Meet the Vermonters Going to the 2026 Winter Olympics

Vermont has few homegrown assets that are instantly recognizable worldwide. Among them are Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Burton snowboards and a certain cantankerous U.S. senator with a Flatbush accent. But once every four years, the Green Mountain State shines on the global stage and demonstrates that its elite winter athletes can compete against the best of the best. Vermonters work hard and play hard — and we’ve got the trophies and Olympic medals to prove it.

By now, avid fans of the Winter Olympics likely know the names of Vermont’s most famous Olympians who are headed to Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy: Jessie Diggins, the most decorated cross-country skier in U.S. history; Ryan Cochran-Siegle, an Alpine skier and member of the “Skiing Cochrans” Olympic dynasty; and Mikaela Shiffrin, arguably the greatest Alpine skier of all time. (Shiffrin was born in Vail, Colo., but honed her skills at Burke Mountain Academy, so we claim her.)

But Vermonters will also be cheering on some lesser-known competitors in medal contention. Sean Doherty is a Vermont National Guard member who trains in Jericho for biathlon, a sport that looks like it was conceived for a James Bond movie, combining cross-country skiing with rifle shooting. Freestyle skier Mac Forehand is essentially a gymnast who transferred his hotdogging aerial skills to a terrain park. Julia Mesplède is a University of Vermont senior and ice hockey player who skates for the Catamounts. Landgrove’s Ben Ogden looks to break a 50-year medal drought for the U.S. men’s cross-country ski team. Nordic skier Julia Kern, of Richmond, aims to medal for the U.S. women.

Not all of Vermont’s Olympians will represent the Stars and Stripes. Mesplède and fellow stick handler Chloé Aurard-Bushee both skate for Team France; Vermont Academy graduate Kristýna Kaltounková and UVM alum Natálie Mlýnková skate for Czechia’s hockey team; former Catamount Sini Karjalainen will skate for Finland. Kevin Drury, of South Burlington, skis for Team Canada.

The Winter Games begin on Friday, February 6 and will be broadcast on NBC and can be streamed on Peacock and NBCUniversal channels. By the time of the closing ceremonies on Sunday, February 22, Vermont could have a few more precious medals to boast about.

— Ken Picard

Cross Paths

South Burlington’s Kevin Drury prepares for what may be his last Olympics with the Canadian Ski Cross Team

By Ken Picard

When Kevin Drury enters the starting gate in a ski cross race, he’s typically the smallest of the four competitors in his heat. Standing five foot seven and 180 pounds, Drury is also dwarfed by his own teammates, all of whom are at least six-two and outweigh him by more than 20 pounds. In downhill ski racing, larger body mass often equates to greater momentum and stability, so Drury has to rely on his skills, athleticism and years of experience to give him an edge.

Clearly, Drury’s smaller size hasn’t been a hindrance to the 37-year-old Toronto native who now lives in South Burlington and competes for the Canadian Ski Cross Team. On January 18, he notched his first FIS Ski Cross World Cup win in five years in a thrilling, come-from-behind victory in his final run in Val Thorens, France. On February 21, “Coach Kevin,” as his teammates call him, will race for gold in his third, and likely last, Winter Olympics.

Ski cross is a relatively new downhill sport, having made its Olympic debut at the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver. Borrowing elements from boardercross, motocross and BMX biking, a ski cross racecourse features jumps, rollers (or bumps), banked turns and straightaways. In each heat, four racers start simultaneously on the same course, then jostle for the lead position. The skiers hug tight turns and soar through the air, often inches apart like fighter jets in formation, at speeds exceeding 65 miles per hour. The first two racers to cross the finish line advance to the next round.

As Drury told Seven Days in a video interview from Innichen, a town in the Dolomites of northern Italy where he was training for another World Cup race, the most daunting challenge of ski cross is learning to ski and jump at high speeds with three other skiers alongside you. While some athletes gets panicky, “I love it!” he said.

I’m going to out-pump you. I’m going to out-turn you. And I’m going to out-ski you.
Kevin Drury

Why? “It’s that direct feedback,” he explained about the close proximity of his opponents. “I’m going to out-pump you. I’m going to out-turn you. And I’m going to out-ski you. And you know immediately that I did better than you.”

