Winter Games are taking place in Italy, thousands of miles away from the hometowns of the Team USA athletes who have journeyed there in search of fulfilling a dream. Of course, some members of the United States’ contingent have had a longer road than others to get to the pinnacle of their sport. For the duration of the Games, SportsTravel will keep tabs on the U.S. medal winners in our own, travel-friendly way by focusing on the medal winners in the non-hockey events. (For the player-by-player breakdown of the gold-medal-winning U.S. women’s hockey team, click here. For the gold-medal-winning U.S. men’s hockey team, click here.)

As the Games draw to a close, it’s been a record-setting performance for Team USA. The Americans claimed 12 gold medals, their most ever in a Winter Olympics, and finished with 33 medals overall, second to Norway’s 41.

Evan Bates

Event/Discipline: Figure Skating / ice dance

Medal: Silver
Hometown: Ann Arbor, Michigan
Approximate distance to Milan, Italy: 4,610 miles

Road to Glory: Maize and blue, through and through, Bates hails from Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he also attended high school and the University of Michigan. Teaming with now-wife Madison Chock, the pair have won seven U.S. championships and are the first U.S. ice dancers to win both a gold (in the team event) and a silver at the same Games.

Jake Canter

Event/Discipline: Snowboarding / slopestyle
Medal: Bronze
Hometown: Silverthrone, Colorado
Approximate distance to Livigno, Italy: 5,500 miles

Road to Glory: Perhaps no member of Team USA has had a more dramatic journey to the podium than Canter. At age 13 he suffered a traumatic brain injury while playing on a trampoline that left him in a medically induced coma with what doctors described as only a 20 percent chance of survival. He eventually recovered but was permanently deaf in his right ear. Less than one year after the injury, he was back on a snowboard, and took home a bronze medal this year in his Olympic debut.

Ethan Cepuran

Event/Discipline: Speedskating / team pursuit
Medal: Silver
Hometown: Glen Ellyn, Illinois
Approximate distance to Milan, Italy: 4,500 miles

Road to Glory: Cepuran started speedskating almost as soon as he could walk, doing so at just two years old. By 21 he was in the Olympics, winning a bronze in team pursuit at the 2022 Games, and he upgraded to a silver in the same event this year.

Madison Chock

Event/Discipline: Figure Skating / ice dance
Medal: Silver
Hometown: Redondo Beach, California
Approximate distance to Milan: 6,300 miles

Road to Glory: Born in California, Chock graduated from high school in Michigan and for the last 15 years she has been teamed up on the ice with Evan Bates, whom she married in 2024. The two have competed at four Olympic Winter Games and earned three medals, tied for the most by any U.S. skater.

Ryan Cochran-Siegle

Event/Discipline: Alpine skiing / men’s SuperG
Medal: Silver
Hometown: Starksboro, Vermont
Approximate distance to Cortina d’Ampezzo: 4,000 miles

Road to Glory: Cochran is part of a legendary family of skiers. His mother, Barbara Ann, won gold in slalom in Sapporo in 1972, and he has an uncle, two aunts and several cousins who have also raced for Team USA. It all traces back to the famous ski area built by his grandparents, Mickey and Ginny Cochran, in 1961, that has since trained thousands of skiers.

Connor Curran

Event/Discipline: Freestyle Skiing / Mixed event team aerials
Medal: Gold
Hometown: Cincinnati, Ohio
Approximate distance to Milan: 4,500 miles

Road to Glory: Curran grew up in Cincinnati before moving to New York for high school. He helped the U.S. to its eighth medal in freestyle skiing at the 2026 Games and did so in his Olympic debut.

Casey Dawson

Event/Discipline: Speedskating / team pursuit
Medal: Silver
Hometown: Park City, Utah
Approximate distance to Milan, Italy: 5,500 miles

Road to Glory: Appropriately for the U.S. record holder in the 5,000 meters, Dawson has been a fast learner at his chosen sport. He started speedskating at age 11, made the national team at age 18 and was in the Olympics at age 21.

Jessie Diggins

Event/Discipline: Cross-country skiing / 10km freestyle
Medal: Bronze
Hometown: Afton, Minnesota
Approximate distance to Cortina d’Ampezzo: 4,450 miles

Road to Glory: Diggins grew up in Afton, Minnesota, on the Wisconsin border. Now 34, she is planning to retire at the end of the 2025-26 season and is going out on top: she is ranked the No. 1 cross-country skier in the world and took bronze in Italy, her fourth career Olympic medal.

