MILAN—As Mikaela Shiffrin reached the bottom of the Cortina d’Ampezzo slalom run last week, she looked up, checked the time and realized that nearly eight years of Olympic heartbreak were over: The greatest skier of all time had won another gold medal.
What she couldn’t have realized on that afternoon in the Dolomites was that her success would touch off a stunning gold rush for the rest of Team USA.
Over the next five days, the Americans flipped their Winter Games from a potential bust into its best-ever showing. It was a glorious stretch that produced the indelible moments of this Winter Olympics for Team USA: the overtime heroics of the hockey teams , the cathartic redemption of Mikaela Shiffrin , the sheer, unbridled joy of Alysa Liu .
And when the flurry was over, Team USA went home from the Milan Cortina Games with an all-time high of 12 gold medals, three more than it had won at every Winter Olympics since 2006.
That haul was still an entire Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo behind the mighty Norwegians , whose 18 golds shattered the Winter Games record they set four years ago. But it was more than host nation Italy, speedskating medal factory Netherlands, the combined total of Canada and China—and enough for the U.S. to finish in second place on the medal table.
“I’m just so proud to represent the greatest country in the world,” hockey forward Matthew Tkachuk said. “The only sad part is it ends after this.”
Until that late run, the Americans had fallen so far off the pace that it looked like their gold-medal tally might not even crack double digits. All over Italy, the U.S. was coming up short in events it had reasonably expected to win, including ones with stars like Shiffrin , figure skating “quad god” Ilia Malinin , cross-country skier Jessie Diggins, snowboarder Chloe Kim and ice dancers Madison Chock and Evan Bates .
Halfway through the Games, the idea of the Americans meeting oddsmakers’ expectations and leaving with a dozen golds sounded as realistic as getting a 6 p.m. dinner reservation in Milan.
But the second week might as well have been a different Olympics.
After four long days when Americans other than speedskater Jordan Stolz combined for zero gold medals, the turnaround began on the monobob track with Elana Meyers Taylor . The 41-year-old mother had won silver and bronzes at the past four Winter Games and wondered if her best shot at becoming an Olympic champion was behind her. But when her moment came, she won her first gold by precisely .04 seconds.
“Lots of ups and downs,” she said. “And you have to be able to ride the storm.”
The U.S. women’s hockey team was almost caught in a flash storm of its own last Thursday, as it sat just two minutes from being on the wrong side of a massive upset against Canada. That’s when Olympic legend Hilary Knight came to the rescue with the tying goal and Megan Keller finished the job in overtime. She pulled off a ridiculous deke, flipped the puck toward the goal and—gold.
Meanwhile, a few kilometers away, another American took the ice to skate for gold in the signature event of the Winter Games.
When it was her turn, Alysa Liu nailed the most blissful program in Olympic history. In a sparkly gold dress, the 20-year-old floated above the pressure, bopped along to the music of Donna Summer and glided her way to stardom—and the top of the podium.
After her final bow, she gracefully skated to the nearest camera and perfectly captured the turning tide of America’s Olympics.
“That’s what I’m f—ing talking about!” she screamed.
It was no coincidence that the gold medals that changed an entire team’s fortunes last Thursday went to women. For the sixth consecutive Summer or Winter Olympics, the U.S. won more golds and overall medals in women’s events than in men’s. One reason is that the gap in funding and infrastructure between the U.S. and the rest of the world is even starker in women’s sports than it is on the men’s side. The result is that Team USA brought the largest delegation of any country—and 115 of the 232 athletes were women.
The final exclamation point, however, came from a bunch of guys who were missing more than a few teeth.
As the men’s hockey team won its first gold medal since 1980, the U.S. said arrivederci to the Games with the one thing that could unite America in 2026: beating Canada.
Write to Joshua Robinson at Joshua.Robinson@wsj.com and Ben Cohen at ben.cohen@wsj.com
