Milano Cortina 2026: The Full Lowdown

The Biggest Take-Home

For the entire Faction team, this was the biggest taking in terms of medal hardware of any Winter Olympics, which speaks to the depth of talent. If this group of riders were their own nation, they’d have been 14th on the medal table, just behind South Korea.

For info on the exact results, check out this page for more details.

Most people will just remember the medals, highlight reels, viral news moments, shocking crashes and mind-blowing attempts to claw back from the brink. Competing at the Winter Olympics is such a small window for the world into winter sports, fleeting as it is off the rails.

It’s hard to believe it’ll be another 4 years til the next, and we’ll soon be treated to an awesome competition in the imminent Paralympic Winter Games.

The Ones Who Should Have Made It

Sarah Hoefflin's season had been building toward something big. Silver at the 2025 World Championships. Runner-up at the Beijing World Cup. At 34, she could spin high-rotation double corks in all four directions, a technical mastery few athletes in the world possessed.

Her Olympics ended with two bindings that refused to play ball. One in training. Another in qualifications. Flying off in mid-air, the pain of the missed opportunity was visceral. For Sarah who'd won Olympic gold at PyeongChang 2018, Milano Cortina became a lesson: the nature of this competition respects no one's previous achievements.

Elias Syrjä had finished second at the 2025 World Championships behind Luca Harrington, ahead of Birk Ruud. The Finnish skier had the repertoire, and style by the truckload. On these particular days, in these particular conditions, the pieces didn't align. His Olympics became about gathering valuable experience rather than collecting results.

Dillan Glennie made it to halfpipe qualifications but couldn't advance. For athletes like Hoefflin, Syrjä, and Glennie, Milano Cortina may still end up going into their career highlight reels; starting at an Olympic event is the culmination of years of toil with many heads behind them, including their coaches, family, friends and communities of fans. Their athletic achievements extend far, far beyond what the past 14 days carried.

We Witnessed New Careers Bloom, and Others Resume

Naomi Urness had burst onto the World Cup scene with podium finishes in her first three events. At Secret Garden in November, she'd finished second in her maiden big air World Cup start. The 21-year-old Canadian had speed, precision, and fearlessness.

At Milano Cortina, the women's big air final happened through a blizzard. Snow fell sideways. Wind whipped through the venue. Urness posted strong performances while more experienced competitors faltered. Her slopestyle appearance alongside three other Faction athletes showed the depth building in the women's program.

Giulia Tanno came storming back after two missed Olympics to take top 6 in Women’s Slopestyle. It was an absolute treat to see. If the Olympics stands as one snapshot of her talent, her World Cup performances, X Games medals and appearances in numerous Faction films serve as a complete album.

Liu Mengting had won her first World Cup at Klagenfurt, ahead of eventual Crystal Globe winner Flora Tabanelli. At Milano Cortina, competing alongside Eileen Gu, she made her Olympic debut in slopestyle with technical mastery that confirmed she belonged.

Henry Sildaru attempted something rare: all three Olympic freestyle events. Slopestyle, big air, halfpipe. Most athletes specialize in one, maybe two. The training time, physical toll, mental focus required to compete across all three at an elite level is immense. Running across all 3 disciplines meant a mad dash to manage the tightly arranged training, qualification and finals schedules.

Henry’s first two events didn't deliver. Then halfpipe swiftly arrived on a snowy Friday evening. Silver medal, but he was in contention for Gold for much of the showdown. The double 1620 blunt he threw might have been the best trick of the competition. At 19, in his Olympic debut, he was one of two athletes to medal across a three-discipline campaign; the other being Eileen Gu.

The Sweep Nobody Saw Coming

The Alps delivered actual winter. Blizzards swept through Livigno multiple times. The women's big air final saw a 75-minute delay. Halfpipe finals were postponed an entire day.

By Tuesday evening, Livigno was buried deeper. The blizzard worsened. Another delay. Snowblowers roared. Shovels scraped. The features had to be rideable.

Despite all of this Tuesday was an evening we wish we could relive for the first time.

Mac Forehand had arrived as the World Cup standings leader, and with a fresh X Games win in his cabinet. Matej Svancer had qualified fourth with tricks that made crowds gasp. Tormod Frostad had qualified second with massive amplitude. All three didn’t get what they came for in slopestyle. For athletes who'd been building all season, the weight showed.

This is how the Big Air started.

By the end of run one, six athletes had broken 90. The bar sat absurdly high. Frostad, Forehand, and Svancer sat near the top.