Korey Dropkin

Event/Discipline: Curling / mixed doubles
Medal: Silver
Hometown: Southboroough, Massachusetts
Approximate distance to Cortina d’Ampezzo: 4,000 miles

Road to Glory: Dropkin’s brother, Stephen, also competed for Team USA in curling, and the family’s involvement in the sport is why they moved from Massachusetts (where he was a member of the Broomstones Curling Club in Wayland) to Minnesota. He teamed up with Cory Thiesse to win silver in mixed doubles.

Ashley Farquharson

Event/Discipline: Luge / women’s singles
Medal: Bronze
Hometown: Park City, Utah
Approximate distance to Cortina d’Ampezzo: 5,600 miles

Road to Glory: A native of Park City, Utah, and still just 26, Farquharson figures to have a shot at competing for Team USA in her home state eight years from now. She’s already made her mark, becoming just the second American woman ever to medal in luge.

Alex Ferreira

Event/Discipline: Freestyle Skiing / Halfpipe
Medal: Gold
Hometown: Aspen, Colorado
Approximate distance to Cortina d’Ampezzo: 5,550 miles

Road to Glory: Ferreira — known as “Hotdog Hans” on his popular YouTube and TikTok channels — is the son of a former professional soccer player. In Cortina, he won his first Olympic gold after claiming a silver in 2018 and a bronze in ’22.

Mac Forehand

Event/Discipline: Freestyle Skiing / Big Air
Medal: Silver
Hometown: Winhall, Vermont
Approximate distance to Cortina d’Ampezzo: 3,960 miles

Road to Glory: Forehand and his family moved from Connecticut to Vermont as a child so he and his older sister, Savannah, could focus on moguls. At 17, Forehand joined Team USA and took part in his first Olympics in 2022.

Amber Glenn

Event/Discipline: Figure Skating / team event
Medal: Gold
Hometown: Plano, Texas
Approximate distance to Milan: 5,400 miles

Road to Glory: A three-time U.S. singles champion, Glenn competed in her first Olympics in 2026. Her most lasting impact may come off the ice. She is the first openly LGBTQ women’s skater on Team USA and her honesty about her struggles with mental health — which caused her to take a break from competition during the 2015-16 season — has helped other athletes with similar difficulties.

Alex Hall

Event/Discipline: Freestyle Skiing / slopestyle
Medal: Silver
Hometown: Fairbanks, Alaska
Approximate distance to Cortina d’Ampezzo: 4,750 miles

Road to Glory: Perhaps no member of Team USA is as well-traveled as Alex Hall. Born in Alaska, he was raised in Zurich, Switzerland, before finishing high school at Winter Park School in Park City, Utah. He has Italian and U.S. citizenship, but competes for Team USA, with whom he won gold in slopestyle in the 2022 Games before taking silver this year.

Kaillie Humphries

Event/Discipline: Bobsleigh / women’s monobob and two woman
Medal: Bronze (2)
Hometown: Calgary, Alberta
Approximate distance to Cortina d’Ampezzo: 4,989 miles

Road to Glory: Humphries is no stranger to Olympic glory — but for a different country. Representing her home nation of Canada, she won gold in the 2-man competition/women in both 2014 and 2018. She switched over to Team USA after marrying fellow bobsledder Travis Armbruster in 2019 and won gold in monobob in 2022.

Breezy Johnson

Event/Discipline: Alpine skiing / women’s downhill
Medal: Gold
Hometown: Victor, Idaho
Approximate distance to Cortina d’Ampezzo: 5,300 miles

Road to Glory: Johnson was born in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, grew up in Victor, Idaho, attended college at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington and went to Rowmark Ski Academy in Salt Lake City. Johnson was banned from competition for 14 months for an anti-doping rule violation, but rebounded to win gold at the 2025 world championships, a prelude to winning the same event at the Olympics.

Jasmine Jones

Event/Discipline: Bobsleigh / Two woman
Medal: Bronze
Hometown: Greensburg, Pennsylvania
Approximate distance to Cortina d’Ampezzo: 4,200 miles

Road to Glory: Jones competed in track at Eastern Michigan where she was noticed by Elana Meyers-Taylor, who sent her an email encouraging her to try bobsleigh. Now 29, she is a Senior Airman in the U.S. Air Force and trains at Lake Placid, New York, home of the 1980 Winter Olympics.

Ellie Kam

Event/Discipline: Figure Skating / team event
Medal: Gold
Hometown: Colorado Springs, Colorado
Approximate distance to Milan: 5,300 miles

Road to Glory: Kam was born on a U.S. air base in Tokyo and grew up in Alaska before relocating to Colorado Springs, where she currently attends college. This was her first Olympic Games, where she was paired with Daniel O’Shea.

