The 2026 Winter Olympics commenced earlier this month as athletes from 92 nations arrived in Italy to compete for gold.
In total, 2,871 athletes qualified for this year’s games to compete in the 116 different events from Feb. 6 through Feb. 22.
While there are a handful of athletes with ties to North Carolina, the only actual NC native competing at this year’s games is Kayden Beasley, a 19-year-old sled hockey paralympian hailing from Coats.
Beasley began playing sled hockey in 2019 with the Carolina Hurricanes Sled Hockey team and has since competed internationally, actually capturing gold with the USA men’s team at the 2025 World Championships.
The Paralympics will kick off a bit later in the year, running from March 6-15.
North Carolina does however boast a pair of Winter Olympians with collegiate ties to the state in Eunice Lee, who currently studies at Duke, and Mystique Ro, a graduate from Queens University of Charlotte.
Lee is a pre-med student who will be competing in both speedskating and short track speedskating.
The 21-year-old actually qualified for the 2022 Beijing Olympics at just 17, but served as a backup for the relay team that year and did not actually compete.
Now, she’ll look to capture a medal herself for Team USA.
Ro, who was a track and field athlete in college, is competing in skeleton this year, which she started training for in 2016.
The 31 year old won a silver medal in women’s individual skeleton at the 2025 World Championships and gold in the team mixed skeleton.
This is her first Olympics.
There’s also an NC State connection at this year’s Winter Olympics as well as Terry Gannon, a member of the 1983 men’s basketball title team, serves as one of the primary broadcasters for NBC.
Gannon hosted the Opening Ceremony and will be on the call for the figure skating events.
But by far the biggest representation for North Carolina will come from those with connections to the Carolina Hurricanes, Raleigh’s NHL franchise.
This is the first time NHL athletes have been allowed back at the Olympic games since 2014 — the league itself refused to allow players to go in 2018 and 2022 — and the Hurricanes sent five players from their current roster.
Amongst those are team leading scorer Seth Jarvis (Team Canada), alternate captains Sebastian Aho (Team Finland) and Jaccob Slavin (Team USA), goaltender Frederik Andersen (Team Denmark) and newest offseason signee Nikolaj Ehlers (Team Denmark).
“The Olympics has been a dream of mine for a long time,” Aho said. “Growing up and watching the Finnish National Team playing, kind of my ultimate goal was winning Olympic gold. Obviously now, winning a Stanley Cup is my biggest dream, but having an Olympic gold would still be something special.”
While Aho, Andersen and Ehlers were named to their team’s respective Olympic rosters back in the summer (each team got to name an initial six players), Slavin and Jarvis had to wait a bit longer to learn that they would be Olympians.
Even despite a season plagued by injuries, Slavin got the call at the start of the new year from Team USA general manager Bill Guerin, but for Jarvis, that wait was even longer.
The 24-year-old forward didn’t actually make the initial cut for Team Canada, but was instead the latest NHL player to be named to an Olympic roster.
He found out just last Thursday, two days before Canada’s charter plane was set to leave for Italy, that he would be going to Milan as an injury replacement for Tampa Bay Lightning center Brayden Point who was ruled out due to a knee injury.
“I knew I was in the running to be one of the guys up and you never know what direction they’re going to go, but I’m obviously super happy that it went my direction and again, just can’t wait to get over there and help contribute any way I can,” Jarvis said.
In addition, there are more than a few former Hurricanes that will be representing various countries as well including Vincent Trocheck, Noah Hanifin and Jake Guentzel for Team USA; Teuvo Teravainen, Eetu Luostarinen, Erik Haula, Mikko Rantanen and Tuomo Ruutu (on the coaching staff) for Team Finland; Elias Lindhom and Gustav Forsling for Team Sweden; Martin Necas and Ondrej Kase for Team Czechia and Nino Niederreiter for Team Switzerland. (Niederreiter was actually the flag bearer for the Swiss at the Opening Ceremony as well).