Run two brought chaos. Athletes who'd stomped in run one went down trying to improve. Others elevated. Frostad threw a switch tail butter double bio 1620 that had the crowd roaring. Forehand matched his first run. Svancer's carved hand drag triple 1980 drew gasps.

Run three.

Forehand needed massive, not big. His nose butter triple 2160 safety soared, rotated clean, landed bolts. First place. One athlete to go.

Frostad faced a choice. Go safe for silver, or risk everything. He dropped in with another butter trick, this time a nose butter double bio 1620. Clean. The landing stuck. The crowd knew before the score came back.

Gold. Forehand silver. Svancer bronze. A complete podium sweep decided on the final run through a snowstorm that should have made feats like this in Big Air something of a fantasy.

Fandoms praised Frostad's butter tricks, noting "style remains a crucial part of successful freeskiing" in a competition dominated by triple rotations. Livestream watchers erupted across timezones. Three athletes responding to slopestyle disappointment with the performances of their lives. A podium sweep no one saw coming. Three friends carrying different flags, but drawn together at the biggest moment of their careers, ecstatic to share the limelight together.

Dylan Deschamps came through to the finals with confidence. After a first run mishap, he came back strong in run two with a switch triple misty 1620. His third attempt sent the biggest triple of the night. The grab didn't connect. Seventh place. But the fearlessness, the willingness to send it anyway, earned respect from everyone watching. This will not be his first Olympic campaign.

Virality in the Air

Four years after Beijing, Eileen Gu arrived in Italy carrying weight no other winter athlete bore. Millions of social media followers. Met Gala appearances. Twenty-three million dollars earned. The world's highest-paid winter athlete. The cover of Time Magazine.

But Milano Cortina wasn't the same as things were before, in Beijing. Between the Games, she'd balanced Stanford full-time, graced the covers of the fashion world, and recovered from multiple injuries in relentless training. The cycle had been "severely disjointed”. Media attention started before she competed. After claiming silver in big air, a reporter asked if her Olympics felt like "two silvers gained or two golds lost."

Her response went viral within hours. "I'm the most decorated female freeskier in history. I think that's an answer in and of itself."

Many praised her confidence. Others criticized. The interview became one of the defining sporting media moments of 2026, sparking a much wider conversation about how athletes are evaluated and, who, actually, sets these standards? What the clip didn't show was what happened next. Halfpipe. Her final event. The discipline where she'd won gold in Beijing. One more chance to respond not with words, but with skiing.

For Gu, the closing Sunday represented her sixth Olympic freestyle event across two Games. She'd medaled in the previous five. Six for six would be perfect. A statistical achievement no other athlete in freestyle skiing history could claim.

In the sunshine, Eileen took the Gold medal.

Six Olympic starts. Perfect 100% podium rate across two Games. No other athlete, male or female, has medaled in every Olympic freestyle event across six events and multiple Games. New Zealand's Mischa Thomas captured it: "She is unreal. She is 'Wonder Woman.'"

At the base, fans held pictures and waved flags. Over 100,000 visitors had enjoyed the Fan Villages in the first four days. The atmosphere was electric, reflecting the warmth of the host nation.

A Wild Two Weeks

When the closing ceremony arrived in Verona Sunday evening, the Olympic flame was extinguished in both Milano and Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy.

For the Faction team, Milano Cortina 2026 delivered eight Olympic medals: two golds, five silvers, one bronze. Twelve athletes competed. Some medaled. Some didn't. Collectively, they supported each other through triumphs and disappointments, many of them friends beyond these Games.

Years of perseverance realized for all. Alex Hall, defending Olympic champion, earned silver in slopestyle. Giulia Tanno, who'd missed two previous Olympics due to injury, finished sixth.

Gu's viral moments have become an ongoing conversation about how success is measured, in the face of global public scrutiny and adoration. The men's big air podium sweep became a story about shared freeskiing camaraderie. Sildaru's three-discipline campaign proved versatility is still possible.

Milano Cortina wasn't Beijing. It was different in every single way. The media narrative was harsher. Social media was more abuzz with every minute of the Games closely watched. The weather was less predictable, albeit with much, much more snow. But for twelve Faction athletes spread across multiple countries and disciplines, it was their Olympics. The performances they delivered, the comebacks they mounted, the records they set will define how they remember these Games.

We can’t wait for their return, knocking again in our neighborhood of the Alps, this time on the other side of the other nearby border with France.