The 7 Best Team USA Winter Olympics Moments, Ranked

The United States was always going to have a good Winter Games. The country jumped from sixth in the medal count to second between the 1998 Nagano Games and the 2002 Salt Lake Games and has been holding in the top five ever since — thanks to impressive results in relatively newer disciplines like snowboarding and curling and newfound competitiveness in classic realms like bobsledding and speed skating.

In Milan Cortina, the United States managed 33 medals, good for second overall and the most ever for the country at a Games outside North America. When you’re out-medaling Germany and the Netherlands at winter sports, you’re doing something right.

But it’s not just how many you win — it’s how you win. And the U.S. had some truly wild and miraculous triumphs, from a figure skater who had been retired just two years go to a cross-country skier who raced with a badly damaged rib to a TikToker who waited at the last possible moment to grab his gold. Here in ascending order are Team USA’s seven most inspirational moments (from among many) as they played out on Peacock/NBC over the past two weeks. Read it and feel all over again.

7. The U.S. Women’s Hockey Team Wins Gold By Beating Canada in OT

In one sense, the U.S. women’s hockey gold was not a surprise: The team had come in a favorite and only got hotter from there, outscoring opponents 31-1 in the six games entering the final. But in another sense, the victory over Canada on Thursday night at Santagiulia Arena was a stone-cold shocker. The U.S. was down 1-0 to its archival with the clock coming up on two minutes and superstar goalie Aerin Frankel heading to the bench. Canada had beaten the U.S. in five of the previous seven gold-medal games they played, and it was about to be a sixth.

Then the improbable happened. Veteran captain Hilary Knight tipped in a Laila Edwards shot to tie the score with 2:04 left and send the game into OT. That led to the snapshot moment: Taylor Heise springing Megan Keller with a stretch pass that the streaking defender took before deking a Canadian defender and tucking the puck into the goal on her backhand. Narrative reversed — the U.S. now had its third gold medal and a possible sendoff of sendoffs to a possibly retiring Knight. It was just a prelude of what was to come between the two hockey powers, but it was plenty gratifying in its own right.

6. Jessie Diggins Skis 10 Kilometers — and Medals — While in Agonizing Rib Pain

Remember that time you had a cold and didn’t go to work? Jessie Diggins may have something to say to you. The decorated U.S. cross-country skier (she previously was a part of the best television Olympics moment of the 2010s with the stir-to-patriotism  “Here comes Diggins” in PyeongChang) had badly bruised a rib in a nasty crash in skiathlon at the start of this Games. She seemed done, destined to head into retirement with her memories and three previous medals. “It’s easy to stress and think ‘this isn’t how it was supposed to happen,’” she posted meditatively on Instagram. “But there are always so many things that are totally out of our control.” 

Yet just days later, Diggins skied the 10 km freestyle and somehow ended up finishing in bronze position; at the finish, she collapsed, writhing in more pain than James Caan when Kathy Bates picked up that ax in Misery. “I thought i was gonna maybe pass or die. it would have been nicer if I could have passed out,” she said later. Fortunately she didn’t, and got to experience the bronze as it happened. Us too.

5. Alex Ferreira Wins His First Gold Medal on His Last-Ever Olympic Run

Some Olympic athletes are phenoms. Then there’s Alex Ferreira. At 31, Ferreira had been a professional halfpipe skier for more than a decade, including at three Olympics. The ski TikToker landed on plenty of podiums, but he never has won an Olympic gold medal. After two runs at the freestyle halfpipe ski run, that didn’t seem likely to change — he was in fifth place and ready for the double cork 1260 in the sky (or, like, the exhibition circuit). But the halfpipe just takes your best run, and Ferreira came out for his third and and laid out exactly that — a beauty — in the final run of his final Olympics to take a gold.

How did he do it? Risk taking and technical skill, of course. But also, a mantra. “I am greatness, and this is my moment,’” he would tell himself at the top of the halfpipe before the runs. “I can feel it in my bone marrow.”