Drury is a Canadian citizen who moved to Burlington to attend, and ski for, the University of Vermont. It was there he met his wife, Rutland native Mary Kate “MK” Drury, a Nordic skier who owns HIIT Performance Training in Burlington.

Kevin Drury competed in both the 2018 and 2022 Winter Olympics. Unlike the U.S. ski cross team, the Canadian one financially supports its athletes, so skiing has been his full-time job for more than a decade.

“There are so many variables in ski cross,” he said. “You can be in first and someone taps your [ski] tails and you crash and your day is done.”

Indeed, something similar happened to him in the 2018 Winter Games in South Korea, where he placed fourth, just missing a podium finish.

“It stings a little,” he said, especially because he had won every heat that day but the last run, during which he collided midair with a Russian competitor. “I lost my ski, but he didn’t, and he skied down to win the bronze.”

For the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing, Drury was satisfied just to qualify, as he had broken his leg the previous year. He was eliminated in the quarterfinals and finished 12th overall. “It wasn’t a great course for me,” he said. “Not a lot of passing opportunities.”

Drury prefers runs that are more open, with a lot of technical challenges and more places to pass. He likens the less desirable courses to Formula 1 racing, in which a driver can be slow but hold the pole position and still win by boxing out their opponents.

One advantage he has over his younger rivals: the experience of having competed in two previous Olympics, he said, especially as it relates to calming one’s nerves.

“So much of that pressure you put on yourself,” said Drury, whose aunt, Marion Lay, was an Olympic swimmer who won bronze in a 100-meter freestyle relay in Mexico City in 1968. “There’s something different about an Olympics that I’ve been able to tap into, which is: Once racing starts, somehow I’m able to turn off the part of my brain that is in any way scared of injury. We’ve made it here. Let’s give it everything we have. If I break my legs, I break my legs.”

Like most Olympians, Drury wouldn’t comment on recent political tensions between his native country and his adopted one. As he put it, “I’m always very, very proud to be Canadian. I love having the leaf on my chest.”

Fun and Games

Vermont Nordic skier Julia Kern aims for camaraderie along with the Olympic podium

By Mary Ann Lickteig

A late afternoon snowfall dusted her hat and shoulders as Olympian Julia Kern stood in the meadow at Huntington’s Sleepy Hollow Inn talking cross-country skiing with 100 local kids.

Kern, who is 28 and lives in Richmond, skied with a club when she was growing up because her high school didn’t have a team. “You guys are really lucky,” she told the young athletes, who ski for Mount Mansfield and Champlain Valley union high schools and in the Bill Koch League program at Sleepy Hollow. Kern answered their questions about her training regimen, warm-up routine and how many pairs of skis she owns — “I don’t technically own any of them,” she said, but racing on the FIS Cross-Country World Cup circuit, she has between 40 and 50 from which to choose. Then she signed autographs on various articles of clothing, in addition to the posters and postcards she had brought.

Williston fifth grader Nico Coleman asked for signatures on his coat, buff, a poster, a postcard and his classic skis. “And I want it on this one, too,” he said after Kern autographed the first ski. Seemingly unpressed for time despite the fact that she was flying to Europe three days later, Kern happily obliged.

She laughed with the kids, asked them how their season was going and replied to each autograph request with, “Yeah, of course.”

For Kern, the best part of skiing has always been sharing it with other people.

Before she could walk, her parents pulled her on a sled. When she was 15 months old, she started skiing and gives much credit to her grandparents for teaching her. Her grandmother bribed her with gummy bears and sang to her so she would ski to a rhythm.

Kern’s parents immigrated to the U.S. from Germany. She was born in Berkeley, Calif., and grew up in Waltham, Mass., but the rest of her relatives live in Germany. For years, Kern and her entire family — her sister, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins — skied together there on Christmas morning.

At home in Massachusetts, Kern skied on the Weston Ski Track, 15 kilometers of trails on a Weston, Mass., golf course. She played with an Olympics Swimming Champion Barbie and dreamed of going to the Olympics herself — but not necessarily as a skier. She also ran track, swam, and played soccer and basketball; the latter was her first love. Her mother, Dorothee, was a captain of the German national basketball team.

Julia Kern set her sights on the WNBA. Then, when she was 14, she competed in a ski race in Estonia. “I thought it was pretty cool to get to travel internationally to ski,” she told her Sleepy Hollow audience. She played other sports after that but focused on skiing.

