This year marks the 50th anniversary of the first Winter Paralympics. Held in 1976 at Örnsköldsvik, Sweden, those Games featured only one American athlete: Bill Hovanic, a skier who lost his right leg in combat during the Vietnam War. Dozens of American amputees have represented Team USA at the Winter Paralympics since then. As we looked back over their achievements, we were surprised to discover how many members of the 2026 American roster are following in the footsteps (or ski tracks, if you will) of historic US competitors. Here are some of the noteworthy parallels we came across.
PAST: ALLISON JONES
Between 2002 and 2016, Jones competed in eight consecutive Paralympic Games—four summer, four winter—as a downhill skier and road cyclist. She won a total of eight medals, including two silver medals as a 17-year-old rookie at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games and golds in both skiing (2006) and cycling (2012). During the course of that 15-year Paralympic odyssey, Jones earned a degree in mechanical engineering and began pursuing a masters in prosthetics and orthotics. To relieve stress during races, she told Women’s Health in 2012, she used to ask herself: “If you’re not having fun, then what the hell are you doing?”
PRESENT: OKSANA MASTERS
At the Milano-Cortina Games, Masters will equal Jones’ feat of competing in eight consecutive Paralympics. Like her predecessor, Masters debuted as a teenager and won a medal in her first appearance (2012). She and Jones were Paralympic teammates three times (2012, 2014, 2016) and co-medalists twice. Over her career, Masters has piled up 19 career Paralympic medals in rowing, cycling, Nordic skiing, and biathlon; that total includes seven (three gold, four silver) from the most recent Winter Games. She and Jones are two of only four Americans ever to win gold medals in both the Summer and Winter Paralympics.
PAST: BONNIE ST. JOHN
When she brought home two bronze medals and a silver in downhill skiing at the 1984 Paralympics, St. John had no idea she’d made history. Only later did she discover the she was the first Black American to win a winter medal of any kind—Olympic or Paralympic. She earned her first medal, in slalom, despite falling on the second of two runs. “That lesson has stood with me forever: People fall down, winners get up,” she later told the US Olympic and Paralympic Museum. St. John went on to earn degrees from Harvard and Oxford and spent time in the White House as an economic adviser.
PRESENT: MALIK JONES
At just 23 years old, Jones is already a seasoned Paralympic veteran. When he takes the ice with the US sled hockey team in Italy, he’ll be attempting to
become the first Black American to win multiple gold medals in winter competition. A congenital bilateral amputee, Jones began playing sled hockey at age seven and made his first international roster as a teenager, winning gold with Team USA at the 2022 Winter Paralympics in Beijing. “I definitely feel pride,” he told a reporter for USA Hockey. “That’s a big accomplishment to be a Black athlete on the world’s largest stage.”
PAST: ANDREW SOULE
His bronze medal at the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver was the first-ever podium finish by an American—Olympian or Paralympian—in the sport of biathlon. Soule achieved another noteworthy first that year, becoming one of the first veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars to represent the US in Winter Paralympic competition. After missing the podium at the 2014 Games, he capped his Paralympic career with a gold medal in cross-country sprint in 2018.
PRESENT: DAN CNOSSEN
Eight years after Soule notched the first US medal in biathlon, Cnossen became the first American male to get to the top of the podium. It was one of six medals he won at the 2018 Games, a haul no American male has surpassed in winter competition. Like Soule, Cnossen lost both legs above the knee while deployed in Afghanistan. If he makes the 2026 roster, he may become the last veteran of those wars to represent Team USA at the Winter Games.
PAST: DIANA GOLDEN
Her impressive alpine skiing achievements include two golds at the 1988 Winter Paralympics. But the aptly named Golden is best remembered as a pioneering advocate for parasports. One of the first disabled champions to insist on being taken seriously as an athlete, she commanded mainstream media attention, inked high-profile endorsement deals, and earned a slew of prestigious awards (including “Skier of the Year” from Skiing magazine). Golden also persuaded US ski officials to let paraskiers compete alongside nondisabled racers in the national championships. “I’m not out there because I’m brave,’’ she told the Christian Science Monitor. “I’m out there because I want to go fast, and I want to win.”
PRESENT: BRENNA HUCKABY
Huckaby needed a court order to participate in the 2022 Winter Games, moving up a classification (and competing at a disadvantage) over the International Paralympic Committee’s objections. She ultimately won two snowboarding medals (one gold) while advancing the principle Golden established decades earlier: We’re athletes; just let us compete. Huckaby promotes the same paradigm-shifting ideas through her media venture (Culxtured), modeling gigs (including the first-ever amputee appearance in Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition), brand ambassadorships, and gargantuan social media following. “Life isn’t about what you achieve,” she writes at her website. “It’s about who you become in the process.”
PAST: STEVE CASH
Team USA’s current run of dominance in sled hockey began with Cash’s stellar performance at the 2010 Games in Vancouver. He became the first goaltender in history to keep the puck out of the net over an entire Paralympic tournament. The record-setting performance, highlighted by a clutch save of a penalty shot in the gold-medal game, propelled Cash to a 2010 ESPY Award. He gave up just three goals—combined—during the 2014 and 2018 Games, retiring with three gold medals and a career 97.3 save percentage. Last summer, Cash—nicknamed “Money” for his big-game exploits—earned a spot in the USOPC Hall of Fame.
PRESENT: JEN LEE
After serving as Cash’s backup in 2014 and 2018, Lee picked up where his teammate left off in 2022, leading Team USA to its fourth consecutive Paralympic gold. In the process, he turned in a Money-like performance: zero goals allowed throughout the Games. As one of just four holdovers from the 2014 team, Lee has a chance to win a fourth Paralympic title—a noteworthy feat for someone who didn’t take up sled hockey until after his 25th birthday. “The goal is always to come out on top, but it’s not going to be easy,” he told a reporter last fall. “Nothing worth it ever is.”
PAST: SARAH BILLMEIER
The youngest American ever to win a Winter Paralympic medal, Billmeier was just 14 when she won two golds and a silver at the 1992 Games. She won ten more medals over the next three cycles, bringing her career total to 13—the most ever by a US amputee skier. She was still in her prime and might well have won another dozen medals. But since losing her leg to cancer at age five, Billmeier had dreamed of becoming a doctor—and Harvard Medical School had a spot for her. Now a board-certified surgeon, she practices at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire.
PRESENT: ZACH WILLIAMS
If he makes the US Paralympic roster as a sit-skier, Williams will create a nice bookend to Billmeier. A bilateral above-knee amputee since infancy, WIlliams spent most of his youth surfing, earning an O&P degree to pay the bills. He didn’t try sit-skiing until just before turning 40, but he got so hooked on the sport he moved to California so he could train full-time. Putting his years of clinical O&P experience to use, Williams builds his own gear, fine-tuning the seat, frame, shocks, and monoski for optimal fit with his body and biomechanics. At 46, he may become one of the oldest Paralympic rookies ever.