Jaelin Kauf

Event/Discipline: Freestyle Skiing / moguls and dual moguls
Medal: Silver (moguls) / silver (dual moguls)
Hometown: Alta, Wyoming
Approximate distance to Cortina d’Ampezzo: 5,000 miles

Road to Glory: Alta, Wyoming, has fewer than 500 residents, which means a three-time Olympic medalist like Kauf has a legitimate claim to being the most accomplished person ever from her hometown. Not only that, she is the most-decorated women’s moguls skier in U.S. history.

Chloe Kim

Event/Discipline: Snowboarding / women’s halfpipe
Medal: Silver
Hometown: Torrance, California
Approximate distance to Livigno, Italy: 6,00 miles

Road to Glory: One of the biggest stars for Team USA entering the Games, it’s a testament to Kim’s dominance that a silver counts as a slight disappointment after she won the halfpipe at each of the two Winter Olympics. Her first such triumph made her, at 17, the youngest woman to win an Olympic snowboard gold medal.

Kaila Kuhn

Event/Discipline: Freestyle Skiing / Mixed event team aerials
Medal: Gold
Hometown: Boyne City, Michigan
Approximate distance to Milan, Italy: 4,300 miles

Road to Glory: Kuhn won her first World Cup race and finished third in the overall World Cup standings before helping Team USA defend its gold in mixed event team aerials at the Olympics.

Emery Lehman

Event/Discipline: Speedskating / team pursuit
Medal: Silver
Hometown: Oak Park, Illinois
Approximate distance to Milan, Italy: 4,500 miles

Road to Glory: Lehman originally took up speedskating at age nine to help him with hockey. At 17 he became the youngest male U.S. speedskater ever in the Olympics, surpassing the legendary Eric Heiden by two days. Now 29, Lehman has a degree from Marquette in civil engineering and a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins in structural engineering.

Elizabeth Lemley

Event/Discipline: Freestyle Skiing / moguls and dual moguls
Medal: Gold (moguls) / bronze (dual moguls)
Hometown: Vail, Colorado
Distance to Livigno, Italy: 5,100 miles

Road to Glory: Lemley is off to a flying start to her Olympic career by winning two medals, one of them gold, at her first Games. She’s a frequent flier herself, having earned her pilot’s license at age 17. She turned 20 just two weeks before the Games began and has dreams of joining the Air Force.

Christopher Lillis

Event/Discipline: Freestyle Skiing / Mixed event team aerials
Medal: Gold
Hometown: Pittsford, New York
Approximate distance to Milan, Italy: 4,000 miles

Road to Glory: Lillis is the only returning member of the U.S. team that won this same event at the 2022 Olympics. He makes sweet music off the slopes too, teaching guitar and piano to kids in Park City.

Alysa Liu

Event/Discipline: Figure Skating / team event and women’s singles
Medal: Gold (two)
Hometown: Clovis, California
Approximate distance to Milan: 5,500 miles

Road to Glory: At 12 she was the youngest woman to land a triple axel. At 13 she was the youngest skater to win a U.S. championship. At 16 she competed in her first Olympics — and then retired. Liu took a couple years off before returning to competition, winning the 2025 World Championships in Boston. In Milan she became the first U.S. woman to win gold singles since 2002.

Ilia Malinin

Event/Discipline: Figure Skating / team event
Medal: Gold
Hometown: Vienna, Virginia
Approximate distance to Milan: 4,300 miles

Road to Glory: The son of two of Uzbekistans greatest figure skaters, Malinin earned the nickname “Quad God” for becoming the first skater to land each of the six types of quadruple jumps in one program before the Games. However, he finished a stunning eighth in the individual program after having multiple falls. But he still leaves Milan with a gold medal for his part in the Team Event and at age 21 may not be done with his Olympic experience.

Mia Manganello

Event/Discipline: Speedskating /mass start
Medal: Bronze
Hometown: Crestview, Florida
Approximate distance to Milan: 4,900 miles

Road to Glory: A three-time Olympian, Manganello was a professional cyclist for five years before returning to speedskating in 2016. She made her first Olympic team in 2018 and won her second career medal at the Games this year.

Elana Meyers Taylor

Event/Discipline: Bobsleigh / women’s monobob
Medal: Gold
Hometown: Douglasville, Georgia
Approximate distance to Cortina d’Ampezzo: 4,736 miles

Road to Glory: At 41, Meyers-Taylor is competing in her fifth Olympics and is the most decorated women’s bobsledder ever. A mother of two, she has also won the most medals by any Black athlete in Winter Olympics history. She had won medals at each of her previous Olympics but didn’t win gold until this year, and is now the oldest bobsleigh medalist since 1956.