At 17, just after her 2015 high school graduation, Kern made the U.S. Ski Team. She studied economics at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., while racing on the World Cup circuit. In 2019 in Slovenia, Kern, then 22, finished third in the freestyle sprint, becoming the youngest American to podium in a World Cup race.

Now a six-time World Cup medalist, Kern won a bronze medal at the 2023 World Championships and a silver in 2025. At the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing, she placed 18th in the sprint freestyle and 53rd in the skiathlon.

She trains with SMS T2 Team, the professional cross-country ski team at Stratton Mountain that includes three other Olympics-bound skiers: Americans Jessie Diggins and Ben Ogden and Canadian Rémi Drolet.

At Sleepy Hollow that January afternoon, kids weren’t shy about stepping up to the microphone to ask Kern questions. “Have you won any gold,” the first asked, “and if so, how many?”

If you don’t have people to celebrate it with and you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, it’s not going to be that fun.
Julia Kern

“Great question,” Kern said amid audience chuckles. “I have not yet won any gold.” There are six women’s races at the Olympics, so only six people can win gold medals, she explained. When you get to the top in ski racing, “It’s really hard to win,” she said, “and as fun as that is, if you don’t have people to celebrate it with and you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, it’s not going to be that fun.”

After the questions and autographs, while Kern sat talking, Nico came running back toting a pair of skis. “I also want my skate skis signed,” he said.

“Oh, yeah,” Kern said, and she pulled out a silver marker — perfect for the mostly black skis, she and Nico agreed. With that, he was all set. As Nico turned to leave, Kern wished him luck and dispensed what may have been her best advice of the day: “Have fun.”

Balancing Act

Landgrove Nordic skier Ben Ogden welds, knits and wins races

By Mary Ann Lickteig

Gus Schumacher (left) and Ben Ogden Credit: Courtesy of International Ski and Snowboard Federation.

At the Beijing Olympics four years ago, race start lists looked surreal to Ben Ogden. His name appeared alongside the world’s best cross-country skiers — Norwegian star Johannes Klæbo and Italy’s Federico Pellegrino — “all these guys who have been on World Championship podiums,” Ogden said. “They’ve been on Olympic podiums. They’ve won the podium in numerous, countless World Cups.”

He was a 21-year-old University of Vermont student from tiny Landgrove, Vt., who had grown up idolizing them. “I didn’t 100 percent think of myself as being one of that group,” he said.

But now it’s 2026. This time, Ogden knows he belongs. When the New York Times asked if American men can end a 50-year drought and win an Olympic cross-country skiing medal, it answered its own question by naming two athletes most likely to do it: Alaskan Gus Schumacher and the 25-year-old, six-foot-four mustachioed Vermonter. Ogden was the fastest male skier age 23 or under on the FIS Cross-Country World Cup circuit in the 2022-23 season. He has won three World Cup podiums, the most recent last Friday, when he and Schumacher placed third in Goms, Switzerland, to win the U.S. men’s first team sprint World Cup podium. Ogden is ranked among the top five sprinters in the world.

He will face his idols again at these Olympics. “They’re still legends, and I still give them the utmost respect,” he said. But in the past four years, he has proven to himself that he can contend with them. When online publication FasterSkier asked him in November to name his biggest goal this season, he answered unequivocally: “An Olympic medal, for sure.”

Ogden was destined to ski. His father, John, had skied at Middlebury College and loved the sport — more deeply than even his wife, Andrea, had realized when they married. The family moved from Seattle to Landgrove, population 177, when she was pregnant with Ben, their second child. Boxes weren’t even unpacked, she said, when her husband announced one day that he was “gonna go to practice.”

John had signed on to coach West River Sports’ Nordic Ski Club in Londonderry, a member of the Bill Koch Youth Ski League. Ben and his sisters joined when they were old enough.

At home, their dad groomed the field around their house for skiing.

There was certainly no growing up as an Ogden child without skiing.
Ben Ogden

“There was certainly no growing up as an Ogden child without skiing,” Ben said. “That was just what we did.”

Nothing about Ben’s childhood, however, indicated to his mother that he would one day ski in the Olympics. He was a “happy-go-lucky, goofy kind of a kid … just having a lot of fun,” she said. He and his sisters and their two cousins who lived across the road built ski hills off of the cousins’ front porch and jumps in the yard, with which they entertained themselves for hours.

