These skiers, snowboarders, curlers, and skaters will have you chanting ‘U-S-A!’

The alpine skier out of Vail, Colo., is the face of U.S. Olympic coverage and deservedly so. All she does is win races, hardware, and gold medals in whatever event she enters. She’s so accomplished and decorated it’s difficult to pick a place to a crowning achievement/stat.

OK, let’s go with this, because when I say Lindsey Vonn people have some sort of context. Vonn retired in 2019 at age 34 and holds the record for women’s World Cup ski wins at 82. Shiffrin, who is 26, has 73. The overall record is 86 held by Sweden’s Ingemar Stenmark (a guy).

So to say Shiffrin could end her career as the GOAT of not just women’s alpine skiing but alpine skiing overall is not hyperbole. She is to skiing what Serena Williams is to tennis. So yes, when Mike Tirico is gushing about her, don’t roll your eyes.

The only stumbles she had came after her father died suddenly in 2020, when she justifiably and admittedly lost focus and passion for the sport. She told People she feels the “spark returning” ahead of her return to the Olympics, and that’s good news because she’s a tremendous talent and already one of the best alpine skiers ever.

Winning gold in Korea was a big deal for Chloe Kim and her family. Though a native of Long Beach, California, her parents are originally from Korea and much of her extended family still lives there. So there wasn’t a lot of room to go up from winning gold in women’s snowboarding halfpipe in PyeongChang.

Apparently, it’s not uncommon for athletes to experience depression after the high of the Olympics, and Kim was no exception, saying that she “hated life” once returning stateside. She even went as far as to throw her gold medal in the trash.

However, she’s back. And when she’s on and focused, she’s capable of putting up a certifiably flawless run, which she did in 2016, becoming only the second snowboarder ever to record a perfect 100 in competition.

Now 21, she’ll be a heavy favorite to repeat at gold. Should she win it, hopefully she can use the knowledge from the previous Games to maintain a healthy state of mind. She’s also my favorite snowboarder in general right now, so I’m especially ecstatic to see her compete again.

I’m not going to pretend I know anything about figure skating. Most of my winter sports knowledge is mountain-based, but you don’t have to look far to find out who Nathan Chen is or why he’s so intensely focused on redeeming his 2018 failures. The six-time national champion from Salt Lake City, Utah, is only the second man to win that many titles in the past 70 years.

People’s interest in figure skating feels a lot like their interest in gymnastics. You can see the parallels in the athleticism and precision, and it always feels like there’s some kind of disgruntled judge. I think that’s my favorite part of watching any figure skating competition: the announcers go crazy for a routine, and then get upset at the judges on behalf of the contestants.

If Chen skates his best, it sounds like the field’s chances at upsetting him are slim. We love a redemption arc, and Chen has the most notable one for Americans, failing to live up to the massive expectations that accompanied his unbeaten record in world competition going into PyeongChang where he finished fifth individually. He did earn a bronze in team competition, and landed six quads in his free skate program, a feat that I’ve read is hard to do.

The rise in mountaineering sports across the U.S. might coincide with a pandemic and people’s subsequent thirst to get outdoors, but if the U.S. ever builds a cross-country program capable of rivaling the nordic countries who constantly kick our ass, Jessie Diggins’ wild finish to win gold in the women’s team sprint, a first for the US, in PyeongChang will be a seminal moment.

Hailing from Saint Paul, Minnesota, Diggins also became the second American to win the overall cross-country World Cup globe, which is a season-long competition and definitely a big deal. If the same people who’ve enthusiastically (almost annoyingly) picked up skinning (traveling uphill on skis) and cross-country skiing bring that same energy to following and consuming cross-country, the sport is only going to thrive — as much as a winter sport that requires gear, snow, and terrain can.

From a “what to watch for” standpoint, a 17-year-old free skier dropping into an Olympic halfpipe for the first time a week or two after winning bronze during her X Games debut qualifies. The Basalt, Colo., native isn’t the favorite. That’d be fellow teenager 19-year-old Kelly Sildaru of Estonia, who is worth watching, as well.

However, we all love skiers who go big, and Faulhaber does. She comes from the same program — Aspen Valley Ski Club — as Alex Ferreira, reigning Olympic silver medalist in men’s freeskiing halfpipe and athlete I’m going to talk about next, so it’d be no surprise if she had a good showing at the very least.

Faulhaber’s X Games success could have something to do with her living near and training at the same venue as the competition, but it’s a different experience on the biggest stage not named the Olympics. She crushed it under the lights in Aspen, and let’s see if she can do the same in Beijing.

Everything is trending up for Alex Ferreira of Aspen, Colo., who didn’t compete in the 2022 X Games in order to prepare for the Olympics. Having won X gold in 2019 and 2020 and a couple of golds in other events last year, you’d think he’d be a bigger name, but his fellow countrymen are his biggest competition.

David Wise out of Reno, Nevada, a two-time and reigning Olympic gold medalist, would be on this list if not for Ferreira’s more recent success. Aaron Blunk of Crested Butte, Colorado, is a hell of a skier, as well. While these three probably had a better shot at a podium sweep of this event in 2018, it’s still a possibility in 2022.

Regardless, Wise and Ferreira should make noise and land a podium spot or two. It’s certainly a better outlook than the U.S. men’s halfpipe snowboard team, which will surely be all about Shaun White and the fanfare NBC throws his way for his final Olympics.

If you can call curling glorified shuffleboard, you can call tennis glorified Ping Pong, but I like to think of their bar game counterparts as poor man’s versions of the real thing. Unfortunately, not everyone who can play table tennis can play actual tennis, but I’m pretty sure there are a lot of people who can play shuffleboard and curl, so that analogy is moot.

However, don’t ever question if John Shuster, Chisholm, Minnesota’s finest, is an athlete. Do you have a gold medal in anything? If America knighted people, we’d be calling him Sir John Shuster after he captured the US’s first gold medal in curling in 2018.

Though I have never curled, I have a few friends who do, and it sounds more like a bowling league than anything else. If Shuster cracks a Coors Light after a particularly tasty skip, we night have to give him some land and a title befitting royalty.

Staples from the 2018 gold medal women’s hockey team, Hilary Knight of Paolo Alto, Calif., and Brianna Decker of Dousman, Wis., are hopeful to lead the team back atop the podium. With the men’s side composed of non-NHL players, women’s hockey will be pushed to the forefront in a sort of USWNT-USMNT soccer dynamic.

The women’s hockey team isn’t as good or as heralded as their soccer counterparts, but a gold and two silvers over the past three Olympics is still impressive. Decker and Knight frequently play on the same line and combined for the opening goal in the 2018 gold medal game against Canada.