At 15, this Northern Californian is the youngest Team USA athlete at the Winter Olympics

LIVIGNO, Italy - It wasn’t that long ago that Northern California Olympian Abby Winterberger was racing down a snowy mountain as a pint-sized toddler on skis, with a blanket in hand and her pacifier in her mouth.

Now at age 15, she is making headlines as the youngest athlete on Team USA in the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics, and she’s among the youngest competitors of all the athletes representing the more than 90 countries in the Winter Games.

Perhaps no better illustration of just how young this Olympian is than through a touching post by Abby’s mom, Rosemary Winterberger, last week, in which she shared a precious photo of a preschool-age Abby, ski goggles on, paci in mouth and blankie in hand.

That photo was butted up next to her official Olympic Games headshot. 

The caption: "What a difference 12 years makes!"

Abby was barely 2 years old, only about 20 months old, when she got her first set of skis and, unbeknownst then to the Winterberger family, began her journey to the Olympics.

Unconventional road 

That journey has been an unconventional one. 

The teen, also a former gymnast, is the only club-level freeski athlete to qualify for the Olympics. She essentially leapfrogged to what’s widely considered the pinnacle of athletic achievement, "bypassing traditional U.S. Ski & Snowboard team pathways," according to Abby’s profile page on the Team USA site.

Abby may be the first to forge this path in her sport.

"Winterberger's nomination to compete for Team USA at the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 in women's halfpipe has been called a rare achievement that may be unprecedented in the history of U.S. freeski halfpipe by her home team," according to Team USA.

Abby came up and honed her skills as part of the Olympic Valley Freestyle Freeride team, a nonprofit that operates out of Palisades Tahoe ski resort, her parents told KTVU in an interview from Switzerland, which has served as staging and training grounds before the athletes move on to neighboring Livigno, in the Italian Alps, where the halfpipe events will take place. 

The fact that their daughter’s dedication, hard work, grit and athletic talents sent her to the Olympics was not a surprise to them.

The Winterbergers said that Abby’s standout performance in her inaugural World Cup season was a strong indication that the Olympics were within reach. 

Childhood goal

She’s had her sights on the Olympics for a long time, declaring it as a goal not long after she began competitive skiing. 

"One of their goal sheets was like, I want to go to the Olympics. She sent it to her moguls coach when she was 7 years old," Dad Jim Winterberger recalled. "We all like were like, ‘Oh, great, it's always good to have goals.’ That got kind of put in the storage locker for a number of years."

After making her debut in the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup this season, it became clear that it was time to take that plan out of the storage locker. 

"This is not a huge surprise. It is something to be incredibly celebrated. But when she started her World Cup season this year, it was pretty evident early on that she had a legitimate chance at this. And, you know, she muscled through it and qualified objectively. So, to say we're shocked? No. But are we proud? Oh my god, yeah, totally," the teen’s dad said.  

Exceptionally young 

Dig deeper:

For any elite winter sport athlete, just reaching the international circuit of competitions known as the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup is an astounding achievement. 

But doing it at such a young age is exceptionally rare.

"She's really freaking young. She qualified for World Cup at 13 years old, and that's two years lower than the FIS’s minimum age requirement. So this was her first year on World Cup which is why she wasn't on the US pro team," her dad explained, adding, "She's got a lot of support and resources from the US Ski Team, but she's technically not on their professional level team, and yet here she is."

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Doing high school 

Being only 15 has meant that, on top of her intense training, she’s also had to juggle schoolwork. Her demanding and rigorous schedule has required her to do high school online. 

"I think the difference with Abby versus a lot of the athletes here, is that Abby is still supposed to be going to high school. She still has all of her online classes that she absolutely has to be completing the work for," the teen's mom explained. "So she has to fit that in along with going to the gym and being on the snow."

Her training calls for her to be on the snow for most of the year. The athletes try not to get off the snow for more than six weeks at a time, according to her parents.

And that means a lot of traveling. In fact, following the Olympics, her parents said she's not even going back home. The competition circuit continues, and she's off to Calgary, Canada.

Straight A student

But even with the grueling schedule of an elite, world-class athlete, Abby manages to approach her tasks with the same high-achieving mentality as she does on the slopes. 

"She’s a straight A student, which is insane," her dad noted, also adding that on top of everything else, there’s the typical teen stuff like keeping her room tidy and working towards her driver’s license.

When asked what is what sets her apart, what gives her the edge to become an Olympian, her parents said that beyond working extremely hard, it’s her passion for the sport. 

"She puts her mind to whatever she really wants," Mom shared. "But she has so much fun doing it. That's the biggest thing: hard work while having a really good time."

Dad added it’s also their daughter’s exceptional ability to perform under pressure, which has been demonstrated on another level as his daughter has had to navigate a crush of interviews being in the Olympic spotlight. 

"I think it's about performance under pressure. And if you watch some of these TV interviews that she's done as a 15-year-old kid, I mean, she doesn't go to normal high school. She doesn't have a normal social life. And she's just been lacing these interviews and the reporters are looking at me," the dad said, "like, ‘What's going on right now?’ So the ability to perform under pressure is huge."