Ben; his sisters, Katharine and Charlotte; and all of their friends ski raced. The Ogden kids attended high school at Stratton Mountain School, one of the premier ski academies in the country. But his parents didn’t pressure him to race, Ben said.

“We were never obsessed with results,” Andrea said. Driving home from a race, she was more likely to ask her daughters how they felt about their ponytail swing than dissecting the way they attacked a hill. John, who died of cancer in 2023, took the same approach, his wife said. It was less about teaching the kids how to ski than modeling skiing as a fun pursuit.

Still, all three competed in college, Ben at the University of Vermont. “He definitely skis with his heart, and he enjoys it,” said UVM head Nordic coach Patrick Weaver, who coached Ben at UVM for five years and remains on his coaching team. “He’s just a really gritty skier,” Weaver continued. “He just goes out and gives it his all.”

Ben completed his college career with 17 Eastern Intercollegiate Ski Association wins and three individual NCAA titles. Weaver, who helps Ben develop his overarching plan, attributes his success partly to the fact that he has interests outside of skiing. The mechanical engineering graduate is a self-taught welder and mechanic who is restoring a 1973 Series III Land Rover and designing a mini timber-frame sauna.

“Being in the ski racing mindset, 24-7, 365 days a year, can be really, really exhausting,” he said. The projects provide something else to focus on. His latest: knitting. Thanks to YouTube tutorials and the encouragement of Minnesota biathlete Luci Anderson, Ben has nearly completed a merino wool sweater, which he displayed during a video call. “I’m working on the last arm,” he said.

Guilford native Bill Koch won the American men’s last cross-country skiing Olympic medal, a silver in the 30-kilometer race in 1976. Fellow Vermonter Ogden could be the next, Weaver said: “On the right day, yes.”

Though not favored to medal, Ben has the ability, said Weaver, a two-time Olympian himself and the guy Ben calls when he’s struggling. Weaver won’t travel to Italy due to his coaching responsibilities, but Ben’s mother and about 30 others who live in and around Landgrove will be in Tesero, Italy, to cheer him on.

In his conversations with Ben in the run-up to the Games, Weaver has tried to downplay the spectacle of the Olympics. Focus on the things that affect your race, Weaver advises. It really is just another race.

12 Vermont Olympians to Watch

Vermont is sending an impressive cohort of athletes to the 2026 Winter Olympics. Here are several to keep an eye on over the next two weeks. More may join them as teams are finalized.

Nina O’Brien

Age: 28
Sport: Alpine skiing
Vermont connection: Attended Burke Mountain Academy
Fun facts: After suffering a serious crash at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing that left her with leg and foot injuries requiring surgery, O’Brien stunned the skiing world by returning to competition just nine months later, completing a slalom run in the first FIS Alpine Ski World Cup race of the 2022-23 season.

Sean Doherty

Age: 30
Sport: Biathlon
Vermont connection: Serves in the Vermont National Guard and trains at Ethan Allen Firing Range in Jericho
Fun facts: An avid hunter, archer, fisherman and woodworker who lives off the grid, the New Hampshire native and four-time Olympian took up biathlon, a sport that combines cross-country skiing and riflery, at age 12. At 18, he was the youngest member of the 2014 U.S. Olympic Team.

Mac Forehand

Age: 24
Sport: Freestyle skiing
Vermont connection: Winhall native
Fun facts: Forehand is a six-time X Games medalist who competed at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. Forehand made history in 2019 when, at just 17, he won the prestigious Slopestyle Crystal Globe, awarded to the top-ranked male and female skiers and snowboarders on the FIS Freestyle Ski World Cup circuit. The highflier is also a self-described World War II history nerd.

Ryan Cochran-Siegle

Age: 33
Sport: Alpine skiing
Vermont connection: Grew up in Starksboro in the third generation of Vermont’s “Skiing Cochrans” Alpine skiing dynasty
Fun facts: One of six Cochran Olympians, Cochran-Siegle won a silver medal in the super G in the 2022 Olympics and now heads to his third Olympic Games. The son of 1972 slalom gold-medal winner Barbara Ann Cochran still trains at the Richmond ski area his grandparents started in 1961. His lone World Cup win, in the super G in 2020, came at the 2026 Olympic venue, Stelvio Ski Centre in Bormio.

