This year’s Winter Olympics, officially called Milano Cortina 2026, will feature multiple teen athletes who defied the odds to qualify for Team USA. These teens will face off against some of the world’s best winter athletes as they each take their first-ever trip to the games. Isabeau Levitoz, Abby Winterberger, Lily Dhawornvej, Alessandro Barbieri, and Oliver Martin may not have yet celebrated their nineteenth birthdays, but they won’t let their youth stop them from chasing gold. They serve as inspiration for any young person willing to chase their dreams.
Isabeau Levitoz
At just 18, Isabeau Levitoz has already proven herself as one of the top figure skating prospects in not only the United States, but the world.
Levitoz, who grew up in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, has been skating since age three. In 2022, she earned a bronze medal in the National Figure Skating Championships; however, she was too young to go on to compete in the 2022 Beijing Olympic Games. The next year, she was crowned a national champion after taking home the U.S. figure skating title. After winning competitions at the national level, Levitoz performed once again on the world stage, medalling silver at the 2024 ISU World Figure Skating Championships.
Levitoz faced a setback in January 2025, when a foot injury led her to withdraw from the year’s national competition. But Levitoz would not be deterred, and by February was back in competition. In January of this year, she won bronze at the national level, punching her ticket to the Olympics. “I knew that qualifying was within grasp,” Levitoz told Bustle, “I’m really glad that I succeeded.”
Levitoz continues to go for gold as one of the figure skaters competing for the United States in Milano.
Abby Winterberger
In her journey to the Olympics, Abby Winterberger has defied the odds, a pattern she hopes to continue as she competes in the women’s freeski halfpipe in Milan. When Winterbringer stepped onto the slopes in her first year on the World Cup Circuit during the 2025-26 season, she was already at a disadvantage: Not only was the 15-year-old skier going up against more experienced world class competition; she also did not have access to professional-level facilities—including, crucially, an Olympic-sized halfpipe—in her hometown of Truckee, California. Winterbringer practiced with the facilities she could, and placed in the top 10 at three World Cup Circuit events.
Last month, at the final Olympic qualifying event in Aspen, Colorado, Winterbringer placed sixth, beating out experienced international competitors to become the youngest member of the team this year.
Winterberger will bring her A-game to her competition, but also feels going to the Olympics is an accomplishment in itself. “It’s almost like a sigh of relief,” Winterberger told The Sierra Sun, “because I know that I’ve already made it here.”
Lily Dhawornvej
Snowboarder Lily Dhawornvej is no stranger to taking on challenges at the biggest world stages.
On the final day of competition in the 2026 European World Cup, icy conditions caused organizers for the event to consider postponing or cancelling. The competition went on, though, and Dhawornvej seized her chance: Facing the perilous conditions, the 16 year old from Copper Mountain, Colorado beat out her competitors to earn her first-ever podium spot in a World Cup event.
“It was a battle with the conditions today,” Dhawornvej said after the competition.
Dhawornvej has been showing up against older competitors in premier competitions since her debut at the 2024 Copper Mountain X-games at 15 years old. The Olympic games will once again pit her against an older, more experienced competition pool. But if history has shown one thing, it’s that Dhawornvej is capable of rising to the occasion.
Alessandro Barbieri
Competing in the 2028 Olympics will “mean everything” to 17-year old Alessandro Barbieri, who will be competing against some of the world’s best athletes in his ancestral homeland.
Both of Barbieri’s parents were born in Milan. Barberi grew up in Portland Oregon where, since the age of 5, he has been hitting the slopes on his snowboard.
In the 2024 Youth Olympic Winter Games in Gangwaon, China, Barberi emerged as one of the premier young talents in American snowboarding; however, last month he made his mark doing something no American has before. On Jan. 9, while competing in the Snow League halfpipe competition, Barberi landed a Cork 1440, making him one of only two Americans to ever land the ambitious combination of flips and twists and the only American to have done so before their eighteenth birthday.
In Milan, Barbieri will have the opportunity to snowboard in his family’s native land while representing the nation he calls home.
Oliver Martin
At 17 years old, Oliver Martin, a professional snowboarder from Colorado, cannot stop breaking records. In preparation for the 2024-2025 season at the age of 16, Martin landed a 2160-degree spin, becoming the youngest athlete ever to do so. In the same practice, he became the first rider in the history of snowboarding to perform both a frontside and backside 2160.
Martin’s record breaking continued from there. When he took on older competitors in the 2025 Calgary World Cup that same season, he became the youngest man ever to win Gold in a slopestyle World Cup event.
“It’s my first World Cup podium, ” Martin told the CBC, “so for it to be gold is just crazy.” To earn this achievement, Martin beat out Olympic Gold Medalist Redmond Gerard and two-time world champion Marcus Kleveland.
Martin will continue to face the biggest names in snowboarding as he competes on the international stage at the winter Olympics in Men’s Snowboard Slopestyle and Men’s Big Air.