An event that seemed reserved for countries with marked winter seasons is opening up to record participation. In the Italian snows there will be more National Olympic Committees than ever in the Winter Games: 92 as in Pyeongchang 2018, but with the addition of the Russians and Belarusians, still without a flag. Ten Latin American countries, three Caribbean countries and a record eight African countries will see their flags fly at the San Siro stadium during the inauguration on February 6.

First modification: 02/05/2026 - 03:23

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Stephanie Joffroy spends seven months a year driving up to 20,000 km across Europe, her car loaded with skis, uniforms and other competition gear to take part in the main events on the calendar. Thus she became ninth in the world ranking in 2024 and the most prominent Chilean in ski cross.

Shannon Ogbani Abeda's family fled the civil war in Eritrea in the 1980s. They settled in Canada and Shannon was born there, and had her first contact with alpine skiing at the age of three. But he was never Canadian to compete. He retained his parents' nationality and in 2018 became the first Eritrean in the Winter Games.

They are two of the stories that mark a more diverse participation than usual in the Milano Cortina 2026 Games, an edition with a record number of countries competing and unprecedented figures also for African Olympic Committees and the number of Latin American athletes.

The protagonists will be the usual ones, with the occasional surprise, such as the solid prospects of the Norwegian-born Brazilian Lucas Pinheiro Braathen of becoming the first Latino on the podium at the Winter Games.

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The maximum fair of the winter calendar returns to the West after 16 years in which it passed through Sochi, Pyeongchang and Beijing, and returns to Italy 20 years after Torino 2006.

They do it with natural snow after the experience four years ago, when they had to resort to producing it artificially to be able to compete in the ski events.

Milano Cortina debuts a sport, ski mountaineering or skimo, which will award three medals: men's, women's and mixed events.

In addition, it adds five events to existing sports, most of them to move towards gender parity: double luge and women's individual long springboard ski jump, the mixed skeleton relay and events for both genders in moguls or acrobatic skiing.

Innovations may go much further in the near future, after International Olympic Committee president Kirsty Coventry paved the way for “an evolution that will affect everyone”.

“We must find a balance between tradition and innovation by looking with new eyes, to be clear that we are evolving,” said Coventry, speaking of the upcoming winter event, but also of the upcoming Dakar 2026 Youth Games.

Read alsoDue to its great "popular support", Milan will be the organizer of the Winter Olympic Games in 2026

Called to shine

Two American athletes will focus attention on the beautiful sport, alpine skiing, for similar reasons: Mikaela Shiffrin and Lindsey Vonn seek the path to Olympic redemption in their legendary careers.

Shiffrin is considered the best in history for her sport, the only one to have surpassed the barrier of 100 victories in World Cup events, slalom champion in Sochi 2014 (the youngest in history in that event) and giant slalom champion in Pyeonchang 2018.

But four years ago in Beijing, where he was predicted to win six gold medals, he inexplicably came away empty-handed, with a fourth place finish as his best performance. At 30 years old, and with an undefeated season in the slalom, he hopes to secure vindication, at least in that event.

Vonn's path has been much more dramatic. She achieved her only Olympic gold in Vancouver 2010, in downhill, but she is the third-largest all-time winner of overall World Cup titles, surpassed only by Annemarie Moser-Pröll and Shiffrin, with four, three of them consecutive.

She retired in 2019, besieged by injuries, but five years later she decided to return to competition, aged 40 and with a partially reconstructed knee. She began racking up podiums within months, and in December 2025 she became the oldest winner at the Saint Moritz World Cup, her first victory in seven years.

She achieved Olympic qualification, the sixth of her career, but on January 30, during her participation in the valid World Cup in Crans-Montana, she suffered a new fall, was evacuated by helicopter and ended up with the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee torn, in addition to suffering damage to her meniscus.

Incredibly, Vonn is convinced that she will be able to participate in Milano Cortina 2026, not in search of a medal or outstanding placements, but to complete the path she began with her return and inspire others not to give up in the face of adversity.

The road to the Games has seen a figure skating athlete, the Spanish Tomás Guarino, with his routine in suspense until the last moment, until Universal Pictures authorized him to use the music from his film "Minions."

He will also have as favorites two skaters touched by the same tragedy, the Americans of Russian origin Ilia Malinin and Maxim Naumov, whose team of coaches and some family members died in the plane crash just a year ago, in which an American Airlines plane collided in the air with a military helicopter.

The flight departed from Wichita, Kansas, where many of its passengers had participated in a figure skating development camp. Most were precisely from Washington, Malinin's home, or from Boston, where Naumov lived, who lost both parents, two former Russian Olympic medalists.

