The first gold medal to be awarded at the inaugural Winter Olympics is housed at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. U.S. speedskater Charles Jewtraw earned it at the 1924 Games in Chamonix, France, when he completed the men’s 500-meter race in 44 seconds. The win inspired fellow Lake Placid, New York, speedskater […]
Of all nine gold medals captured by the United States at the 2018 Winter Olympics, Team USA’s win in men’s curling might have been the most improbable. History was not on the Americans’ side. Between the men’s and women’s teams, the U.S. had won only once at the World Curling Championships since 1978 (a women’s […]
Maame Biney was the first Black woman to make it onto the U.S. Olympic Speedskating team. But she almost didn’t make it to Beijing this year after working with a coach she found abusive. In this episode of The Mental Games, Biney opens up about struggling with her mental health and how she regained her […]
Mikaela Shiffrin entered the starting gates trailing by a little more than half a second on the last run of her final slalom race before the 2022 Beijing Olympics. A challenging past few months had compounded an agonizing few years since Pyeongchang, a stretch of time so disorienting that America’s preeminent alpine skier, a blur […]