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With each passing Olympic Games, there’s thing caller to admire. Typically, it’s a chill costume astatine the opening ceremony, oregon a caller cauldron for the Olympic flame, oregon possibly a caller fancy stadium the big metropolis volition person nary usage for successful 10 years. Then determination are the brand-new records acceptable during each Games, jaw-dropping examples of quality strength, talent, and mind-melting perseverance.
But for the 2026 Winter Olympics, immoderate of the astir notable firsts are coming retired of the Olympic Village alternatively than the idiosyncratic venues. They are the ones pushing their sports guardant and making past successful the process. Here are 12 athletes acceptable to marque past astatine this year’s Winter Olympics.
Amber Glenn
Sport: Figure Skating
Amber Glenn, 1 of the astir absorbing and multi-faceted fig skaters successful caller history, has already racked up 3 US nationalist titles and 1 Grand Prix Final championship. Openly pansexual, she is known for taking triumph laps draped successful a Pride flag. Glenn besides speaks frankly astir her struggles with intelligence wellness and ADHD. (She’s also a large instrumentality of Star Wars, Pokémon, and Magic: The Gathering.) While her Madonna-themed abbreviated programme is good worthy a watch, her 2024 accumulation show acceptable to Olivia Rodrigo’s “Vampire” is adjacent better.
Notable quote: “The fearfulness of not being accepted is simply a immense conflict for me. Being perceived arsenic [going through] ‘just a phase’ oregon [being] ‘indecisive’ is simply a communal happening for bisexual/pansexual women. I don’t privation to shove my sexuality successful people’s faces, but I besides don’t privation to fell who I am.” —Amber Glenn to The Dallas Voice
Laila Edwards
Sport: Ice Hockey
When you (or anyone who’s watched Heated Rivalry) deliberation “hockey player,” the representation that typically comes to caput is of immoderate burly Russo-Canadian, speedy connected his skates and with his instrumentality but missing a fewer teeth. Laila Edwards is thing but that. As the archetypal Black pistillate to play connected the US Olympic hockey team, Edwards treads a full caller path. She’s getting a small assistance on the way, too, with chap Cleveland Heights, Ohio natives Travis and Jason Kelce donating $10,000 to the GoFundMe that the Edwards household acceptable up to wage for the travel to ticker their girl successful the games.
Notable quote: “Walking into a rink and having idiosyncratic accidental ‘the hoops court’s that way,’ having acquisition with microaggression, taught maine lessons and had maine turn a thicker tegument successful a predominantly achromatic sport.” —Laila Edwards to TV presumption KARE 11
Tallulah Proulx
Sport: Alpine Skiing
At conscionable 17, Tallulah Proulx is already breaking records, becoming not lone the archetypal Filipina to ever suffice for the Winter Olympics but besides the youngest Filipino idiosyncratic to suffice ever. Though she was calved successful California and present lives successful Utah, Proulx is competing successful the Games nether the emblem of the Philippines. Though she’s improbable to medal, having finished 16th successful the Asian Winter Games, her slalom and elephantine slalom runs successful Milano—and her entranceway during the opening ceremony—should beryllium 1 to watch.
Notable quote: “I'm conscionable truly happy, and I anticipation I tin beryllium a relation exemplary to different young Filipina girls and Filipinas successful general.” —Tallulah Proulx to ABS-CBN News successful the Philippines
Kim Meylemans and Nicole Silveira, and Anna Kjellbin and Ronja Savolainen
Sports: Skeleton (Meylemans and Silveira), Ice Hockey (Kjellbin and Savolainen)
OK, sure, possibly it’s imaginable that wives person played connected opposing teams astatine the Olympics before, but the information that two sets of wives are competing against each different astatine the 2026 Winter Games feels beauteous monumental. For the skeleton competition, it’s Belgium’s Kim Meylemans looking to champion her spouse, Brazil’s Nicole Silveira. In the crystal hockey rink, it’ll beryllium Anna Kjellbin’s Swedish Team looking to outmatch woman Ronja Savolainen’s Finnish squad. And for Meylemans and Silveira, being retired and successful contention during these games is astir much than conscionable being a cute story. As the mates posted connected Instagram, “With the Games being successful Italy and the existent Italian authorities making decisions/laws that wounded the LGBTQ+ assemblage (read up connected it if you don’t judge it), it feels other peculiar to perchance vie arsenic a joined mates and radiance a airy connected matrimony equality portion doing so.”
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