In the year since that fateful day, Malinin has become the best skater in the world, the only one to have completed a 1,440-degree jump in competition and one of the few who has dared to do backflips in his performances.

But he also raised more than a million dollars for the victims' families with his 'Legacy on Ice' exhibition events.

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Naumov, for his part, had to take charge of the 'Champions of Tomorrow' training program, which his parents were running, and went from being a long shot to qualify for the Olympic Games, to surprisingly becoming one of the three Americans with a secure place.

The list of stars includes the Chinese revelation of Beijing 2022 Eileen Gu, who gave up competing for her native United States, and the Norwegian Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, who is close to becoming the most successful cross-country skier of all time, with more than 100 World Cup victories, and owner of seven Olympic medals, five of them gold.

Latinos on the rise

The Milano Cortina Games will have more Latin American athletes than any other edition. There will be 37, three more than the previous record, set in Pyeongchang 2018, but not only that: this event could have them not as fewer participants, but opting for the podium.

Lucas Pinheiro, who began representing his mother's country, Brazil, after having differences with his father's Norway, won the World Cup slalom in Levi, Finland, to become the first Brazilian champion of a global alpine skiing event.

He heads a 'canarinha' delegation of 14 members, an unprecedented number, where Nicole Silveira also shines, the only woman from her country who has achieved a podium in a skeleton World Cup, the one in South Korea in 2024.

In total there will be 10 Latin American countries represented in the Italian snows. In addition to Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Uruguay and Venezuela will participate.

Mexico will have five representatives, among them the highly-publicized skater Donovan Carrillo, who made history four years ago with his qualification to the final.

The group includes two alpine skiers, the mother-son duo of Sarah Schleper and Lasse Gaxiola, and two cross-country skiers, Allan Corona and Regina Martínez, a doctor and former professional soccer player who began practicing cross-country skiing at the age of 27, and just a year later she was already qualified for the Olympic Games.

Uruguay returns to the top winter stage after a 28-year absence, thanks to Nicolás Pirozzi, who competed as a Chilean (his father's nation) at the 2020 Lausanne Youth Games and then decided to represent his mother's country.

Bolivia will be present again, for the third consecutive edition, thanks to Timo Gröndlund, a Finn who adopted his wife's nationality in search of an Olympic quota.

Argentina will equal its record of representatives, the eight from Torino 2006, with seven of them trained in the snows of local resorts, such as those of Bariloche or Ushuaia.

Incredibly, Jamaica will once again have a full bobsled team, the same quadruple bobsled event that inspired the movie 'Cool Runnings', but this time the quartet is preceded by its first ever victory in an international event, the IBSF North American Cup in Whistler, Canada, last November.

In addition, it includes two track stars, sprinters Tyquendo Tracey, who reached 9.96 in the 100m dash before changing sports, and Andrae Dacres, who was part of Jamaica's 4x100m relay at the Santiago 2023 Pan American Games.

The feat is shared by another Caribbean nation, Trinidad and Tobago, which qualified seven athletes in total, including the men's four-man bobsled.

There will also be two Haitians, Stevenson Savart and Richardson Viano, two young people who spent the first months of their lives in an orphanage, until they were adopted, the first by a French couple and the second by an Italian-French woman.

They may not shine as brightly in competition, but at San Siro they certainly will, with their hand-painted parade attire, inspired by the work of Haitian artist Edouard Duval-Carrié.

Africa below zero

The unprecedented universality of these Olympic Games, 92 countries in contention, plus the Russians and Belarusians (who once again compete as neutrals), will include 15 African athletes from eight different countries.

It may seem like they are small delegations, but it equals the Pyeongchang 2018 ceiling, which is the largest number of National Olympic Committees on the continent since South Africa debuted with five competitors at Squaw Valley 1960, in the United States.

In the group is the skier Mialitiana Clerc from Madagascar, adopted by a French family, who will become the first African woman with three Olympic appearances in the winter event.

One of the most decorated African athletes in history, two-time Olympic champion and former marathon world record holder Eliud Kipchoge, has been chosen as one of the eight Olympic flag bearers at the opening ceremony.

He will enter San Siro alongside other personalities who, according to the Organizing Committee, embody the fundamental values ​​of Olympism, including Brazilian gymnast Rebeca Andrade, Refugee Olympic Team boxer Cindy Ngamba and Tongan multi-athlete Pita Taufatofua.

The same consensus of acceptance does not favor less desirable protagonists of these Games. US Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio will be present at San Siro, as well as agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). For everyone, embarrassing boos are expected during the inauguration.

Read also"They are not welcome": outrage in Italy over the presence of ICE agents at the Winter Games

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