4. Elana Meyers Taylor Wins Gold Medal for Her Deaf Toddler Sons

Speaking of waiting a while for gold, consider Elana Meyers Taylor. The 41-year-old  bobsled mainstay was entering her fifth Games and, despite five previous medals, had never won a gold. Yet somehow in the new sport of monobob — one pilot doing everything — she finished four one-hundredths of a second faster than the 27-year-old German competitor Laura Nolte to win her first gold and become the most decorated Black athlete in Winter Games history. 

If Meyers Taylor’s win along wasn’t enough to tug at the heartstrings, the athlete  is mom to two deaf toddlers, Noah and Nico (he also has Down syndrome), who come with her and her husband-coach Nic to many of their competitions and were present at the sliding track in Cortina. Meyers Taylor spoke with NBC’s Mike Tirico about how all the training and triumphs were for her sons, prompting an “I’m not crying, you’re crying” outpouring on social media. “Parenting my two sons with disabilities has done everything for me,” she said, “If I win medals or lose medals, it doesn’t matter because I’m still mom to them.” Then she added, “Hopefully when they’re older they’ll look back and realize what actually happened. I was just so happy to be able to hug them and hold them for a brief moment while everything played out.” (We can’t embed this one but check out the interview here.)

3. Corinne Stoddard Posts That She’s “Embarrassed” By How She Keeps Falling — Then Goes Out and Grabs a Bronze

Corinne Stoddard is currently ranked third in short track for 500 and 1,000 meters. She became known for something else for much of the Milan Cortina Games — she fell a shocking four times during races and wrote a self-lacerating Instagram post that “Part of me thinks I haven’t been able to handle the pressure and expectations I put on myself” and said that she feels “embarrassed by how much I’ve choked on the Olympic stage over and over again.” (She also fell in Beijing in 2022.)

But on Friday in the 1,500-meter race, her last, she pulled off a third-place finish for bronze after holding off a pair of hometown heroes, including Italian legend Arianna Fontana. Stoddard has has been public about her battles with anxiety and insomnia, and the sight of her battling through to reach the podium gave hope to anyone familiar with mental-health struggles. Stoddard’s tearful parents were mirrored by broadcaster Katherine Reutter-Adamek, who choked up with emotion. “Forgive us if we all join the parents in shedding a tear,” play-by-play man Ted Robinson said.

It would be the first individual medal for a U.S. woman short-track athlete in 16 years.  “Every person on that ice understands what Stoddard lived through,” Robinson said.

“It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish,” Reutter-Adamek said.

2. Alysa Liu Skates Like No One Is Watching and Reminds Us Why We Do This

We could use words to describe what Alysa Liu — barely two years ago retired because she didn’t find figure-skating pleasurable anymore — pulled off with her gold-medal skate on Thursday. But nothing compares to the contact high from just watching her pull off the most joyous figure-skating performance in modern memory.

On an Olympics stage where competitors can be uptight, dour and neurotically serious because of the pressure placed on them, Liu reminded us what events should really be all about: fun. Watch the skate here and your day will instantly become 37 percent better.

1. The U.S. Men’s Hockey Team Wins Gold By Beating Canada in OT

Where to start with one of the best hockey games ever played, talent-wise, and also the one with the most TV storylines?

The United States’ first-ever gold medal win in hockey over Canada? The fact that it happened on the anniversary of the Miracle on Ice, aka the event widely regarded as the best TV moment of the 1980s? The vengeance against Canada from last year’s Four Nations tournament? The sheer wizardry of Matt Boldy and Connor Hellebuyck? The touching tribute to the late Gaudreau brothers? The dominance of the ascendant Hughes brothers? The fact that one of said brothers, Jack, poked the puck away from Cale Makar and then sniped the winning shot in OT after having a few teeth knocked out on a high stick near the end of regulation?

Hughes’ goal was the burst of unity and the palliative we need at this moment — not, with the Miracle on Ice, to heal a country fractured by the Cold War but to heal a country fractured by itself. (“I’m so proud to be an American today,” he said.) Plus who doesn’t love a good sports-dentistry story? “Would you trade a couple of broken teeth for a gold medal?” broadcaster Kenny Alert asked. Fortunately for America, Hughes would.