LIVIGNO, Italy —The U.S. Olympic team won its record-breaking 11th gold medal of the Winter Games on Saturday, with at least one more good possibility when its men’s hockey team wraps up the action on closing day with the title game against Canada.
The trio of Kaila Kuhn, Connor Curran and Chris Lillis gave the U.S. the record by capturing the American team’s second straight title in mixed aerials.
The 11th gold breaks the country’s mark set at the last Olympics on U.S. soil — in Salt Lake City in 2002, which has long stood out as a turning point for a winter sports program that had struggled over previous decades.
This could end up being another turning point, not so much for the sheer number of medals but the variety of places from which they came: Twelve of the 17 sports disciplines represented in the Winter Games produced medals for the U.S.
“Our focus and our strategy has always been about breadth,” said Sarah Hirshland, the CEO of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee. “We want to win in everything. We want to make every sport better. Some could argue there are countries that go a mile deep in certain sports and really dominate. Our goal has been to improve Winter sport across the board.”
The aerials medal, then a bronze in speedskating from Mia Manganello later in the day, lifted the United States to 31 overall for the Olympics with one day left.
That’s second to Norway, which had a record 18 gold medals and 40 overall through Saturday evening. Seventy-two percent of the golds came in the endurance sports of cross country, biathlon and Nordic combined. The biggest gold-medal hauls for the United States came in four disciplines—two each (18 percent) in Alpine skiing, freestyle skiing, figure skating and speedskating.
There are 38 more medal events on the program this year than there were in 2002. A lot of the new events have come at the snowpark—halfpipe, slopestyle and big air—which used to be America’s domain but has now been taken over by Japan, which, for instance, won nine medals in snowboarding, compared to two for the United States.
“We stated we wanted to be a podium nation,” Fin Kirwan, the USOPC’s chief of Olympic sport, said of the U.S. goal of being top-three on the medals table. “We said it will likely take 30 medals and we got after it. The athletes delivered on their potential and, by turn, we hit the record on gold-medal performance, which shows that our very best were able to execute.”
Here are some looks and links to the rest of the 11 U.S. gold medal winners:
Alex Ferreira, Freeskiing
Halfpipe skier rounds out his Olympic collection — gold, silver, bronze. Back home, he’ll keep going with streamer “Hotdog Hans” where he dressed up like an 80-something ski sensation.
Breezy Johnson, Alpine skiing
Her long journey included a knee injury four years ago on the same mountain where she won the gold.
Elizabeth Lemley, Moguls
Nicknamed “Lizard,” she joins a long line of great U.S. moguls skiers, including 2010 champion Hannah Kearney and her teammate, Jaelin Kauf, who now has three silver medals.
Alysa Liu, Figure Skating
The 20-year-old stepped away after the 2022 Beijing Games, rediscovered her love for figure skating and happily claimed the title.
Elena Myers Taylor, Bobsled
At her sixth Olympics, she finally broke through, becoming the oldest Winter Olympian to win gold at age 41.
Mikaela Shiffrin, Alpine Skiing
The most winning skier of all time cashes in at the Olympics with slalom gold after a tear-stained shutout four years ago.
Jordan Stolz, Speedskating (2)
Joined Eric Heiden at Lake Placid in 1980 as only the second man to capture the 500 and 1,000.
US figure Skating Team
Liu, Amber Glenn and Ilia Malinin are among the members of a team that brings home second straight gold; the last one took two years to capture after a Russian doping saga.
US Women’s Hockey Team
A tense thriller, highlighted by Hilary Knight’s equalizer with 2:04 left, then Megan Keller’s winner in overtime.
By Eddie Pells, The Associated Press
