American Women Dominated the Winter Olympics

This is part of Slate’s 2026 Olympics coverage. Read more here. 

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The Milan Cortina Olympics are over, and it’s fair to say that the United States crushed it. Team USA won 33 medals at the 2026 Winter Games, which is the most it’s won since Vancouver in 2010. The U.S. won 12 gold medals, too, which is more than it’s ever won at any Winter Games. Sure, the USA lagged behind Norway in the overall medal count, but there’s no shame in that. There were approximately 900 cross-country-related events at the Milan Cortina Olympics, and Norway medaled in almost all of them. Adjust for the Scandinavian nation’s hyper-competence in that one specific discipline, and you could almost argue that America had the best Games of any nation. Yeah! Woo! U-S-A! U-S-A!

While it was a great Winter Games for Team USA by pretty much every measure, it was especially great for the women of Team USA. America’s female Olympians were responsible for (or partially responsible for, in the case of mixed team events) 21 of those 33 total medals, and eight of those 12 golds. American women won as many gold medals as the entire nations of Germany, France, and Sweden and as many overall medals as Canada. And, with apologies to the U.S. men’s hockey team, American women also authored pretty much all of the moments that I’ll remember most vividly from these Olympics.

The Games started off with Lindsey Vonn’s improbable Olympic comeback after eight years away, a return that turned tragic when the 41-year-old skier—who, to be clear, was a legit medal contender—crashed and broke her leg in the first few seconds of the downhill. I’ve already forgotten what I had for lunch today, but the sight of a supine Vonn dangling in the sky, being carried away by a medevac helicopter, will be seared into my brain forever.

Elsewhere in the Alpine skiing program, World Cup legend Mikaela Shiffrin came to Cortina hoping to make up for her inexplicably awful performance in Beijing in 2022. After unremarkable races in the team combined and giant slalom events, she returned to form in the slalom finals, winning her first slalom gold since 2014. Not only did Shiffrin leave Cortina with some long-awaited Olympics redemption. She also gave consistently deep and insightful interviews, sharing her inner-most thoughts about racing and her mental health.

Mikaela Shiffrin. Christophe Pallot/Agence Zoom/Getty Images

If we’re talking redemption arcs, then we’ve got to talk about short-track speedskater Corinne Stoddard. After crashing and breaking her nose in her very first race at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, Stoddard came to Milan hoping to stay upright and win some medals. But when the 2026 Winter Games began, Stoddard just kept on crashing, again and again. It got so bad that she wrote an anguished, dark-night-of-the-soul Instagram post in which she apologized to her friends and family for letting them down. Then, in her final race of the Winter Games, Stoddard didn’t just remain upright: She won a bronze medal in a thrilling and cathartic finish.

Who had a more cathartic Olympics than Elana Meyers Taylor? The 41-year-old bobsledder had won medals in each of her preceding four Winter Olympic appearances, but she had never won gold. A mother of two young special-needs children, Meyers Taylor made major sacrifices to get back to the Winter Games. When she beat out Germany’s Laura Nolte by 0.04 seconds in the women’s monobob and claimed the gold medal she’d been chasing for so long, she hugged her children tight while clutching an American flag. No matter how cynical you are about the Olympics—and you should be cynical about the Olympics!—that tableau captured the immense meaning of the Games and melted my cold, jaded heart.

If any American deserves a lifetime achievement award for Olympic inspiration, it’s cross-country skier Jessie Diggins. Eight years ago, Diggins made Olympic history when, with teammate Kikkan Randall, she won a completely unexpected gold in the women’s team sprint—America’s first cross-country skiing medal of any sort in more than 40 years. Diggins has only gotten better since 2018, and came into her final Winter Games expected to contend for multiple medals. While she only ended up winning one, her bronze in the 10-kilometer freestyle was the most fitting possible way for the grittiest woman on Team USA to conclude her Olympics career. In her very first race at the Milan Cortina Games, Diggins fell and bruised her ribs. Days later, skiing in excruciating pain, she sprinted across the finish line in the 10-kilometer race and immediately collapsed, crying out in agony as she writhed on the ground. “Have you ever seen anything like it?” NBC’s Steve Schlanger asked. I must say, I have not. Later, Diggins proclaimed herself “the most grateful, happiest bronze medalist in the history of the world.”

Jessie Diggins. JAVIER SORIANO/Getty Images

As great as the U.S. men’s hockey team’s overtime victory over Canada was, I would argue that the U.S. women’s hockey team’s overtime victory over Canada was even greater.  The rivalry between the American and Canadian women’s hockey teams is one of the best in all of sports, made greater by the infrequency—and utter unpredictability—of their quadrennial meetings. With the exception of the 2006 Games, the gold-medal match in women’s hockey has always come down to the U.S and Canada, and the U.S. has lost more often than they’ve won. Their overtime victory this year, settled on a golden goal by Megan Keller, sets the stage for their next grudge match four years from now in the French Alps. I know I’ll be watching.

Off the ice and snow, American women also dominated the human-interest side of the Winter Games. Downhill gold medalist Breezy Johnson got proposed to (at her request!) after her final Olympic race. Long-time Team USA fixtures Hilary Knight and Brittany Bowe also got engaged on site to cap their Olympic careers, while luge racer Sophia Kirkby charmingly declared herself the Games’ “most eligible bachelorette.”

Compared to their female counterparts, the men of Team USA were, let’s be honest, relative nonentities. Yes, yes, Jordan Stolz and Mac Forehand created some exciting moments. On the other hand, the most interesting things about the 21-year-old Stolz at this point in his life are his two enormous quad muscles, while “Mac Forehand” is clearly a fake name. Ben Ogden also did great in cross-country skiing, but not nearly as great as Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, whose six gold medals told the story of men’s cross-country skiing. And sure, Korey Dropkin (male) won mixed doubles curling silver alongside Cory Thiesse (female), but let’s be real: Without Cory, Korey wouldn’t have even been at the Olympics!

With apologies to Rich Ruohonen, the 54-year-old curling alternate who became the oldest American ever to compete in the Winter Games and spoke out passionately against ICE, the only truly compelling American male Olympian was Ilia Malinin, and the vaunted Quad God sadly didn’t come through when it was his time to shine. Malinin did his best Olympics work at the figure skating exhibition gala, and even there he was less memorable than the guy who skated in a panda costume!

But even if Malinin would have lived up to his advance hype, his performance would have been eventually overshadowed by that of Alysa Liu, the figure skater whose exuberant free skate provided the most indelible American moment of the Milan Cortina Games. Along with her teammate Amber Glenn, Liu eradicated the “ice princess” prototype in women’s figure skating. In a sport where the top competitors are forever skating scared, she glided across the ice in obvious delight to “MacArthur Park,” which is frankly one of the silliest songs of all time. There was nothing stressful or portentous about her performance. Liu’s routine was pure joy.

Alysa Liu and Amber Glenn. Joe Scarnici/Getty Images

That gold-medal skate reminded us that sports don’t have to be stressful and serious. Even at the Olympics—an event that is too often overburdened by its own sense of self-importance—they can be joyful, inspiring, and fun.

Two weeks ago, at the outset of the Winter Games, amid a politically chaotic and utterly depressing start to this calendar year, I wrote of my hope that the Milan Cortina Games might give us the exciting, engaging, life-affirming break that we all desperately needed. I hope these Olympics did that for you, because they did it for me. And I have the women of Team USA to thank.

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