These American Olympians are expected to bring home gold.

Gus Kenworthy

Freestyle skier Gus Kenworthy: “I’m definitely like ‘the gay skier’ now, and that’s fine. I knew I was stepping into that role when I did it.” (Toni L. Sandys/Washington Post)

Freestyle skiing: Kenworthy was a silver medalist in slopestyle four years ago in Russia, but he made as many headlines for adopting some of Sochi’s stray dogs. And though he worried that it would hurt his sponsorships, he came out, and that boosted his marketability even more. Now he will be one of two openly gay U.S. athletes competing in PyeongChang.

Jamie Anderson

Slopesyle snowboarder Jamie Anderson at the Team USA Media Summit for the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympic athletes.(Toni L. Sandys/Washington Post)

Snowboarding: Anderson, who will defend her slopestyle gold medal from Sochi, is third in the World Cup standings in that discipline, behind Reira Iwabuchi of Japan and New Zealand’s Christy Prior. Anderson has a shelf full of X Games medals; she won her first, a bronze, in 2006 when she was just 15.

Maddie Bowman

Halfpipe freestyle skier Maddie Bowman will defend her gold medal. (Toni L. Sandys/Washington Post)

Freestyle halfpipe: Bowman returns to defend her 2014 gold medal, but she will face tough competition from Kexin Zhang of China and Cassie Sharpe of Canada, not to mention her U.S. teammates, Brita Sigourney, who leads the World Cup rankings; Devin Logan (fifth); and Annalisa Drew (seventh).

Nathan Chen

Men’s singles figure skater Nathan Chen is a two-time U.S. champion. (Toni L. Sandys/Washington Post)

Figure skating: The 18-year-old Chen already is a two-time U.S. champion, and he won two gold medals in 2017 – in the ISU Grand Prix and the Four Continents Championship. Though young, Chen has a powerful repertoire that few can match: He performs five quads – jumps that include four revolutions – in his free skate and two in his short program. None of the three men on the U.S. skating team have Olympic experience. Vincent Zhou is even younger than Chen – 17 – and Adam Rippon is a rookie at age 28.

Ted Ligety

U.S. Alpine skier Ted Ligety slowly started to find his groove this season, and on Jan. 28, in his last race before the Winter Games, he reached the podium again in the giant slalom. (Toni L. Sandys/Washington Post)

Skiing: Ligety, 33, had not made a World Cup podium for three years before winning a bronze at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, in late January. That sends the two-time Olympic gold medalist (the combined in 2006 and the giant slalom in 2014) to PyeongChang on a high note.

Advertisement

Alex Rigsby

Hockey: Rigsby will make her Olympic debut at goalie for the women’s team, which is seeking its first Olympic gold medal since 1998. Rigsby has played in four world championships for the United States, winning four gold medals. She has played the past three seasons for the Minnesota Whitecaps professional team.

Katie Uhlaender

Skeleton : In her third Olympics in 2014, Uhlaender finished off the podium, 0.04 seconds behind Russia’s Elena Nikitina. For a while, it looked as if she would move up to third and earn a bronze when Nikitina was stripped of her medal and banned from the Olympics in the wake of the scandal surrounding state-sponsored doping in Russia. But the Court of Arbitration for Sport overturned Nikitina’s ban last week.Uhlaender is the top-ranked American woman (12th) in the World Cup standings.

David Wise

Freestyle skiing: Wise enters the Olympics on a roll, winning gold at the Winter X Games after performing four doubles in four different directions on his final run. Wise will defend the halfpipe gold medal he won four years ago in Sochi.

Nina Roth

Curling: Roth will be the skip for the U.S. women’s team at her first Olympics. In fact, none of her curling teammates – Tabitha Peterson, Becca Hamilton, Corey Christensen and Aileen Geving – have Olympic experience, either. Roth, who placed fifth at the world championships in 2017, has a nursing degree and works as a nurse in the Madison, Wis., area.

Mikaela Shiffrin

Alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin, who will turn 23 in March, has 41 World Cup victories.(Toni L. Sandys/Washington Post)

Skiing: At 18, Shiffrin became the youngest skier to win gold in the slalom at the 2014 Games. At 22, she will try to become the first skier, male or female, to repeat as Olympic slalom champion. Shiffrin is the best skier in the world. She has nearly twice as many overall points in the World Cup standings as her next competitor. She ranks first in slalom, third in giant slalom and fifth in downhill. At the 2017 world championships, she became the first woman to win three consecutive slalom world titles in 78 years.

Elana Meyers Taylor

Bobsled:After a bronze at the Vancouver Games in 2010 and a silver four years later in Sochi, Taylor hopes the progression continues with a gold in PyeongChang. She ranks second in the World Cup standings with 1,591 points, behind Canadian Kaillie Humphries’s 1,631.

Jessie Diggins

Cross-country skiing: Diggins, third in the overall World Cup standings, could become the first American woman to medal in an Olympic cross-country event. At the 2017 world championships, Diggins won silver in the sprint freestyle event and bronze in the team sprint classic competition and finished fourth in the 4×5-kilometer relay and fifth in the 30K mass start.


Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.

Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.

filed under: