Vermont Tops the Medal Count in Milan Cortina Winter Olympics

With the snow just settled on the 2026 Winter Olympics, Team USA flew home with a very respectable 33 medals, ranking second among the competing countries. Although the Olympic coverage was apparently aired on The Curling Channel from what seemed to be on every time we tuned in (is curling still happening?), we were thrilled to notice that we frequently saw a familiar face from Vermont grabbing some Olympic hardware. Of the nearly 20 athletes sent to Italy with Green Mountain State ties, six Vermont-trained athletes reached the podium for a total of 7 medals, over a fifth of the total USA haul.

That's pretty impressive when you consider that if little Vermont were a country like it once was, we'd be ahead of Australia and Finland in the global standings - 14th overall, which is pretty appropriate given that we were the 14th state in the Union. With Vermont's storied history as a cornerstone of the ski industry - we have the shredding trifecta with the nation's first rope tow lift, the first commercial cross country ski center and Jake Burton Carpenter revolutionized snowboarding here - it's no surprise that all of our athletes competed and scored medals on snow (our idea of curling is hoisting cheddar cheese and shots of maple syrup and we leave the skating stuff to our neighbors to the North).

Among the many thrills of this year's winter games was seeing Burke Mountain Academy-trained Mikaela Shiffrin get her medal mojo back after failing to podium in 2022 in Beijing. Smartly focusing on her true bread and butter slalom event, Mikaela's plan paid off with a blistering gold medal time that put her 1.5 seconds ahead of the pack. To understand the sheer domination of that margin, consider that the last seven winter Olympic slalom victories were won by a total of 1.5 seconds. Just as impressive, Shiffrin's total to date of three golds are the most alpine gold medals of any U.S. alpine skier in history. Now she's back on the World Cup Tour looking to add to her record 108 wins to date.

Mikaela Shiffrin scorches the field in the Slalom event

The University of Vermont Catamounts scored big in Italy with three former Catamounts reaching the podium. UVM alum and Vermont resident Paula Moltzan earned her first medal in her second winter Olympics with a bronze in the inaugural alpine team combined event. Fellow UVM graduate and Cochran family skiing heir Ryan Cochran-Siegle won the silver medal in Super-G, exactly 54 years to the day after his mom, Barbara Ann Cochran, won the gold medal in slalom at the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan. This was Cochran's second Super-G silver after scoring his first in 2022. Rounding out the impressive Catamount showing is Landgrove resident and three-time NCAA Nordic champion Ben Ogden who cross country skied his way to two silver medals, not only becoming the first UVM grad to score multiple Olympic medals, but he was the first American to medal in cross country skiing in 56 years, after Vermonter Bill Koch was the first to do so for Team USA in 1976.

Ben Ogden celebrates Silver along with one of those weird Beanie Baby things

Stratton Mountain School alum Jessie Diggins was already the most decorated U.S. Nordic racer of all time, having won Team USA's first-ever gold in 2018 and taking the silver and bronze in 2022, so she had nothing to prove in her final winter Olympics but did so anyway. After bruising her ribs in an earlier crash, Diggins grabbed Bronze in the 10K race and missed another medal by mere seconds in the final Nordic event, the grueling 50K.

Jessie Diggins kicks and glides to Bronze and record glory

Another Stratton Mountain School-trained Vermonter, Mac Forehand of Winhall, Vermont, brought his acrobatic heroics and went big for the Silver in the Freeski Big Air event. Leaving nothing on the snow, Mac uncorked a newly minted and not-yet-attempted nose butter triple cork 2160 on his third and final run to secure his podium spot. Whatever that means, it's a blur of rotations and flips while somehow landing skis down perfectly.

Bravo to the Vermont Olympians for being the biggest cheese in Italy and bringing home the hardware as sweet as our maple syrup.

Mac Forehand goes big air for Silver