These Bay Area Athletes Are Set To Compete At 2026 Winter Olympics

ALAMEDA, CA — A handful of Bay Area athletes will represent Team USA at the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics and Paralympics later this year.

With competition sites in the city of Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, the winter resort in the Dolomites that is more than 250 miles away by road, this will be the most spread-out Winter Games in history

Athletes will also compete in three other mountain clusters besides Cortina, while the closing ceremony will be in Verona, 100 miles east of Milan.

Among the 252 athletes selected to represent Team USA this year, these are from the Bay Area, and the athletic feats they specialize in:

• Alysa Liu — Figure Skater out of Richmond/Oakland
• Nina O'Brien — Ski Racer out of San Francisco
• Anthony Ponomarenko — Figure Skater (Ice Dancer) out of Santa Clara County
• Joanne Firesteel Reid — Biathlete who grew up in Palo Alto
• Jen Lee, a three-time Paralympian and gold medal winner in sled hockey, grew up in San Francisco.

This year's United States roster consists of 115 women and 117 men, including 98 returning Olympians and 33 Olympic medalists. The youngest athlete on the team is Freeskier Abby Winterberger, age 15, and the oldest is 54-year-old Rich Ruohonen, a curling athlete.

The majority of athletes selected for the winter games were from Colorado (30), Minnesota (24) and California (19).

Although the opening ceremony isn’t until Feb. 6, competition begins on Feb. 4 with curling. Here are other key dates:

• Feb. 7: First gold medal events.
• Feb. 8: Gold medal, women’s Alpine skiing downhill.
• Feb. 13: Gold medal, men’s figure skating.
• Feb. 18: Gold medal, women’s Alpine skiing slalom.
• Feb. 19: Gold medal, women’s figure skating. Gold medal game, women’s ice hockey. First gold medals in ski mountaineering, a new Olympic sport.
• Feb. 22: Gold medal game, men’s ice hockey. Closing ceremony.

Dozens of countries will stream or air each day's events, with some delaying broadcasts until primetime depending on the time zone. That will be the case in the U.S., where Eastern time is six hours behind Milan and Cortina. NBC will carry showcase events at night while streaming sports on Peacock.

Among athletes to watch are two of the most decorated Alpine skiers in history, 41-year-old Lindsey Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin. The pair opened the World Cup season in dominant form, raising American hopes of a golden run in Cortina. Chloe Kim is back in snowboarding, although fighting through an injury. And NHL players are back on Olympic ice for the first time since 2014, so keep an eye on the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Sidney Crosby.

Ski mountaineering will make its Olympic debut, while skeleton has added a mixed team event, luge has added women’s doubles, and large hill ski jumping added women’s and men’s super team events.

California Editor Kat Schuster contributed to this report.