Each two years, the Olympics roll round and switch goals into gold, and athletes into stars.
This week, the 2026 Winter Olympics get underway in Italy, with hundreds of dreamers descending upon the northern area of the nation to tackle the slopes, rinks, sliding tracks, ski leaping hills, and all the things else the Video games have to supply.
Amongst these dreamers? Over 200 Group USA athletes, a few of whom will develop into family names over these subsequent few weeks.
Maybe every of those 5 athletes able to storm the worldwide stage.
Let’s meet 5 possible stars within the making.
Girls’s skeleton made its Olympic debut on the 2002 Salt Lake Metropolis Video games, the place Tristan Gale and Lea Ann Parsley took gold and silver, respectively, representing the USA. Since then Group USA has managed only one extra medal in girls’s skeleton, a silver from Noelle Pikus-Tempo on the 2014 Sochi Video games.
Mystique Ro is hoping to vary all that.
Ro’s path to the sled has been an unconventional one. She was a observe and discipline star at Queens College of Charlotte, who competed in a number of occasions together with the heptathlon. She was a part of the ladies’s 4X100 meter relay crew that set a faculty report again in 2016.
However that very same 12 months she attended a coaching mix for Group USA’s sliding sports activities, and completed within the prime three in skeleton. A brand new path awaited her.
Ro labored her approach by the skeleton world, making her IBSF World Cup debut through the 2023 season. She landed her first World Cup podium in December of 2023, with a second-place end. She earned her first World Cup victory in 2024, and in addition took house the gold medal on the Pan American Championships in March of that 12 months. At her first IBSF World Championships in 2025 at Lake Placid, she took silver within the girls’s skeleton, and gold with teammate Austin Florian. That silver made Ro the primary American to medal within the girls’s skeleton at that occasion since Pikus-Tempo again in 2013.
She additionally took silver in her first World Cup race of 2026, taking second in Winterberg, Germany, at first of January.
When your nickname is the “QuadGod,” likelihood is you’re going to develop into a family identify.
Over the following few weeks, Ilia Malinin will possible do exactly that.
His has been an historic rise by the determine skating world, though possible not a stunning one on condition that his mother and father — Tatyana Malinina and Roman Skornyakov — have been each Olympic determine skaters for Uzbekistan. He was an alternate for Group USA on the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, and in addition took gold within the 2022 World Junior Championships.
Throughout the 2025 U.S. Determine Skating Championships he grew to become the primary determine skater in historical past to land six quads in a single efficiency, touchdown a quad flip, a quad Axel (a leap no different skater has ever landed), two quad Lutzes, a quad toe loop, and a quad Salchow. Whereas he fell on an tried quad loop, he captured his third consecutive U.S. title with that skate, successful by 46.82 factors over second-place finisher Andrew Torgashev.
Malinin took his fourth title in St. Louis in January.
“It’s such an incredible feeling,” mentioned Malinin in a media assertion to SB Nation. “I labored so exhausting, particularly after these 2022 nationals. It has such an enormous that means for me, having the ability to go there and comply with in my mother and father’ footsteps being two-time Olympians. It’s such an honor and I’m so excited for that have.”
If the quads weren’t sufficient his signature transfer is the “Raspberry Twist:”
It is a nod to his final identify, because the origin of his final identify ‘malina’ in Russian interprets to raspberry
For the previous few seasons, Jordan Stolz has dominated the speedskating sprinting occasions. He enters the 2026 Winter Olympics having gained each single 1,000- and 1,500-meter race through the World Cup season, and 5 of the 9 500-meter races. This comes within the wake of Stolz sweeping the dash distances on the World Championships in each 2023 and 2024, and he gained the full-season title in any respect three distances final season.
He made his Olympic debut on the 2022 Beijing Video games, the place he completed thirteenth within the 500 meters and 14th within the 1,000 meters. However since then he has been on an absolute tear, beginning when he gained each the 1,000-meter and the 1,500-meter races at a World Cup occasion 9 months after the 2022 Winter Olympics.
He has his eyes set on three gold medals in Milano Cortina, a consequence which might make him simply the second American to win three or extra gold medals in a single Winter Video games.
Ilia Malinin just isn’t the one Group USA determine skater who may vault into superstardom over the following few weeks.
Alysa Liu may be a part of him.
The 20-year-old’s journey to the 2026 Winter Olympics has been full of twists and turns. As only a 13-year-old through the 2019 U.S. Determine Skating Championships she landed a pair of triple axels — one thing no different feminine skater had completed on the occasion — and secured her first nationwide title.
She secured a spot on Group USA for the 2022 Winter Olympics, took bronze on the 2022 World Championships after which … stepped away from the game.
“I’m going to be shifting on with my life,” she introduced on Instagram.
Liu did simply that, enrolling at UCLA to review psychology and spending time away from the rink.
“I actually felt trapped and caught,” Liu mentioned lately. “The one approach, in my mind, to succeed in out (past the world of skating) was to go away the game.”
However a now-famous journey to Mt. Everest with an expensive pal not solely drew them nearer, however drew Liu again to the rink. She claimed the 2025 World Championships in Boston, and took gold on the 2025-26 Grand Prix Ultimate, her debut at that occasion. On the 2026 U.S. Championships she certified for Group USA, taking silver behind Amber Glenn.
However after that occasion, she made it clear what her targets are for Italy.
“I’m so excited to go on the stage to indicate me off. My hope is to get seen – not even simply my skating, simply me.”
Laila Edwards has already made historical past for Group USA.
She is going to make extra when she takes the ice on the 2026 Winter Olympics.
Edwards started determine skating when she was simply three years previous, however a number of years later she switched to hockey. She is at the moment a senior on the College of Wisconsin, and over the previous three years she has led the Badgers to a few consecutive appearances within the Nationwide Championship Sport, with Wisconsin successful two titles.
She was named to the U.S. girls’s crew for the November Rivalry Collection in opposition to Canada in 2023, changing into the primary black lady to play for the senior crew. She was named to the roster for the IIHF Girls’s World Championship the next spring, and have become the primary black lady to sore a purpose for Group USA on the occasion with a purpose in opposition to Czechia. Towards Finland within the semifinals she notched a hat-trick, main Group USA to a win and a spot within the gold medal recreation in opposition to Canada.
With six targets and two assists within the match, she grew to become the youngest participant to be named Match MVP at an IIHF Girls’s World Championship at simply 20 years previous.
She then switched to protection for Group USA forward of the 2025 IIHF Girls’s World Championship, and scored a purpose and three assists over seven video games as she helped the US win a gold medal.
When she takes the ice in Italy, she’ll develop into the primary black lady to characterize Group USA in Olympic hockey.
