U.S. figure skating is poised for a strong showing at the Winter Olympics, sending what some in the sport are calling its most dominant team in years. And that’s saying something, given the U.S. brought home gold in both the team and men’s events from the Beijing Games in 2022.
“I cannot believe the talent and the depth of the U.S. field, but the way that we stack up against the world is what makes me really excited for the Olympics,” Ashley Wagner, three-time national champion and 2014 Olympic medalist, told NPR.
She’s particularly excited about the women’s field, which has its first shot at a U.S. gold medal since 2002: “This is the first time in, I would say, about four Olympic cycles that we have three women who could realistically end up on the Olympic podium.”
The 16 skaters representing the U.S. are a mix of seasoned veterans and rising stars, including reigning world champions Ilia Malinin, Alysa Liu and the ice dance duo of Madison Chock and Evan Bates. On the roster are three men, three women, three ice dance duos and two sets of pairs, who will face a packed schedule in Milan, starting with a multi-day team event on Feb. 6.
The team was announced in mid-January, at the culmination of the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in St. Louis.
“We’re not just going in just with a couple athletes here or there that hopefully will have some performance impact, but I believe we have a team that across the board will be remembered for years to come,” Justin Dillon, U.S. Figure Skating’s senior director of athlete high performance, said at the end of the nationals.
Here are the names — and backstories — to know.
Men’s | Women’s | Pairs | Ice Dance
Men’s singles: Ilia Malinin, Andrew Torgashev, Maxim Naumov
Reigning four-time U.S. champion Ilia Malinin — who hasn’t lost a single competition since 2023 — is widely considered Team USA’s best hope for men’s figure skating gold, as one of the sport’s most revolutionary athletes.
Part of it may be hereditary: The 21-year-old Virginia native is coached by his parents, who represented Uzbekistan in multiple Olympics. But he’s put his own spin on the sport: Malinin is known as the “Quad God” because of his penchant for gravity-defying quadruple jumps.
He became the first, and only, skater to successfully land a quadruple Axel (that’s four and half rotations!) in international competition in 2022. He’s continued to smash records, including by becoming the first person to land seven clean quadruple jumps in a single free skate at the 2025 ISU Grand Prix Final in December.
This will be Malinin’s first Olympics, as he narrowly missed making the team for Beijing 2022 at the start of his senior career. But he’s already said it won’t be his last.
“There are three Olympic cycles that I want to skate,” he told reporters recently, which would bring him to Salt Lake City in 2034. “I don’t know how much my body will handle it after all the jumps I’ve been doing so far, but that’s the goal for me.”
Malinin will be joined by Andrew Torgashev, 24, who clinched his second consecutive silver at nationals with an electrifying free skate that brought the sold-out crowd to its feet — overcoming a rocky start to the season to earn a spot at his first Olympics.
The Florida native is also the son of former Soviet skating champions, in pairs and ice dance respectively. He’s known for his powerful jumps, creative choreography and love of pizza, once subsisting off of it for 54 days in a row.
Rounding out the men’s group is 24-year-old Maxim Naumov. His parents and coaches, Olympic pair skaters Vadim Naumov and Evgenia Shishkova, were among the 67 passengers — including 28 members of the figure skating community — who died in the D.C.-area plane crash in January 2025.
Naumov has continued training in pursuit of what he’s described as his lifelong Olympic dream, through his grief and with his parents in mind.
“It’s all about being resilient. That’s the feeling and the mentality that I’ve come into this entire season,” he said after his short program at nationals, as he held up a photo of the three of them on the ice when he was a toddler. “What if, despite everything that happened to me, I can still go out there and do it?”
He went on to win bronze in St. Louis, after finishing fourth the last three years. As he put on his Olympic jacket, he shared what the moment meant to him and his family: “We did it. We absolutely did it.”
Women’s singles: Amber Glenn, Alysa Liu, Isabeau Levito
Amber Glenn is a first-time Olympian at age 26, calling her decade-plus career “a slow rise that I’m very proud of.” The reigning three-time U.S. national champion is the first U.S. woman since Michelle Kwan to win that title three years in a row.
Glenn is known for her athleticism, as one of the only American women who consistently lands an Axel in international competition. The Texas native has also won over fans for her determination and resilience, speaking frankly about her mental health struggles, experiences as an openly queer skater and hopes of making the sport more inclusive.
“Seeing some of those struggles … can help [young people] acknowledge, ‘Hey, I have the same thing. I feel the same way sometimes and that’s okay. Amber has struggled with it, but she got help, she spoke out to an adult and is able to do what she’s doing at this level and I want to do that too,'” she said in December.
Alysa Liu has carved out a comeback on the ice, reversing her teenage retirement to reach her second Olympics at age 20.
