The 2026 Games are just nine days away, and the Team USA roster has arrived. And it’s historic: At 54, Rich Ruohonen — a curler and personal injury attorney from Minnesota — is the oldest American ever to make the Winter Olympics team.
A triumph many years in the making, Ruohonen spent nearly two decades playing in Olympic trials to no avail. “I figured I’d get [to the Olympics] someday as a coach, maybe,” he told NBC last year. “But to get there, even if it is as an alternate, is just my dream.” His persistence finally paid off last month, when the U.S. men’s curling team secured its spot in Milano Cortina.
Another athlete to earn age-related accolades is 44-year-old snowboarder Nick Baumgartner, who will be competing in his fifth consecutive Winter Games this year. In 2022, at 40 years old, Baumgartner became the oldest snowboarder to win an Olympic medal and the oldest U.S. gold medalist since the 1948 Winter Olympics. “The older I get, the more people say, ‘Aw, he’s not a threat this time. He’s not a threat this time,’” he told Detroit’s Local 4 News. “Fall asleep on me. See what happens?”
And in what she says will be her last Games, 41-year-old Lindsey Vonn is set to become the oldest woman in Winter Olympics history to compete in Alpine skiing. She recently told People that her decision to compete again after a six-year retirement was partially driven by the 2026 Games’ location, which was where she got her first podium at the 2004 World Cup. “Honestly, I don’t know if I would have done this if it wasn’t at Cortina,” she said, adding, “It’s one of the few races in my whole career that both of my parents were at. So it’s a very special place for me.”
At the other end of the age spectrum is 15-year-old Abby Winterberger of California. The freeskier is the youngest on Team USA’s 232-athlete lineup, and the only club-level freeski competitor to participate in this year’s Games. “This still doesn’t feel real. I’ve been dreaming of this moment ever since I learned how to ski, and to finally say it out loud is unreal,” Winterberger wrote in a recent Instagram post. “I know little me would be so proud. I truly couldn’t have done this without the love and support of everyone around me.”
Another young phenom to watch is 17-year-old snowboarder Ollie Martin from Colorado, who became the youngest male rider to win a World Cup slopestyle event at the 2025 Calgary Snow Rodeo in Canada. Utahn Josie Johnson, 19, is also one of five American ski jumpers to make their Olympic debut this year.
At the 2024 Youth Winter Games, Johnson clinched Team USA’s first medal in ski jumping, and in an Instagram post, she cited Taylor Swift as the reason she was able to calm her nerves: “Specifically, I was thinking about her Reputation dance from the Reputation Tour. That’s just what I do sometimes when I’m a little bit nervous. I just do some of the dance moves in my head.”
Meet more of the athletes on the roster.
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