The official roster for Team USA will not be finalized until weeks before the 2018 Winter Olympics start Feb. 9, but the first competitors in the 15 Winter Olympic sports have already been chosen, and they each bring a unique story to the games.
Maame Biney is a 17-year-old who already made history as the first black woman to qualify for Team USA’s short track speedskating team, she won bronze in the women’s 500m at the 2016-17 Short Track Junior World Championship. Chloe Kim, a Long Beach Native, is a 17-year-old snowboarding sensation who has long been considered the future of women’s snowboarding. She’s a favorite to win gold in the halfpipe event in Pyeongchang.
Olympic gold medalist and overall Mikaela Shiffrin is poised for another triumphant alpine skiing run during the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. When she was just 18, Shiffrin was the youngest person ever to win an Olympic gold in the Winter Olympic sport of slalom, a sport she will be competing in again this year. In the women’s biathalon, Susan Dunklee is one to watch. The 2014 Olympian earned a silver medal in the mass start at the world championships in 2017 in Austria. Elana Meyers Taylor is hoping to lead the bobsleigh women’s team in 2018 by besting her silver from Sochi, she was the first American woman to ever win a bobsled world championship in 2015.
In Cross Country Skiing, Jessie Diggins is dominating the Winter Olympics team into Pyeongchang after coming in fifth in this season’s world cup standings. Her teammate Kikkan Randall won a world championship medal in the sprint just after giving birth to her first child. In Luge, Erin Hamlin won the U.S. its first medal ever for singles luge with her 2014 bronze, and is going for gold in 2018. Hamlin is a two-time world champion, including winning the title in the 2017 spring race at the world championships.
You go girls!