Liu became the youngest skater in history to land a triple Axel in an international competition in 2018, at age 12. She became the youngest U.S. women’s champion in history in 2019, and won the title again the following year. But after the Beijing Olympics in 2022, 16-year-old Liu abruptly announced her retirement on social media.
Liu enrolled at UCLA, traveled — including trekking to Everest Base Camp — and got her driver’s license, with no plans to revisit skating. But a ski trip in 2024 reminded her what she loved about the sport, and she cautiously returned to the rink, this time training at her own pace and taking creative control over things like costumes and music.
Lowering the pressure, however, didn’t keep her off the podium. Liu won World Championships gold in March 2025, becoming the first American woman to do so in almost two decades, and racked up more international titles before the end of the year. She has earned praise for her high-difficulty combination jumps, fun-loving attitude and personal style (including her “smiley piercings” and striped hair).
“Quitting was definitely, still to this day, one of my best decisions ever,” Liu said in October. “And coming back was also a really good decision.”
Isabeau Levito is the team’s youngest member at age 18, but is known for maturity, poise and quiet confidence beyond her years. Some of her fans have taken to calling her “Tinkerbeau,” a reference to the Disney fairy and a nod to Levito’s ethereal skating style.
The New Jersey native has had a rapid rise, as the 2023 U.S. champion and 2024 world silver medalist. She also has a personal connection to these Winter Games: Her mom is originally from Milan, and much of her family still lives in the city.
“This is what we all dream of,” she said after winning bronze and a spot in her first Olympics. “They’ve always supported my skating career. Just to be able to watch me in person, in real life, on the biggest stage, is just insane.”
Pairs: Kam and O’Shea, Chan and Howe
The reigning two-time national pairs champions, Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov, didn’t make the cut for Team USA not because of scores but because of citizenship: Efimova, who is Finnish-Russian but got her green card in 2024, was unable to get a U.S. passport in time, despite last-ditch efforts by U.S. Olympic and Figure Skating officials.
The U.S. will be represented by bronze medalists Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea, who have been partners since 2022 — a pairing that began when O’Shea was technically retired. O’Shea, now 34, has been skating for three decades with dreams of reaching the Olympics.
“It’s been quite a few years of not making the team,” O’Shea said. “This is the fourth Olympic cycle that I’ve been a part of, and the fourth championship event that qualifies for an Olympic team. And I kept believing, and we made it happen.”
They will be joined by Spencer Howe and Emily Chan, who rebounded from eighth-place after their short program to a fourth-place finish at nationals. The pair, partners since 2019, train at the Skating Club of Boston, which lost six of its community members in the D.C. aircraft collision.
Howe enlisted in the U.S. Army in late 2024, and now holds the rank of private second class. He is a member of the Army’s World Class Athlete Program, which allows elite athletes to serve while representing their country at international competitions.
Ice dance: Chock and Bates, Zingas and Kolesnik, Carreira and Ponomarenko
Madison Chock and Evan Bates are one of the most recognizable duos in U.S. ice dance today, as three-time Olympians and three-time reigning world champions who just won their record seventh national title. They began their skating partnership in 2011, started dating six years later and married in 2024.
“I think our chemistry really comes through when we perform because we have a shared passion,” Chock said in December. “We love what we do, but we also really love each other, and we’re able to take this passion and use it to foster our connection as a couple. And I think from that we’ve grown a lot through our sport, and that’s been such a great teacher for us.”
Chock and Bates are known for telling stories on the ice through creative choreography and costumes, often designed by Chock herself (see: “snake charmer,” “astronaut meets alien“). Their free dance this season is a flamenco-inspired program featuring Chock as a matador and Bates as a bull.
They are joined by Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik. They have enjoyed a relatively rapid ascent since pairing up in 2022, taking fourth place at nationals last year and silver this year.
Zingas previously competed as a singles skater representing Cyprus, the birthplace of her paternal grandparents. Kolesnik is a native of Kharkiv, Ukraine, but moved to Detroit at age 15 to train. He received U.S. citizenship in August, after nine years in the country.
Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko, who have been partners since 2014, also had to navigate the wait for a U.S. passport.
Carreira is originally from Montreal, though moved to Michigan when she was 13. Carreira and Ponomarenko switched to a training school in Ontario in 2021, but she needed to live in the U.S. as a requirement for citizenship. So she spent the last four years driving at least an hour across the border each way to the rink. She got her citizenship in November 2025.
“I’m sure the border agents miss me,” Carreira said with a laugh. “A lot of them when we would pull up they told us that they watched our last competitions and they were asking us where we’re going next. They were hoping we’d do well here.”
Ponomarenko, who is originally from California, is also the son of Soviet Olympic skaters. His parents, Marina Klimova and Sergei Ponomarenko, are the only ice dancers to have won Olympic medals of every color.
Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Lillian Karabaic contributed.