Chloé Aurard-Bushee

Age: 26
Sport: Hockey, for France
Vermont connection: Attended Vermont Academy
Fun facts: The Villard-de-Lans, France, native’s identical twin sister also played hockey at Vermont Academy. Aurard-Bushee ranks fourth in Northeastern University history for career points scored, 204, and tied for third in assists, with 115. Vermont Academy teammate and current VA hockey coach Maddie Paydos said, somewhat jokingly, that all of her goals at the school were assists from Aurard-Bushee: “She had this superpower of just being able to find you and set you up perfectly every time.”

Julia Mesplède

Age: 23
Sport: Hockey, for France
Vermont connection: University of Vermont senior and Vermont Academy alum
Fun facts: The five-foot-two forward from Bordeaux, France, scored three goals against fifth-ranked Cornell in a pair of games for UVM in November. She tallied 13 goals and 11 assists in her single year as a Vermont Academy Wildcat.

Kristýna Kaltounková

Age: 23
Sport: Hockey, for Czechia
Vermont connection: Vermont Academy
Fun facts: “Kalty” and Chloé Aurard-Bushee were teammates when Vermont Academy won the 2018 New England Preparatory School Athletic Council Championship. In five seasons at Colgate University, the forward recorded 233 points in 171 games, the second-highest career point total in Colgate history, and became the first player from outside North America to be selected first overall in the Professional Women’s Hockey League draft when the New York Sirens signed her to a three-year commitment in 2025.

Margie Freed

Age: 28
Sport: Biathlon
Vermont connection: University of Vermont and Craftsbury Green Racing Project
Fun facts: The Minnesota native, who started cross-country skiing in sixth grade and competed for UVM, joined Craftsbury Green in 2020 as a Nordic skier. Friends there said, “Hey, come try shooting with us,” Freed told Minnesota Public Radio. She never stopped. She transferred to the biathlon team last year and makes her Olympic debut. Her least favorite part of being an athlete: clothing management.

Luke Brown

Age: 30
Sport: Biathlon
Vermont connection: Craftsbury Green Racing Project
Fun facts: As the youngest of three brothers, Brown’s bio on US Biathlon’s website says, “Luke learned about competition, tenacity, and the quest to keep up from a young age.” The Dartmouth College 2018 physics grad from St. Paul, Minn., earned two NCAA All-American skiing titles and credits watching German biathlete Sven Fischer race without gloves in the 2002 Olympics for sparking his interest in the sport.

Jack Young

Age: 23
Sport: Cross-country skiing
Vermont connection: Jay native, Craftsbury Green Racing Project
Fun facts: Young was a high school quarterback and baseball player when he began to get serious about cross-country skiing — and earned five state championship titles. In Davos, Switzerland, last month, he won a career-best fourth place in his first-ever World Cup skate sprint final. He didn’t break into the FIS Cross-Country World Cup, the US Ski Team posted on Threads; “he stormed onto it.”

Paula Moltzan

Age: 31
Sport: Alpine skiing
Vermont connection: Skied for University of Vermont; lives in Waitsfield
Fun facts: Minnesota native Moltzan joined the U.S. Ski Team just after her 17th birthday and was the first U.S. woman to win a slalom gold medal at the Junior World Championships. Last week, she won her fourth World Cup podium this season. She won bronze in the giant slalom at the World Championships last year. Husband Ryan Mooney is her ski tech.

Laurence St-Germain

Age: 31
Sport: Alpine skiing, for Canada
Vermont connection: University of Vermont
Fun facts: The Québec City native heads to her third Olympics hoping to top her prior Olympic best, a 2018 ninth-place finish in the mixed team event. The 2019 UVM computer science grad became the first skier in school history to sweep the slalom and giant slalom titles at the NCAA championships. She beat Mikaela Shiffrin at the 2023 world championships to win the slalom gold.

Correction, January 28, 2026: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Ben Ritchie of Waitsfield would be competing in the Olympics as an Alpine skier. Because his qualifying race occurred after the U.S. Ski Team’s deadline, he will not be allowed to compete.

The original print version of this article was headlined “Pedal to the Medal | Meet the Vermont-connected Olympians who are going for gold at the 2026 Winter Games”

This article appears in January 28 • 2026.