Winter Olympics have not gone to plan for USA so far

Published 11:05 am Monday, February 16, 2026

DOBBIACO, Italy — The first signal that the 2026 Winter Olympics might not go as planned for the Americans might have been a week before the Italians lit the cauldron, when Lindsey Vonn crashed in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, and ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in her left knee.

Or maybe it was in November, when Lauren Macuga, a rising star on the U.S. Alpine team, crashed and tore her ACL, then opted to have surgery and miss the Games. Or a little more than a month later, when Chloe Kim, the magical snowboard champion, tore the labrum in her shoulder while training.

Or maybe it was when Jessie Diggins, the world’s top cross-country skier, crashed and severely bruised her ribs in her first Olympic race. Or when Vonn crashed in the downhill. Or when Ilia Malinin, the world’s most talented figure skater, started tumbling on his skates.

Needless to say, it has been an interesting few months for Team USA, and an especially interesting first 10 days of the Games.

The good news for supporters of the stars and stripes is that, a little more than halfway through the Games, the team is tracking ahead of the past two Winter Olympics in total medals, with some big stars with big events left on their schedules. Through Sunday, the U.S. team had won 17 medals, including five golds, compared with 25 and 9 through the entirety of the Beijing Games four years ago. If the U.S. continues medaling at its current rate through the remaining events, it would finish with 28 or 29 medals.

The less good news is that, so far, some of the biggest U.S. stars have struggled with injuries, freak mishaps and the usual Olympic pressure that has thrown off some of the predictions of the U.S. team’s higher minds and allowed some lesser-known characters to emerge.

“Nothing is ever promised at the Games, for anyone, but the goal is always to improve as a team,” said Rocky Harris, the chief of sport for the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee, who oversees the targeted investment in sports and athletes to produce medals. “This team has great breadth and depth, and that’s showing up here in Italy, where athletes are picking up their teams and teammates across sports and across disciplines.”

Harris is not wrong about that.

Sophie Goldschmidt, the chief executive of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, was at the base of the Olympia delle Tofane when Vonn, one of the biggest stars in the Games and a favorite for the downhill gold, crashed violently and broke her leg 13 seconds into her run. Goldschmidt and the rest of the team had a lot riding on Vonn, who was favored to win medals in downhill, super-G and combined.

Skiing and snowboarding competitions account for about half the medals at these Winter Games, which feature 116 events.

A helicopter evacuated Vonn from the mountain. She has had four surgeries on her leg and was finally cleared to fly home to the States after her most recent operation on Saturday.

Given Vonn’s position as a leader and mentor to several team members, the crash sent some shock waves through the team.

“The nature and severity of it was definitely very impactful, and not just for us,” Goldschmidt said. “It affected people in different ways.”

Breezy Johnson had already posted her gold medal-winning time when Vonn crashed, but Jackie Wiles, a close friend and Vonn acolyte, just missed the podium with a fourth-place run shortly after. Then, two days later, Wiles and Paula Moltzan grabbed the bronze medal in the combined event, when Mikaela Shiffrin, the other of the massive stars on the team, posted her worst slalom run of the season, with her and Johnson holding the top spot following the downhill run.

With one Alpine skiing race left, the U.S. has three medals, compared with one in Beijing. Shiffrin, the best slalom skier ever, is a massive favorite in the slalom event on Wednesday. But as Harris has said, nothing is guaranteed, especially for Shiffrin.

She has won 108 World Cup races but has not won an Olympic medal since 2018 after crashing three times in six races in Beijing and not performing up to expectations so far in Cortina.

“No matter how many runs of slalom I do, it never gets easier,” Shiffrin said. “You become more aware of how challenging it is.”

Shiffrin at least has a relatively healthy body to bring to the competition. That wasn’t the case for Kim, or for Diggins, following an early fall in the 10-kilometer skiathlon on the first day of cross-country skiing. Diggins fell hard just after the start and bruised her ribs.

That put a question mark around her availability and effectiveness for the rest of these Olympics, which she says will be her last. She gutted out a bronze medal in the 10-kilometer freestyle, a race that a healthy Diggins would have been favored to win.

Diggins may have missed out on a medal or two, but Ben Ogden picked her up with a silver in the individual sprint, the United States’ first men’s cross-country medal in 50 years.

Kim, who was going for her third consecutive gold medal in women’s snowboard halfpipe and emerged with a silver, could relate to Diggins’ resilience. She missed a chunk of training in the weeks leading up to the Games.

With so much responsibility for so many medals, Goldschmidt said the federation has worked to insulate itself from mishaps involving big stars and smaller ones, both in Milan Cortina and down the road. When Goldschmidt took over as CEO of U.S. Ski and Snowboard four years ago, the organization’s revenue was about $36 million. This year, total revenue is projected to reach $70 million, and she and her team have tried to invest as much as possible in athlete support and development.

She pointed to the invaluable experience that 16-year-old U.S. snowboarders Jess Perlmutter and Lily Dhawornvej are getting during these Games. Both qualified for the finals in snowboard slopestyle on Sunday. They may not win medals this year, but they will be more prepared for 2030. Jordan Stolz, a star in speedskating, didn’t come close to the podium in Beijing at 17. At 21, he has already delivered gold medals in the men’s 500 and 1,000-meter races.

Development and preparation became a talking point around Malinin’s downfall. The 21-year-old figure skater has taken his sport to a new level with his ability to string together “quads” — jumps with four rotations. An average performance would have earned him a medal, maybe even the gold, in the men’s competition. There is no world in which the U.S. team’s leadership was not counting on a medal from Malinin, and most likely the gold.

Instead, Malinin was as off as he could have been. He said the pressure of the Olympic spotlight got to him. As soon as he left the ice, he complained to his father and coach that if the national governing body of figure skating had put him on the team for Beijing — which he was controversially omitted from after finishing second at the U.S. championships just before the 2022 Games — he would not have skated so poorly in Milan.

Of course, it’s impossible to know if that’s how events would have unfolded, but Malinin’s experience demonstrated how different the Olympic Games are from any other competition.

The final days of the Milan Cortina Games hold the potential for results that can get the U.S. team over the 25-medal mark set in Beijing. Though, with some new events, such as ski mountaineering, there are more medals available in Italy than there were in China. Only a series of miracles would get the U.S. team to its Winter Olympic record of 37 medals, which was set at the 2010 Vancouver Games.

Goldschmidt has faith in Shiffrin and likes the U.S. team’s chances in the upcoming freestyle skiing events in big air and halfpipe. Aerials could bring success, too, with Quinn Dehlinger and Kaila Kuhn.

The U.S. hockey teams are cruising as they head toward potential medal showdowns with their rivals from Canada. Alysa Liu is the reigning world champion in figure skating.

Then again, so was Malinin.

Harris believes.

“We are tracking ahead of recent performances and feeling good about where we are today,” he said. “I have total confidence in these athletes and the winter sport national governing bodies as we head into the second week.”