While 2024 was the year of the Summer Games, Americans who participate in winter sports may collectively be having their best season on snow and ice in recent history.
That success could put the U.S. on track for its best Winter Games in more than a decade, as the country finished fourth and fifth in total Olympic medals in 2018 and 2022.
Below is a breakdown of the storylines and key athletes focused on the U.S. and the 2024-2025 winter season, the last full season before the 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy:
Alpine skiing: Mikaela Shiffrin shines despite injury
In 2022-23, Mikaela Shiffrin broke the record for career Alpine Skiing World Cup wins. In 2023-24, her season was cut short by a downhill injury on January 26. She suffered a left leg injury and a sprained ankle. She was sidelined for a series of 11 races of the 39-race season, still the best woman with nine race victories.
Shiffrin now has 97 World Cup victories to her name. This season, which begins in October, she can become the second athlete to win 100 individual World Cup events in a winter sport. Retired Norwegian cross-country skier Marit Bjørgen has won 114.
More history is on the line at the world championships in Saalbach, Austria, next February. With one win, Shiffrin would break the record for career gold medals at world championships in modern history (currently seven). She would also be one shy of the record for total medals at world championships in history (15).
While Switzerland’s Marco Odermatt continues to dominate the men’s tour, River Radamus became the youngest American man to reach a podium finish in a World Cup race in nearly a decade last February. Radamus, 26, shares a hometown with Shiffrin (Edwards, Colorado).
Cross-country skiing: Jessie Diggins accompanied by young people
Jessie Diggins, an Olympic medalist of every color, comes from the most successful season ever for an American cross-country skierFor the second time, she won the overall title of the World Cup, which rewards the world’s best all-round skier by combining season-long results over various distances and classic and freestyle techniques.
This season offers a chance to achieve something new. At the biennial world championships, the U.S. women have a chance to win their first relay medal after finishing fourth or fifth in each of the last six world championships.
The US also has a rising male star in 24-year-old Alaskan Gus Schumacher. Last February, he became the youngest American to win a World Cup cross-country skiing race and the first American man to win one in a decade. The U.S.’s only men’s Olympic cross-country medal came in 1976 (Bill Koch, silver).
Figure skating: Malinin, Chock/Bates back as world champions
U.S. figure skating is coming off of winning two titles at a single world championship for the first time since 1996. Last March, Ilia Malinin, 19, won his first world title. Ice dancers Madison Chock, 32, and Evan Bates, 35, repeated their world titles.
This season is crucial, as the results at the World Championships will determine how many countries will compete in each event at the 2026 Olympic Games. In addition, the World Championships are being held at home in Boston.
Malinin won his world title with the best collection of jumps in one program in historyLooking ahead, he has hinted that he wants to become the first skater to make a five-way jump in a competition.
Chock and Bates, the oldest couple to win a world ice dancing title, coming off their first undefeated seasonalthough their margin of victory at the world championships was the narrowest in dance in a decade. They were married in June. In recent years, they have decided each offseason whether to continue competing. They signed up for this fall’s Grand Prix Series. In January, they could tie the record of six U.S. ice dance titles held by Meryl Davis and Charlie White.
The US is becoming increasingly active in the women’s event in the absence of the once dominant Russians. Every international winter sports federation banned athletes from Russia and Belarus shortly after the invasion of Ukraine, and all of those bans remain in effect.
Isabeau Levito won silver at the World Championships, the best performance by an American woman in eight years. Amber Glenn is coming her first national title among seniorsAlysa Liu, the 2019 and 2020 U.S. champion and the 2022 World Championship bronze medalist, returned to competition for the first time in more than two years this past weekend.
Freestyle Skiing: Alex Ferreira’s Perfect Season
The US’s top freestyle skier has yet to win an Olympic gold medal, but appears to be an early favorite for 2026.
Alex Ferreira, a bronze medalist in 2018 and a silver medalist in 2022, won all seven of his ski halfpipe competitions in 2023-24, a year after some suggested he would quit the sport after two serious crashesThis season he may face New Zealand’s Nico Porteous, who slowly returned to competition last winter for the first time since winning the 2022 Olympic title.
In 2026, Ferreira could become the first man to win an Olympic medal in every color in an individual event on snow.
Last season, 12 different U.S. men and women also made World Cup podiums in aerials, moguls or the new Olympic event dual moguls. The group is led by Jaelin Kauf, the 2022 silver medalist in the women’s moguls, and Winter Vinecki, who has won three of the six women’s aerials World Cups.
One of those podium finishers, Alli Macuga, is one of three sisters who could make the Olympic team in three different skiing disciplines. Sam, the oldest, is a ski jumper. Lauren, the middle sister, is an alpine skier.
