Team USA’s Dreams of a Record Olympics Are Suddenly Falling Apart

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Team USA’s Dreams of a Record Olympics Are Suddenly Falling Apart

As household names underperform all over Italy, the first week of the Games has yielded only four golds for the Americans. Can their Olympics be salvaged?

By Joshua Robinson and Ben Cohen, WSJ

Feb. 14, 2026

Team USA is on track for its fewest winter gold medals since 1998, having secured only four golds a week into the Olympics.

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MILAN—They came to Italy for a gold rush.

From the downhill course of Cortina to the cross-country tracks of Val di Fiemme and a figure skating rink on the edge of Milan, members of Team USA envisioned themselves spending the entire Olympics on the top steps of podiums. And with the biggest delegation here, they dreamed of a run that would surpass their record 10 gold medals the last time they hosted the Winter Games.

Then came the disastri.

One by one, America’s made-for-TV stars fell short of expectations. Lindsey Vonn crashed. Chloe Kim fell. Mikaela Shiffrin struggled. The most shocking fumble of all came on Friday night when figure skater Ilia Malinin, the self-proclaimed “quad god,” melted down in the brutal heat of the Olympic spotlight.

It was merely the latest disappointment of an Olympics souring faster than burrata in the sun for Team USA, which is suddenly on track for its fewest winter golds since 1998.

With a gold medal on the line, Chloe Kim crashed during her final run in the snowboarding halfpipe finals.

A full week since the Opening Ceremony, the U.S. was stuck on four, the same number as Sweden and Switzerland. The Americans are looking up in the medal standings at host nation Italy, which is on pace for its best-ever Olympics, and they have been lapped by the Norwegian gods of the Winter Games.

Before the Olympics, the betting markets suggested the Americans could reasonably expect to win 12 golds. They have already lost at least four of those events despite starting as the favorites.

“There’s a lot of puzzle pieces that need to lock into place,” Jessie Diggins, the top-ranked cross-country skier in the world, said after finishing the skiathlon in eighth. “The things out of my control did not go very well.”

To be sure, weird things happen on ice and snow when athletes are ripping down mountains and carving around sharp turns—and glory is decided by fractions of a second.

With those margins, near-misses can turn into valiant defeats. With one surgically rebuilt knee and a completely torn ACL in the other, the 41-year-old Vonn gutted her way to the starting gate and had a real chance of medaling before her violent crash. Gritting through a shoulder injury, Kim was graceful in defeat when the two-time gold medalist in snowboard halfpipe took silver and celebrated the teenager who beat her.

For some Americans, simply competing at the Olympics was a reason to celebrate the athletes who put their bodies and mental health on the line.

For most of Europe, there was a healthy dose of schadenfreude. These days, over 60% of Italians have an unfavorable view of the U.S., in line with other Western European countries, according to a YouGov survey released on the eve of the Games. And they let the Americans know how they felt by booing Vice President JD Vance at the Opening Ceremony.

Since then, France has joined the chorus of jeers following its gold medal in ice dance, where a French team narrowly edged out Madison Chock and Evan Bates. Americans saw a judging controversy and weighed a formal protest. The French saw only rude Americans abroad.

Team USA might console itself with its total medal haul, which still ranks third behind Norway and the Italians. But when it comes to overall supremacy, only the U.S. counts silver and bronze. At the Olympics, the rest of the world lives on the gold standard.

And at these Olympics, America’s ice dancers and mixed-doubles curlers have seen gold slip from their grasp, while the country’s best figure skater practically had it around his neck.

Malinin’s unraveling was the most shocking moment of the entire Olympics. On a night when the men’s free skate turned into a splatfest, the reigning world champion wiped out twice, flubbed multiple jumps and tumbled all the way off the podium. Instead of the Star-Spangled Banner, the crowd was treated to the national anthem of Kazakhstan.

Minutes after the devastating performance, Malinin admitted to feeling overwhelmed by the intense pressure of the Olympics. “Too much to handle,” he said. He was still going home with the gold medal he clinched for the U.S. in the team event. But a week earlier, the Americans had plausible hopes of four golds and a fifth medal. Now they might be leaving Italy with one gold and one silver.

As it turned out, Malinin wasn’t the only American sensation who turned in a 15th-place performance with gold on the line.

Days earlier, Shiffrin left the starting gate in the women’s team combined skiing event with the U.S. in first place after a brilliant downhill from teammate Breezy Johnson. Shiffrin crossed the line in 15th, her worst slalom finish in a decade. If she had placed even 13th, Shiffrin and Johnson would have won gold. Instead they left empty-handed.

Still, it hasn’t been a completely nightmarish trip across the Atlantic.

Johnson was the surprise winner of the downhill on the day of Vonn’s crash. Freestyle skier Elizabeth Lemley stunned her own teammate Jaelin Kauf in the women’s moguls. The powerhouse U.S. women’s hockey team continues to crush everyone.

And speedskating phenom Jordan Stolz delivered precisely what was expected with a commanding performance in the 1,000 meters. As the front-runner in four more events, the cheese-powered human rocket from Wisconsin could salvage these Games for the U.S. by single-handedly winning as many golds as the rest of the nation.

Until then, there is one race that the Americans are running away with. They have come so tantalizingly close to so many golds that they now hold a decisive lead in another category: silver medals.

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