5 Athletes to Watch as the Winter Olympic Games Kick Off at Milano Cortina 2026

The Winter Olympics have arrived!

With the opening ceremony set to take place on Friday, February 6, at San Siro Stadium in Milan, Italy, athletes from around the globe are getting ready for the biggest sporting event of their life. The Milano Cortina games will run for just over two weeks through February 22 before picking back up in March for the Paralympics.

From Lindsey Vonn’s long-awaited return to the Games to the Olympics debut of the figure skating “Quadgod,” Ilia Malinin, here are five Olympians to watch this month. Let the games begin!

Lindsey Vonn

Vonn is definitely one to watch at this year’s Winter Games. The alpine ski racer — who won the gold medal in downhill at the 2010 Winter Olympics — announced in December that she had qualified for Milano Cortina after previously retiring from skiing in 2019 due to various injuries. With a successful knee replacement surgery behind her, fans of Vonn had high hopes going into the Winter Olympics. At age 41, Vonn said at a news conference in St. Moritz, Switzerland, “Physically I’m in possibly the best shape I’ve ever been in.”

Things took a sharp turn for the three-time Olympic medalist after she crashed in the World Cup downhill in Crans-Montana, Switzerland — the final downhill before the Olympics — on January 30 and ruptured her ACL. According to the Associated Press, Vonn was in good spirits and jumping after the injury, with her coach believing that she would be just fine when it comes to competing in Italy. “I’m pretty confident that she can still pull off this dream,” head coach Chris Knight told the AP. “I’ve got no doubts in my mind that this is going to be OK.”

Chloe Kim

The 25-year-old snowboarder became the youngest woman to win an Olympic snowboarding gold medal at 17 years old for the women’s snowboard halfpipe at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea. During her return to the Olympic Games when she competed in Beijing in 2022, Kim once again won gold and became the first woman to win two gold medals in halfpipe.

However, in early January, the celebrated snowboarder revealed to her 1 million Instagram followers that she took “the silliest fall” during a routine training session in Switzerland ahead of this year’s Games, dislocating her shoulder. “I’m trying to stay really optimistic,” Kim told fans. “The positive thing is I have range. I am not in that much pain. Obviously, I just don’t want it to keep popping out, which has happened.” In an update on January 13, she revealed that she tore the labrum in her shoulder. The good news, she said, was that the tear was “less severe” than it could have been and said she was “good to go” for the Olympics.

Ilia Malinin

He’s not nicknamed the “Quadgod” for nothing! The figure skater, 21 is known for his signature move, a fully rotated quadruple Axel, and he’s the first and only skater to successfully land it in an international competition. After he was controversially left off Team USA for the Beijing Olympics, Malinin is making his highly anticipated Olympics debut in the Milano Cortina Games, and he is a favorite for achieving gold medal status.

Malinin comes from a family of figure skaters, and he is coached by his parents, Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov, who both represented Uzbekistan at the Nagano 1998 and Salt Lake City 2002 Winter Olympics. Malinin is a two-time World champion and a three-time Grand Prix Final champion with plenty of other accomplishments on his résumé. Of his ability to successfully land that quad Axel, he told CBS Sunday Morning, “The human body can do amazing things, and I guess I’m one of them.”

Mikaela Shiffrin

Considered the GOAT of alpine skiing, the 30-year-old athlete is a two-time Olympic gold medalist (the youngest slalom gold medalist in Olympic history) and has the most World Cup wins of any alpine skier in history. Coming from a family of skiers, Shiffrin became so successful in the sport that she was even named one of TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2023.

Going into the Games in Italy, “I feel very aware of all the things that could happen that I can’t expect,” she admitted to TIME last month. “I know very well that we could do everything right on paper and it might not end up with a medal. But I feel really connected with my coaches, with the staff, with everyone around me, and that’s building in a way that, whatever comes up, we’ll be able to handle it together. That’s the best I can do.”

Redmond Gerard

The 25-year-old snowboarder is already an Olympic gold medalist after making a splashy debut in slopestyle at the 2018 Winter Olympics, becoming the youngest Olympic snowboarding gold medalist ever. However, he was so chill about going into the Games eight years ago that he woke up late on the big day. In an interview with Jimmy Kimmel on Jimmy Kimmel Live! following his win, Gerard revealed that he was up late the night before watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine, slept past his alarm the following morning and left without his own jacket.

Since then, Gerard returned for the 2022 Winter Olympics, where he placed fourth in the slopestyle final. He has won three X Games medals for slopestyle throughout his career, and he is going back to the Olympics with that same cool and calm mind frame he had during his debut. “I try not to get too serious the night before a contest,” he recently told TIME. “It really helps me to sit back and play a card game with my friends or go have a beer with my brother. Something to get my head off of what’s going to happen tomorrow.”