According to Bill Mallon of the OlyMADMen, three siblings have served on the same U.S. Winter Olympic team twice: alpine skiers Barbara, Bob and Marilyn Cochran in 1972 and bobsledders Curtis, Hubert and Paul Stevens in 1932.
Hockey: Changes for US Women, NHL Returns to Olympics
Since winning silver at the 2022 Olympics, the U.S. women’s hockey team has hired a new coach (John Wroblewski), named a new captain (Hilary Knight), welcomed a new world MVP (Laila Edwards, the first Black woman to play for the senior national team) and welcomed back Kendall Coyne Schofield from maternity leave.
At the 2023 World Cup, the US snapped its losing streak against Canada in the final of a major tournament. At the 2024 World Cup, Canada regained the title on a golden goalThe World Cups in the Czech Republic in April next year could determine the favourite for the 2026 Olympic Games.
For the men, the NHL has reached an agreement to participate in the Olympic Games for the first time since 2014.
The U.S., which last won gold with Miracle on Ice in 1980, could field a team featuring Auston Matthews (2023-24 NHL leading scorer), goalie Connor Hellebuyck (2023-24 Vezina Trophy winner) and the Hughes brothers (Jack, Luke, Quinn). Yes, there could be three sisters and three brothers in the 2026 U.S. Olympic delegation.
Pittsburgh Penguins coach Mike Sullivan has already been named coach of the US men’s team at the Olympics.
Paralympic sports: cross-country skiers and snowboarders lead
The American successes in parabiathlon, cross-country skiing and snowboarding at the Paralympic Games have continued since 2022.
Last season, Paralympic champions Oksana Masters and Kendall Gretsch won the Biathlon World Championships, while Masters also won the World Cup in cross-country skiing.
Masters, the most decorated American Paralympic winter athlete in history, and Gretsch then returned to their summer sports at the Paris Olympics. Masters added two more gold medals to cyclingwhile Gretsch won silver in the triathlon.
In snowboarding, five Americans won banked slalom races at last season’s final World Cup: Paralympic gold medalists Noah Elliott, Brenna Huckaby and Mike Minor, plus Darian Haynes and Peggy Martin. The biennial world championships return this season in March in Big White, British Columbia.
In hockey, the U.S. has captured the last four Paralympic titles, but rival Canada snapped the Americans’ 41-game winning streak in the World Cup final in May. In 2026, the U.S. can bid to become the first nation to win five consecutive hockey titles at the Olympics or Paralympics.
Short Track: Kristen Santos-Griswolds Record Number of Medals
Kristen Santos-Griswold won a medal in all five of her events at the Women’s World Championships last March as part of the U.S. short track team had his best worlds since the sport was added to the Olympic medal program in 1992.
At the last Olympics, Santos-Griswold finished fourth in the 1000m and considered retiring. Now she is in a strong position to win the first U.S. women’s short track medal at the Olympics since 2010.
Santos-Griswold could be challenged this season by South Korea’s biggest star, Choi Min-jeong, who sat out the 2023-24 season.
Sliding Sports: Return of Elana Meyers Taylor, Kaillie Humphries
Five-time Olympic medalist Elana Meyers Taylor returned last season of her second delivery. Three-time Olympic gold medalist Kaillie Humphries plans to return this season after having her first child in June.
Also last season, Mystique Ro became the first American to win a World Cup skeleton race in eight yearsAmerican lugers won doubles World Cup for the first time in 18 yearsAnd a women’s doubles team won a medal at a world championship before that event’s Olympic debut.
This season, both World Championships will be held in North America: luge in Whistler, Canada, in February and bobsleigh and skeleton in Lake Placid, New York, in March.
Snowboarding: Chloe Kim Makes Halfpipe History
Chloe Kim returned to competition last season for the first time since repeating her Olympic gold in 2022. In her second competition back, she became the first woman to score a 1260 in a competition.
This January, Kim will break her tie with Kelly Clark for the most X Games titles in the event (both have seven total, six in Aspen). In 2026, Kim likely won’t be the only American looking to become the first woman to win three Olympic snowboarding golds.
Lindsey Jacobellis, who won two golds in 2022, won silver at the 2023 World Championships at the age of 37Jamie Anderson, who won gold in slopestyle in 2014 and 2018, returned to competition last winter after giving birth in March 2023.
Skating: Jordan Stolz is the boss
Jordan Stolz is coming off one of the best seasons in a winter sport. In 2023-24, the Wisconsinite broke his first world record (1000m), skated the fastest time in history at sea level (1500m), won the 500m, 1000m and 1500m at the world championships for the second year in a row and claimed the sport’s most legendary title: world all-around champion. All at age 19.
This season, Stolz will get his first chance to skate at a home World Cup in Milwaukee (Jan. 31-Feb. 2). The World Championships are in March on the famous Viking ship in Hamar, Norway.
