Kimberley Bos of the Netherlands and Matt Weston of Great Britain will go into the Milan Cortina Games as reigning world champions in skeleton.
Mystique Ro goes into the Olympic season as the first American to win a world championships medal in skeleton since 2013.
And Ro and Austin Florian will go into the Olympic debut of the mixed team event as the reigning world champions.
“I think there’s a lot of expectations and pressure,” going into Milan Cortina, Ro said. “It’s weird because (the team event) takes some pressure off, but it also adds a little bit of pressure.”
Bos and Weston, both owners of World Cup season titles, consolidated their places as 2026 Olympic medal favorites by claiming individual world championship titles Friday in Lake Placid, New York.
Bos, the 2022 Olympic bronze medalist, prevailed by 67 hundredths of a second over Ro combining times from two Thursday heats and two Friday heats.
Bos is the only Dutch athlete in a sliding sport (bobsled, luge, skeleton) to win an Olympic or World Championships medal and now has one of every color (2022 Olympic bronze, 2023 World Championships silver).
“I’ve been close so many times,” Bos told Dutch broadcaster NOS, according to a translation. “This gives me a lot of confidence for the Games.”
Ro improved from fourth place after the first two heats to earn silver by eight hundredths over Czech Anna Fernstaedt.
“It’s a really great feeling, just to be able to do it in front of a home crowd and just have the support,” Ro said. “You feel, like, distant (on) social media (with) people’s well wishes, but to have it in front of you and in person is such a surreal feeling.”
Ro, second-oldest of 11 children, competed in track and field for Queens University in Charlotte, graduating in 2016.
She began sliding internationally in skeleton in 2017, debuted on the top-level World Cup in January 2023 and in March 2024 became the first American to win a World Cup race in eight years (also in Lake Placid). She ranked 12th on the World Cup circuit this season.
Nicole Silveira, a registered nurse who moved to Canada around age 7, finished fourth Friday. She nearly became the first Brazilian to win a world championships medal in any Winter Olympic event.
Earlier, Weston won his second world title by a whopping 1.90 seconds over countryman Marcus Wyatt combining times from four runs.
It’s the second-largest world championships margin of victory after Weston’s coach, Martins Dukurs of Latvia, won by 2.08 seconds in 2012, the last time Lake Placid hosted worlds.
“As a collective, we’re pretty good at winning big, and we’re hoping to continue that into Milan,” Weston said.
Weston has won two of the three world titles since placing a disappointing 15th at the 2022 Olympics. He considered quitting the sport after those Games, according to the BBC.
“I’ve already been thinking about (Milan Cortina) for the past, like, four years,” he told The Associated Press on Friday. “As soon as we got off the plane from Beijing, the targets were set for Milan.”
Weston and Wyatt recorded the first British one-two in any World Championships final in a Winter Olympic event in recent memory. Britain has never gone one-two at the Winter Olympics. The last British man to win individual Winter Olympic gold was figure skater Robin Cousins at the 1980 Lake Placid Games.
“We both know that each other are the ones we want to beat the most,” Weston said of Wyatt. “I know if I beat Marcus, I’m in a pretty good position.”
German Axel Jungk earned bronze Friday by eight hundredths over Vladyslav Heraskevych, who recorded the best skeleton result in Ukraine’s history.
After he finished, Heraskevych draped himself in a Ukrainian flag signed by soldiers who represented the country in the Invictus Games, according to the AP.
Florian was sixth, the best finish for an American man at a major championship since Matthew Antoine took bronze at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
Then on Saturday night, Ro and Florian became the first non-Germans to win a world title in the mixed team event, which debuted in 2020. One man and one woman from the same nation each take a run, and their times are combined.
It’s the first world title in any skeleton event for the U.S. since Katie Uhlaender won the women’s title in 2012 in Lake Placid.
NBC Sports’ Dan Meyer contributed to this report from Lake Placid.
