Almost 20 skiers with ties to Utah will be in the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics. That includes Park City resident and comeback queen Lindsey Vonn.
The games open Feb. 6, and the first women’s downhill event is two days later.
Despite a crash in a downhill race at the end of January where she tore her ACL, the 41-year-old Vonn said she will still compete.
“My knee is not swollen, and with the help of a knee brace, I am confident that I can compete on Sunday," Vonn said in a news conference for the U.S. ski team in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. "And as long as there’s a chance, I will try . . . I will do everything in my power to be in the starting gate."
Picabo Street lives in Park City, too, and knows what it’s like to crash and burn before the Olympics.
Street won a gold medal in the Super Giant Slalom in 1998, a week after falling at 75 miles per hour in a training run and sustaining a concussion. She said getting back in the starting gate for her gold medal run was a mind game.
“It's compartmentalizing your thoughts and really being mindful about what you're thinking about, what you're letting in and what you're not letting in,” she said.
Street is Vonn’s childhood hero. The two met when the latter was 9 years old — four years before Street struck gold. Fast forward three decades, and it’s Street who will likely watch Vonn vie for an Olympic medal as a ski racing commentator for NBC. For her, it’ll be a tough job calling Vonn’s races without becoming emotional.
“She’s a good friend and someone I care about immensely,” Street said. “I know it's going to be a lot, and I'm going to have to keep myself in check to not have any of my emotions waft off of me and affect her. She's an absolute beast, and what she's doing is unprecedented, and she's again, pioneering in yet another way in the sport.”
Vonn is the biggest name of the Team USA Olympic racers marquee, alongside Mikaela Shiffrin. Despite dominating the World Cup Circuit ahead of the last winter Olympics in Beijing, Shiffrin didn’t medal.
“The expectations were so high, the relentlessness of the camera on her, she had nowhere to escape. It was like the Apple basket dropped, and the apples were rolling all around, and she couldn't grab them back up quickly enough, Street said. “ I can guarantee she'll never end up in that situation again.”
And Street has her eyes on other ski racers with Utah ties who could hit the podium.
“Paula Moltzan is an absolute Tiger. I have never seen anybody crash as hard as she has and come back the next day and race and, you know, get in the top five or even on the podium. She is phenomenal. She's a racehorse, and nobody should ever bet against her. She's got the possibility of winning three medals at the games, in the combined, in the GS, and the slalom.”
Breezy Johnson was on the podium in third place in the Super-G in Switzerland the day after Vonn crashed and tore her ACL. Street thinks Johnson also has something to prove at the Olympics, especially after winning gold in the downhill at the World Championship in 2025.
“When you win at the World Championships, then you're like, ‘OK, well, I won the world championships, can I win the Olympics?’ It's kind of in the same ballpark. So she's got that pressure,” Street said.
She also thinks Jackie Wiles, who attended Westminster University in Salt Lake City, and Nina O’Brien are medal contenders. She expects big results from them and other teammates, too.
“I mean, you’ve got AJ Hurt and Mary Bocock, there’s a chance for some of these athletes to pop in there. Utah has a huge contingency of local athletes going. They've been growing up here, or moved here and started training here, and, yeah, it's gonna be, it's gonna be fun, and it's just gonna raise the excitement for the 2034 games when they come back.”
Street will be a reporter on the slopes in Italy and will get to inspect the courses as she did in her own racing heyday.
“I get to talk to the coaches, I get to talk to whatever athletes will talk to me. And then I get to be in the start when they all go and do their thing.”
It’ll be different, though, and she admits to some nerves being there as a reporter and observer, not an athlete — and it’ll likely tug at her heartstrings.
“I think I'm emotional because I know what it takes, and I know how hard they've worked, and I know how much it means, and I know how much of a threading the needle it is.”
But being there also comes with the emotions of not having any control over the outcomes.
“When I was racing, I could get in the gate and actually focus and race and do something about it. I'm a watcher and not a doer this time, and I think that's got me a little bit twisted.”
The 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics start Feb. 6 and will continue through Feb. 22. You can follow NPR’s Olympic coverage here.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
