At least 11 athletes with Michigan ties won gold medals at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy, including the players who scored “golden goals” in men’s and women’s hockey.
Jack Hughes, who graduated from high school in Canton Township, scored a sudden-death overtime goal to lift the US over Canada on Sunday, securing the gold medal for his team, which included five other Michiganders.
His brother, Quinn Hughes, had scored a game-winning goal in overtime of the quarter final match against Sweden.
Other Michigan players on the team include Dylan Larkin of Waterford Township, Zach Werenski of Grosse Pointe, Kyle Connor of Shelby Township and goalkeeper Connor Hellebuyck of Commerce Township, who blocked dozens of shots against Canada.
Farmington Hills native Megan Keller was the hero for the US women’s team on Thursday, scoring a game-winning goal in sudden death overtime against Canada.
The shots by Keller and Hughes are considered “golden goals” because they clinched gold medals for their teams.
Joining Keller on the gold medal women's team was Kirsten Simms, who was raised in Plymouth and spent her early years playing hockey with boys before switching to the Little Caesars AAA girls program in eighth grade.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who was overseas on a trade mission, caught the game-winning goal in Milan and personally congratulated Keller and the team in a social media video.
On Saturday, Boyne City’s Kaila Kuhn won gold as part of the mixed team aerials in freestyle skiing.
All told, more than a dozen athletes with Michigan ties qualified for this year’s Winter Games, with events in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo running through Sunday.
They competed in ice dancing, hockey, snowboarding, freestyle skiing, biathlon, bobsleigh and cross-country skiing, reflecting Michigan’s strong pipeline of collegiate programs and training facilities.
'Skategate 2.0'
Ann Arbor native Evan Bates and Madison Chock, who moved to Michigan from California as a teen, won gold in an ice dancing team event.
But the married couple also came up short in individual competition, winning a silver medal in a razor-thin finish that fans are calling “skategate 2.0,” a reference to a prior controversy at the 2002 Winter Olympics.
Bates and Chock finished 1.43 points behind Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron of France, who won with what some consider a generous score by French judge Jezabel Dabouis.
The judge gave Beaudry and Cizeron a 137.45 and Chock and Bates a 129.74 for their final performances. It was the widest gap amongst the panel of judges and was the lowest score for the US pair.
The scores prompted outrage from US fans. Some viewers believe the score did not reflect the skaters’ technical execution and program difficulty, calling for more transparency on how ice dancing is judged.
US Figure Skating did not appeal the decision, but Chock said she thinks that unclear scoring results do a disservice to the sport.
“It's hard to retain fans when it's difficult to understand what is happening on the ice,” she told USA Today. “There needs to be a lot more clarity for the skaters, for the coaches and for the audience, in order to just have a solid fan base moving forward. People need to understand what they're cheering for and be able to feel confident in the sport that they're supporting.”
Despite the controversy, Chock and Bates won two medals each this year and, combined team medals in 2022, are now tied for the most Olympic medals ever won by a US skater, according to US Figure Skating.
Other Michigan athletes
In bobsledding, former Eastern Michigan University track athlete Jasmine Jones won a bronze medal in two-woman bobsledding. Watch their winning run here.
Several other Michigan athletes came up just short in their quest for medals, including figure skating pairs Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko and Emilea Zingas who trains at the Novi Ice Arena with Ukrainian partner Vadym Kolesnik.
Whitmer spoke to those skaters, along with Bates and Chock, while she was in Italy.
In snowboarding, Nick Baumgartner of Iron River finished 7th in men's snowboard cross after winning a team gold in 2022. He won a lot of new fans this year as a social media star, too Jake Vedder, a Pinckney native, finished 11th in snowboard cross.
In freestyle skiing, Kuhn finished fifth earlier in the week and Gaylord native Winter Vinecki finished sixth in individual aerials.
Biathlete Deedra Irwin, a Wisconsin native who trained extensively in northern Michigan and competed for Michigan Technological University, did not medal across five individual and team events.
In cross-country skiing, former Northern Michigan University athlete Zak Ketterson did not medal across four individual and team events.
Other US gold medalists
As of Sunday morning, Norway led the Winter Olympics with 18 gold and 41 total medals. The US was second with 12 golds and 33 total medals. See the medal count here.
Notable non-Michigan winners include:
Alyssa Liu of California earned gold in Women’s figure skating, ending a longtime drought in the sport. The last time the US won a medal for a women’s individual figure skating was in 2006, when Sasha Cohen won silver.
Breezy Johnson of Wyoming earned gold in the women’s alpine skiing downhill, giving the United States its first medal of the 2026 Games.
Mikaela Shiffin of Colorado won gold in women’s slalom, high-speed alpine skiing, ending an eight-year Olympic drought.
Elizabeth Lemley of Colorado delivered a standout performance in women’s moguls, earning her first Olympic gold at just 20 years old. In her Olympic debut, she posted the highest score in the final, leading a U.S. 1-2 finish with teammate Jaelin Kauf taking silver.
Elana Meyers Taylor, who grew up in Georgia, won her first Olympic gold in the monobob, women’s-only olympic bobsledding, at age 41, becoming the oldest American woman to take gold at these Games.
Jordan Stolz, from Wisconsin, dominated long-track speed skating, winning the men’s 500m and 1000m races and setting new Olympic records in both, coming in at 33.77 and 1:06.26, respectively.
This article first appeared on Bridge Michigan and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.