Paula Moltzan

Event/Discipline: Alpine skiing / women’s team combined
Medal: Bronze
Hometown: Minneapolis, Minnesota
Approximate distance to Cortina d’Ampezzo: 4,682 miles

Road to Glory: Moltzan won the NCAA slalom title while at the University of Vermont, and made her Olympic debut in 2022. This was her first Olympic medal.

Ben Ogden

Event: Cross-country skiing / classic sprint and team sprint freestyle
Medal: Silver (two)
Hometown: Landgrove, Vermont
Approximate distance to Cortina d’Ampezzo: 3,900 miles

Road to Glory: Another in the long line of U.S. skiers from the Green Mountain State, Ogden was part of Stratton Mountain School’s club team and got a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Vermont. This year, he became the first American man to win a medal in classic sprint in 50 years, then teamed with Gus Schumacher to take silver in the team sprint freestyle event.

Daniel O’Shea

Event/Discipline: Figure Skating / team event
Medal: Gold
Hometown: Pontiac, Michigan
Approximate distance to Milan: 4,300 miles

Road to Glory: O’Shea had already retired twice from competition before he teamed up with Ellie Kam, who needed a practice partner. He returned to competition, and despite their nearly 14-year age gap, developed into Olympians. Now 35, O’Shea is the oldest U.S. Olympic pairs skater in nearly a century (since 1932) and the oldest figure skater from any country to take part in the Olympics for the first time since 1948.

Gus Schumacher

Event/Discipline: Cross-country skiing / team sprint freestyle
Medal: Silver
Hometown: Anchorage, Alaska
Approximate distance to Cortina d’Ampezzo: 5,000 miles

Road to Glory: Schumacher graduated from the University of Alaska Anchorage in his hometown in 2024, in between his two Olympic appearances. The first didn’t yield a medal, but in Cortina he teamed with Ben Ogden to win the U.S.’s first medal in men’s team sprint freestyle.

Mikaela Shiffrin

Event/Discipline: Alpine skiing / slalom
Medal: Gold
Hometown: Edwards, Colorado
Approximate distance to Cortina d’Amepezzo: 5,100 miles

Road to Glory: Shiffrin’s tale is well-told, befitting the most decorated alpine skier ever. She lived in Vermont and Colorado growing up, skied at Burke Mountain Academy and made her World Cup debut in 2011 at age 16. She has since won more World Cup races than any other skier, male or female, and won gold at three different Olympics, twice in the slalom (2014 and 2026) and once in the giant slalom (2018).

Corinne Stoddard

Event/Discipline: Short-track Speedskating / women’s 1,500 meters
Medal: Bronze
Hometown: Tacoma, Washington
Approximate distance to Milan, Italy: 5,400 miles

Road to Glory: Stoddard grew up in the same area as speedskating legend Apolo Ohno and preferred inline skating before switching to speedskating so she could pursue the Olympics. That decision paid off with her first career Olympic medal in 2026, four years after she broke her nose in her first Olympic race.

Jordan Stolz

Event/Discipline: Speedskating / men’s 1,000 meters; men’s 500 meters; men’s 1,500 meters
Medal: Gold (men’s 1,000 meters); Gold (men’s 500 meters); Silver (men’s 1,500 meters)
Hometown: Kewaskum, Wisconsin
Approximate distance to Milan, Italy: 5,761 miles

Road to Glory: One of the breakout stars of this Olympiad, Stolz was inspired to become a speedskater by watching the 2010 Winter Olympics. Now 21, he is leaving current challengers behind and chasing history. He has won two golds already at these Games, making him the first U.S. speedskater since Eric Heiden in 1980 to win multiple golds at the same Olympics, and he added a silver in the 1,500.

Cory Thiesse

Event/Discipline: Curling / mixed doubles
Medal: Silver
Hometown: Duluth, Minnesota
Approximate distance to Cortina d’Ampezzo: 4,500 miles

Road to Glory: A native of Duluth, Thiesse is the daughter of former USA Curling veteran Linda Christensen. Thiesse took part in the 2018 Games and this year became the first American woman to win any Olympic medal in curling.

Jacqueline Wiles

Event/Discipline: Alpine skiing / women’s team combined
Medal: Bronze
Hometown: Portland, Oregon
Approximate distance to Cortina d’Ampezzo: 5,600 miles

Road to Glory: Wiles was part of the White Pass Ski Club in Washington and took part in her first Olympics in 2014. She missed the 2018 Games because of injury, but finally won her first Olympic medal this year, taking bronze in the women’s team combined.