Winter Olympic Games: 10 biggest stories ahead of Milan Cortina

The 2026 Winter Olympic Games are almost here.

The world will descend upon Italy's Milan Cortina region from Friday, Feb. 6, through Sunday, Feb. 22, for the 25th running of the Winter Olympics.

Here are the ten biggest storylines to follow across two full weeks of competition:

A reset in women's figure skating

The 2022 Olympic women’s figure skating competition ended, quite literally, in tears. This year’s crop of female figure skaters aims to behave differently.

Team USA's Amber Glenn (at 26, the oldest Olympic skating debutante in nearly a century), her teammate Alysa Liu, and her competitors Kaori Sakamoto and Ami Nakai of Japan lead the field, and they are wellness-focused, sisterhood-driven athletes whose uncompromising morals have refreshed the sport's energy from within. Any one of them could take home the gold medal; every one of them will be thrilled for the one who does. No tears here.

Lindsey Vonn’s comeback

Lindsey Vonn is one of the biggest names in skiing, but for all her glamor and mystique, she’s underperformed on the Olympic stage. She's racked up twice as many Olympic DNFs as she has Olympic medals, and that simply won't do for Vonn. She's pushed herself out of retirement for one more shot at Olympic glory at the ripe old age of 41. 

Vonn isn't just competing with an age handicap: she’s competing with a literal handicap, too. Vonn reportedly ruptured her ACL in a high-speed crash just weeks ago. She’s hurting, but she’s unwilling to give up her Olympic dream. "It's just so many reasons for her to not let go that they're powering her along and keeping the adrenaline high," Vonn’s coach Chris Knight told ESPN. "You don't want to slow down in these situations."

The return of ski mountaineering

Milan Cortina will host the modern revival of Olympic ski mountaineering, otherwise known as “skimo”. It’s a fast-paced, lung-busting sport combining the best of cross-country skiing, winter hiking and technical skiing, and it’s returning to the Olympic Games for the first time since 1946.

Skimo is an Alpine sport through and through, and accordingly France, Switzerland and the host nation of Italy are expected to dominate it. Keep an eye out for China too, though: it became the first non-Alpine nation to podium in the event when it secured a third-placed finish in the Skimo World Championships in 2025.

Changes in men's snowboarding

The past four years have seen the halfpipe snowboarding dominated by fiendishly difficult "triple cork" tricks: three off-axis flips featuring rotations of 1440 to 1800 degrees. Japanese rider Ayumu Hirano won Olympic gold in 2022 by being the only competitor capable of landing one; these days, Australia’s Scotty James, New Zealand’s Cam Melville Ives and Japan’s Ruka Hirano and Yuto Totsuka can all do it too. 

But can any riders from Team USA? Signs point to no. Its best hope is 18-year-old Portland native Alessandro Barbieri, who landed his first competitive triple cork back in the fall but has been hit-or-miss on the trick ever since. If Barbieri can stick the landing, he might continue America’s Olympic snowboarding legacy…but if he can’t, there’s a strong chance that Team USA will miss out on the men’s halfpipe podium for the second Games running.

Chloe Kim’s three-peat

While the American men are falling behind in halfpipe snowboarding, the American women are surging ahead. They’ve won three consecutive Olympic gold medals without breaking a sweat.

Los Angeles native Chloe Kim shook the sport to its foundations when she won gold in 2018 age 17, then redefined it for a new generation when she repeated the feat in 2022. If she can hold off a strong field in 2026, she'll become the first boarder of any gender to win three Olympic halfpipe golds in a row. It won’t be easy—Kim enters these Games with a niggling shoulder injury—but it’d be silly to bet against her in her prime.

Eileen Gu’s buzzy return

While Kim aims for snowboarding dominance for Team USA, 22-year-old Eileen Gu will seek freestyle skiing dominance for Team China. The Chinese-American dual national burst onto the scene in 2022 during the Beijing Games, winning two gold medals (in halfpipe and big air) and one silver medal (in slopestyle) on home soil. She became the first freestyle skier in history to win three medals in one Olympic Games, and she did it at the precocious age of 18.

Gu is one of the most recognizable and marketable figures at these Games, and she’s earned that spotlight—no one else in the freestyle skiing universe dominates quite as many disciplines as she does. Gu is out to repeat her multi-medal performance for a second Olympics in a row. Doing it in Beijing made her a celebrity; doing it in Milan Cortina may well make her a legend.

Two wild hockey tournaments

There’s a lot to like about men’s and women’s hockey this year, from the never-ending USA-Canada rivalry to the consistency of the Nordic nations to the rising threat of Czechia. Both tournaments are wide open, with room for standout individual performances to make all the difference.

Keep an eye on Czech goalie Lukas Dostal, who arrives at the Olympics high off a strong season start with the Anaheim Ducks. And don’t forget about 38-year-old legend Sidney Crosby: he’s out to win his third gold medal after taking home the top prize with Canada in 2010 and 2014.

The Quad God's Olympic debut

American skater Ilia Malinin is known for doing the impossible. In 2022, he became the first person in history to land a quad axel jump in international competition, and he’s been churning them out with terrifying regularity ever since. He landed two in his record-setting (and gold medal winning) Grand Prix final skate in January of 2026…and both of them came in the second half of his program, when his legs were tired and his lungs were spent.

21-year-old Malinin is set to make his Olympic debut at Milan Cortina, and he’s the odds-on favorite for gold. He’s a barrier-breaking, sport-changing, once-in-a-generation athlete, and these Games are his. No one else in the field can touch him.

Jessie Diggins’s fond farewell

American cross-country skier Jessie Diggins announced in November that these Olympics—her fourth—will be her last. The 34-year-old is set to hang up her skis at the end of the 2025-26 season.

It’ll be tough to say goodbye to Diggins. She won America’s first-ever cross-country gold medal in PyeongChang in 2018 and remains the most decorated American in the history of the sport. She's also a tireless advocate for athlete wellness, and her work has fundamentally changed the conversation around mental health in winter sports.

A hyped-up host nation

This is Italy's fourth time hosting the Winter Olympics, and it will be fascinating to watch its medal contenders perform on home soil. Its best hope for gold lies with short track speed skater Arianna Fontana, who enters these Games as her sport's most decorated athlete, and mixed doubles curlers Amos Mosaner and Stefania Constantini, who have yet to lose an international match as a duo.

The 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics will kick off in earnest on Friday, Feb. 6.