Olympic Stars: Malinin, Klaebo & Gu – Italy 2026

The Dutch focus during the Winter Games in Italy – without wanting to neglect other sports – is mainly focused on long track speed skating and short track speed skating. But of course there is much more to enjoy on the ice and in the snow.

Who should pay extra attention to? Who are expected to do great deeds? A small selection from the range of foreign stars.

The Norwegian Johannes Høsflot Klaebo is considered one of the best cross-country skiers ever, and perhaps the very best. The latter may seem a bold statement, considering that his legendary compatriot Bjørn Daehlie is in third place on the list of most successful Olympic medalists.

Daehli collected eight gold medals, but 29-year-old Klaebo also has five and can significantly increase that number in the coming Games. Last year he was untouchable at the World Championships in Trondheim by winning the title in all six events, two of which were team-based.

Grandpa Klaebo must not have foreseen that when he gave his 2-year-old grandson skis as a gift. But Johannes turned out to have not only talent, but also an enormous dose of willpower and work ethic. This combination quickly brought ‘De Komeet’ great successes.

Klaebo, since 2018 the youngest man ever to win a gold Olympic cross-country skiing medal, is not shy about publicizing his successes on social media and also exploiting them commercially, but he can afford it: his popularity knows virtually no bounds in his own country.

The blond Norwegian with the mat in his neck, who has grown from a formidable sprinter into an all-rounder who can hardly be beaten over long distances, knows what is expected of him in the coming weeks.

She was already in the spotlight four years ago and that will soon be no different in Italy. In 2022, it was initially mainly about her switch from a few years earlier: the California-born freestyle skier was going to compete for China, her mother’s country of birth, from 2019 onwards.

They didn’t like it that much in the US, but they did in Asia and especially China. After all, the 2022 Winter Games were in Beijing and with Eileen – or Ailing in Mandarin – the organizing country suddenly had a promising top athlete.

It turned out that 18-year-old Gu won gold in the big air and halfpipe and silver in slopestyle. It only benefited her popularity, which has risen to great heights via Instagram (more than two million followers) but also Chinese social media such as Weibo.

But she is also making good progress outside the snow: modeling only became more lucrative after her Olympic successes. She has also had great sponsorship contracts from an early age. According to Forbes, in 2023 she would be the second highest-paid athlete in the world among all tennis players.

And in the meantime, the winner of a Laureus Award in 2023 (Action Athlete of the Year) is also studying quantum physics at the prestigious Stanford University, although she has put that on the back burner over the past year.

Gu, who mainly focuses on halfpipe and slopestyle in Italy, has the most World Cup victories to her name with twenty. She also won the last two before the Games.

As the son of two Olympic figure skaters – Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov represented Uzbekistan in Nagano in 1998 – the sport was naturally deeply rooted in his genes. But his parents, who emigrated to the United States in 1998, would not have suspected that Ilia would reach such great heights.

Literally almost, besides. Malinin was only 17 years old when he became the first person ever to successfully perform a quadruple Axel, the most difficult jump in figure skating, in a competition at the US International Classic. It wouldn’t just be that one time. And he’s still the only one.

The now 21-year-old American has two world record points to his name and extended his world title with force majeure last March. The ‘Quad God’ (referring to his quadruple – quadruple – jumps) showed a freestyle in Boston that included six – of the planned seven – quadruple jumps and a back somersault, all perfectly executed.

Malinin also introduced the choreographic move where he uses a butterfly-like run-up to throw himself into the air and perform a single sideways spin. He calls this maneuver the Raspberry Twist, because his last name is derived from it malinaraspberry in Russian.