The parents also pointed to their daughter’s receptiveness to learning and her ability to take criticism and use it to improve her skills.

"She is arguably among the more coachable in this sport," Jim Winterberger said.

Dangerous sport 

That ability to listen to the coaches is imperative in a discipline with such high risk and danger.

The sport is one in which skiers and snowboarders "execute multiple tricks one after the other down a 22 foot-high (6.7m) halfpipe," as described in an article on the Olympic Winter Games site.

The description went on to stress the importance of the landing. "The key here is not only performing super high, difficult twisting flips and rotations, but landing them perfectly to maintain flow and momentum. Each landing leads directly into the next flip, leaving little room for error," the article noted, adding, "Riding down the halfpipe certainly isn't for the faint of heart."

And one might think athletes who engage in such perilous activities would embody a sense of fearlessness.

While she is brave, the teen’s mom said their daughter has plenty of fear, but it's also laced with good judgment and an abundance of solid training and preparation. 

"A lot of people will say, 'Oh, she's fearless.' And Jim and I both don't think she's fearless. We think she absolutely has fear. She definitely gets scared, but she's calculated… They're doing an absolute dangerous sport, but there are so many progressions that go into it, from trampolines to airbags to, you know, her whole gymnastics background," Rosemary Winterberger explained, adding, "She says, ‘I trust my training. I trust my coaches, and I know I'm ready."

Family affair

This journey has been a collective one, with the Winterbergers and their two other children all traveling to the Olympics to support Abby. The opening ceremony was an incredible and shared experience, as they watched the teen walk alongside her fellow Team USA athletes.   

"It was like the best day of my life. Our whole family was there," Jim Winterberger shared, marveling, "It was insane. 80,000 people in that arena, was nuts to watch her walk into."

The backstory:

Her parents, self-proclaimed ski bums, passed down their love for the sport to their three children.  

Abby’s 17-year-old brother, Mack, who also competes in the halfpipe is an impressive skier in his own right with his own sights set on the Olympics. "He's on the World Cup as well. And he is an absolute ripper," Jim Winterberger said. "It's really, really hard to make it to this level, but for the men, it's particularly hard."

So Abby grew up watching her brother’s success as a model.

"She just chased him around from day one, and here we are," the dad said.

In fact, it was after a training session of her brother’s that she was tapped for her current team.

"They had a trampoline outside, and the team director saw Abby on the trampoline and he said, ‘I want you on my team.' And she was on the team from that day forward," Rosemary Winterberger recounted.

On Jan. 22, on social media, as she proclaimed to the world, ‘I’M GOING TO THE OLYMPICS," Abby did not miss an opportunity to express her gratitude towards her brother. She gave a shout-out to Mack and to fellow prodigy and World Cup skier 15-year-old Keva Kelly, as she thanked them "for shaping me into the skier I am today."

The Winterbergers' third child, 10-year-old Greta, is also a skier, as well as a competitive gymnast. 

The mom, a former preschool teacher and dad, a small business owner, now travels around the world to support their children in their sport.

Both parents said it can be extremely stressful watching her kids compete. 

"I take on all their feelings. I take on their adrenaline. When I'm done watching a gymnastics or a ski competition, I feel like I just did it," Rosemary Winterberger shared. "It's definitely tough to watch, but also seeing their joy is priceless."

World-class teammates 

Abby’s parents said, not surprisingly, they haven’t had as much access to their Olympian daughter as they typically do during competitive events, and they expressed gratitude to her teammates who have looked out for their daughter. 

"The other women of Team USA have been really great. That’s Svea Irving, Riley Jacobs and Kate Gray, who's from Mammoth," Jim Winterberger shared. "Those women on that team are incredible athletes and world-class people too."

What's next:

Abby is set to compete in the qualifying stage of the women's freeski halfpipe on Thursday. 

The top 12 athletes in the qualification round then advance to the final medal run, scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 21.

For the Winterbergers, they’re soaking in this Olympic journey and taking it all one step at a time.

"I think the future is looking really bright. For right now," Dad said. "I just want her to enjoy this experience, put down a run she's proud of, stay safe and what's to follow is gonna be a pretty amazing opportunity for a 15-year-old kid.

His wife shared that hope and said there's so much to celebrate already. 

"I'm just so happy for Abby that she'll be able to always say she is an Olympian. And the fact that she has this under her belt at such a young age is just amazing, and I'm just really happy for her," Mom said. 

The life-altering significance of this moment and her parents’ support and guidance through this experience, have not been lost on this young athlete.

"This still doesn’t feel real. I’ve been dreaming of this moment ever since I learned how to ski, and to finally say it out loud is unreal. I know little me would be so proud," Abby shared in her Olympic-bound announcement, adding, "Mom and Dad. Thank you for always supporting me no matter what. I truly couldn’t have done this without you." 

This story was reported from Oakland, Calif. 

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