Preview of Olympic Sports Weekend: Mikaela Shiffrin Returns Home

The Stifel Copper Cup on Copper Mountain, Colorado, marks the first of two Alpine skiing World Cup stops in the United States this season, taking place over Thanksgiving weekend.

It’s Mikaela Shiffrin’s first race in her home state since 2017. Shiffrin’s first recorded International Ski Federation level events took place at Copper Mountain in 2010, when she was 15 years old.

Shiffrin is the obvious favorite for Sunday’s slalom after winning the first two slaloms of the World Cup season by 1.66 and 1.23 seconds over Albania’s Lara Colturi. She now has 103 Alpine World Cup wins, 66 of which have come in slalom.

Saturday’s huge slalom should be a tougher test. Shiffrin finished fourth in the season-opening GS on October 25, her best performance in the discipline since crashing in the November 2024 GS, puncturing oblique muscles and losing two months. Shiffrin has a World Cup record 22 women’s GS victories, the most recent in December 2023.

Paula Moltzan emerged last year as a potential Olympic medalist in giant slalom and slalom. She finished second in the season opener in giant slalom, a career high, and won bronze in the event at the World Championships last February. She also finished third to sixth in the last five World Cup slaloms.

Swiss Marco Odermatt, the reigning World Cup season winner in both the super-G and giant slalom, is the favorite in the men’s races on Thursday and Friday. Odermatt, the 2022 Olympic GS gold medalist, has previously won world titles in downhill, super-G, and GS. He is a gold medal candidate in all three races in the Milan Cortina Games, as well as the new team combined.

Aleksander Aamodt Kilde of Norway, an Olympic and world super-G champ, hinted on Monday that the Copper super-G could be his comeback race. Kilde, who is betrothed to Shiffrin, has not competed since suffering a severe right leg laceration and injured left shoulder ligaments in a January 2024 race crash. If Kilde skips Copper, he intends to return next week to Beaver Creek.

The short track speed skating World Tour season comes to an end in Dordrecht, Netherlands, where Olympic quotas will be determined on Saturday and Sunday.

Corinne Stoddard, an American, has finished second or third in six of the nine individual World Tour races thus far, solidifying her standing as an Olympic medal contender in the 500m, 1000m, and 1500m. She is now second in the overall standings, trailing Courtney Sarault of Canada, after finishing third overall previous season.

After being sidelined by a back ailment in late summer, American Kristen Santos-Griswold, the circuit’s top overall skater previous season, has two podium results (both third) in nine races.

For the first time since 2010, the United States has the opportunity to qualify both men’s and women’s Olympic relay teams. The US women are in an excellent position, while the US men are in eighth and last place heading into the final relay in Dordrecht.

The Bobsled World Cup heads to Igls, Austria, for races on Saturday and Sunday.

Last week’s opening World Cup saw Germans Laura Nolte and Johannes Lochner sweep the bobsled events in the first races at the 2026 Games location in Cortina d’Ampezzo.

Kaysha Love, an American, finished second in both women’s bobsled races in Cortina and was Nolte’s main competitor. Love, who transitioned from brakewoman to driver after the 2022 Olympics, won the monobob world championship last March at Lake Placid, New York.

Kaillie Humphries, a three-time Olympic gold winner, had a strong start to the season, finishing third and fourth in Cortina, making the podium for the first time since June 2024 delivery.

Elana Meyers Taylor, a five-time Olympic medalist, improved from 19th in the first race in Cortina to sixth in the two-woman event the following day.

The skeleton events slated for Igls have been canceled due to inadequate track preparation.

Kaysha Love and Kaillie Humphries finished on the podium in the first two-woman bobsled race of the World Cup season, with Elana Meyers Taylor finishing sixth.

The first cross-country skiing World Cup of the season will take place in Ruka, Finland, from Friday to Sunday.

Jessie Diggins, the most decorated American cross-country skier in history, declared last week that this will be her final season. Diggins is now a three-time Olympian, having won an Olympic medal in every color, including the first Olympic cross-country skiing title in American history in 2018 with Kikkan Randall.

Diggins has won the last two World Cup overall titles as the world’s greatest all-around cross-country skier during the November-March season.

Johannes Høsflot Klaebo, a Norwegian cross-country skier, could be the biggest star of the Milan Cortina Games. He won all six races at last season’s World Championships in Trondheim, his homeland. He has the opportunity to become the first individual in any sport to win six medals of any color at a single Winter Olympics.

Klæbo has 98 individual World Cup triumphs and has the potential to achieve 100 in Ruka this season. Marit Bjørgen, a retired Norwegian cross-country skier, holds the record for most World Cup wins (114) and Winter Olympic medals (15).

In luge, the first top-level event of the season is notable since it is an Olympic test event at the Cortina track, which will host its first luge race.

While Germany and Austria are the sport’s traditional powerhouse, American Emily Fischnaller won bronze at the World Championships in Canada last February. Fischnaller (formerly Sweeney) married Italian luger Dominik Fischnaller in May.