The name of Laila Edwards will be front and center in communities of color if the United States wins the gold medal in Olympic Women’s Hockey. Edwards, a defender from Cleveland Heights, Ohio, is the first Black woman to play for the U.S. Olympic Women’s Ice Hockey team.

Olympic athletes are going to have quite a famous fan cheering for them during the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics.

Back at the 2022 Winter Olympics in China, Hall didn’t just show up — he showed out, snagging Olympic gold for Team USA in freestyle skiing and cementing himself as one of the sport’s biggest stars. As one admirer recently put it: “got lost in his eyes.” Another watching him on the slopes wrote, “Omg he’s a god.”

For more than seven decades, women from the United States have shaped Olympic figure skating. Each champion arrived in a different era. Each one faced a different challenge. Some battled illness. Others carried the weight of tragedy or tough rivalry.

The Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games' opening ceremony will kick off in northern Italy on Friday night local time, with Australians watching the snowy coverage in the early hours of the morning Saturday, and in the aftermath of a heatwave.

The two best bets to win the gold medal in women’s halfpipe skiing at the Winter Olympics were born in the United States. Zoe Atkin competes for Britain and hardly anyone raises a fuss about

Women’s skeleton made its Olympic debut at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games, where Tristan Gale and Lea Ann Parsley took gold and silver, respectively, representing the United States. Since then Team USA has managed just one more medal in women’s skeleton, a silver from Noelle Pikus-Pace at the 2014 Sochi Games.

The ejection of Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych from the Winter Games over his "helmet of remembrance" has put the spotlight on rules over where athletes are not allowed to express themselves on political matters at the Olympics.