This week in Olympic and Paralympic sports features the Grand Prix Final — the top figure skating competition before the Milan Cortina Games — as well as the return of The Snow League.
The Grand Prix Final from Thursday through Saturday in Nagoya, Japan, includes the top six per discipline from the six-event Grand Prix Series in October and November, making it a mini preview of the Olympic competition. For the first time, the Grand Prix Final features every reigning World Championships medalist.
Ilia Malinin is the biggest favorite at the Final. He puts a two-year, 12-event win streak on the line against a field that includes 2022 Olympic silver medalist Yuma Kagiyama of Japan. In three starts this season, the “Quadgod” posted the world’s top three scores by a wide margin.
Alysa Liu, the 2025 World champion, and Amber Glenn, the 2024 Grand Prix Final champion, will see where they stack up against the world’s highest-scoring skaters this season, all from Japan: three-time world champ Kaori Sakamoto, Ami Nakai and Mone Chiba.
Madison Chock and Evan Bates can add their third consecutive Final ice dance title to their three consecutive world titles. The married couple faces a new challenge in Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron of France, who are in their first season together. Like Chock and Bates, the French won their two Grand Prix regular season starts. The two couples who train under the same coaches in Montreal go head-to-head for the first time.
In pairs, reigning world champions Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara of Japan were the lone team to win both of their Grand Prix regular season starts, but Anastasiia Metelkina and Luka Berulava of Georgia own the world’s best score this season.
In Alpine skiing, Mikaela Shiffrin, who won the last four World Cup slaloms dating to last season and already qualified for her fourth Olympics, races giant slaloms in Tremblant, Canada, on Saturday and Sunday.
Shiffrin has called her GS a “work in progress.” She punctured oblique muscles in a November 2024 GS crash, missed two months and while training to return to the event was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder last winter. In five GS races since coming back, her best finish is fourth.
In addition to being the best slalom skier in history, Shiffrin is also an Olympic gold medalist in GS, plus owns a women’s record 22 World Cup victories in the event. She needs to post strong GS results over the next two months to earn a high start number for the Olympics to improve her medal chances in the event. Currently, the top GS skiers are Alice Robinson of New Zealand and Julia Scheib of Austria.
Swiss Marco Odermatt headlines the Stifel Birds of Prey Men’s Alpine Skiing World Cup in Beaver Creek, Colorado.
Odermatt, a lion enthusiast who has shared commercials with Roger Federer, was last season’s World Cup leader in the downhill, super-G and giant slalom, plus won the first super-G and giant slalom races this season. He’s also an Olympic medal contender in the team combined, giving him the potential to become the first man to win four alpine medals at a single Games.
Aleksander Aamodt Kilde of Norway a two-time World Cup downhill season champion, will race his first downhill since a January 2024 crash where he sustained a severe right leg laceration and torn left shoulder ligaments. Kilde, who is engaged to Shiffrin, had his first race back of any kind in a super-G last Thursday in Copper Mountain, Colorado, where he placed 24th.
The Snow League, a halfpipe circuit for snowboarders and freeskiers founded by three-time Olympic gold medalist Shaun White, debuted last March in Aspen, Colorado, and holds its first international event this weekend in China.
Ski halfpipe includes three-time Olympic slopestyle medalist Nick Goepper, who established himself as a medal contender in his new event by winning last January’s X Games.
Eileen Gu, who won two golds and a silver at a home Olympics in 2022, competes in her first halfpipe event in 11 months, having won 14 of her last 15 FIS-level pipe starts dating to 2021.
In snowboard halfpipe, 2022 gold medalist Ayumu Hirano of Japan builds up toward a likely Olympic showdown with Australian Scotty James. In the women’s field, American Maddie Mastro competes after spending much of the summer recovering after dislocating an elbow in June.
The speed skating World Cup resumes in Heerenveen, Netherlands.
Jordan Stolz, the 2023 and 2024 World champion in the 500m, 1000m and 1500m, had a strong start to the season with six wins in eight races across those distances over the first two World Cups. Stolz, bidding to become the second American to win three gold medals at a single Winter Olympics, added his first World Cup podium in the mass start (third place in Calgary at the most recent World Cup), potentially a fourth event for him in Milan.
Like Stolz, Erin Jackson met Olympic qualifying criteria with a podium finish at each of the first two World Cups. Jackson, who in 2022 became the first Black woman to win individual Winter Olympic gold, ranks second in the world this season in the 500m behind Dutchwoman Femke Kok, who is undefeated in the event since February 2024.
The U.S. has more Olympic medal contenders: Casey Dawson in the men’s 5000m, Mia Manganello in the women’s mass start and the men’s team pursuit (including Dawson), all World Cup winners so far this season.
The cross-country skiing World Cup moves to Trondheim, Norway.
Jessie Diggins, the most decorated U.S. cross-country skier with an Olympic medal of every color, had a solid start last weekend to her final season before retirement, including a runner-up finish.
This weekend’s races include the first 10km freestyle of the season. At the Olympics, that event is likely Diggins’ best shot at winning the first individual Olympic gold medal in U.S. cross-country skiing history. She won the last world title in the event in 2023.
Norwegian Johannes Høsflot Klæbo races in his hometown, where he won six gold medals in six events at last season’s World Championships. No athlete has won six medals of any color at a single Winter Olympics. Klæbo won his 99th career World Cup race last weekend. He and Canadian moguls skier Mikaël Kingsbury are now both on 99, each looking this weekend to be the first man to win 100 individual World Cups across all winter sports.
The first World Cup of the season for aerials and moguls will be in Ruka, Finland, where the U.S. has several Olympic medal contenders. The headliner is Jaelin Kauf, who already qualified for the Games. Kauf, the 2022 Olympic moguls silver medalist, won last season’s World Cup overall title, plus claimed the World Championships title in dual moguls, which makes its Olympic debut in 2026, giving moguls skiers two events at the Games.
Australian Jakara Anthony, the 2022 Olympic moguls gold medalist, missed most of last season due to injury. She’s expected to return in Ruka and could be Kauf’s biggest competition come the Games.
In aerials, the U.S. boasts reigning world champion Kaila Kuhn and two-time individual world silver medalist Quinn Dehlinger. Both were also part of a world championship-winning mixed aerials team last season.
In sled hockey, the U.S. builds up to March’s Paralympics by going for its 10th consecutive Para Hockey Cup title. Declan Farmer, the national team’s all-time leading scorer, already led the Americans to wins over Czechia on Sunday and China on Tuesday.
Next up is rival Canada in the last preliminary round game Wednesday night with a likely rematch in Saturday’s final. The U.S. won the last four Paralympic titles, including victories over Canada in the last two gold-medal games.
