The U.S. Olympic team for the 2026 Milan Cortina Games is starting to take shape now that the 2024-25 winter sports season is nearly complete.
Two-time Olympic gold medalist Chloe Kim became the first athlete to mathematically clinch a spot on the team via her No. 1 world ranking on April 1.
Kim won the two biggest competitions this season: January's X Games, her seventh title at the annual Aspen, Colorado, event, and the biennial World Championships for a third time.
Next February, she will bid to become the first person to win three consecutive Olympic snowboard halfpipe gold medals.
Kim will soon be joined by more athletes to clinch spots on the U.S. team for Milan Cortina.
Snowboard Slopestyle/Big Air
On May 1, the highest-ranked American man and American woman in slopestyle will clinch a spot on the Olympic team in slopestyle and big air, should they also be ranked in the top three in the world.
Red Gerard, the 2018 Olympic snowboard slopestyle gold medalist, is currently in qualifying position with no more significant events on the schedule between now and May 1. He is ranked second in the world behind Canadian Liam Brearley.
Gerard, who in 2018 became at age 17 the youngest snowboarder to win Olympic gold, added X Games slopestyle titles the last two years.
Freestyle Skiing
Later this spring, up to one male and one female athlete in specific freestyle skiing disciplines can clinch an Olympic spot via International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) base ranking lists that are largely determined by results from the previous season.
Last year, the base ranking lists were calculated on May 24.
Once the base lists are published, the highest-ranked American man and American woman in aerials, halfpipe, moguls, ski cross and slopestyle will clinch a spot on the Olympic team, should they also be ranked in the top three in the world.
As of March 24, the top Americans who were also ranked in the top three in the world in FIS points were Alex Ferreira (first, halfpipe), Jaelin Kauf (first, moguls) and Alex Hall (first, slopestyle).
Curling
Cory Thiesse and Korey Dropkin already won the U.S. Olympic Trials for mixed doubles curling, but they must still qualify the U.S. quota spot to earn their place at the Games.
They have two chances to do that. The first is by combining results from the 2024 World Championship and the 2025 World Championship, which will determine the first seven nations to qualify quota spots (along with automatically qualified host nation Italy).
In 2024, a different U.S. mixed doubles team placed 10th at worlds (ninth if excluding Italy). So Thiesse and Dropkin must improve the overall U.S. standing after the 2025 Worlds — April 26 to May 3 — to get into the top seven excluding Italy.
If they don't earn the quota spot through world championships, they can still do so at a last-chance qualifier in December.
Biathlon
Campbell Wright won two silver medals at the World Championships in February, which met preliminary U.S. Biathlon selection criteria for the 2026 ...
