The Milan Cortina Paralympics — the 50th anniversary of the first Winter Paralympic Games — start in 100 days in breathtaking style with an opening ceremony at Verona Arena, a nearly 2,000-year-old Roman amphitheater.
That will be followed by 79 events in six sports over nine days of medal competition. The U.S., Canada and Ukraine have been the most consistent winners in recent Winter Games, though China won twice as many medals as anybody else when it hosted the last Games in 2022.
In addition to the medal count, the top anticipated storylines include the return of Oksana Masters (the American record-holder with 14 Winter Paralympic medals), yet another USA-Canada hockey rivalry and a new event that will feature a former UConn basketball player who appeared in “The Last Dance.”
Oksana Masters: Greatest U.S. Winter Paralympian ever?
If going by total medals won, Masters already stands alone in American Winter Paralympic history after just three Games. At the last edition in 2022, she won seven medals between Para biathlon and cross-country skiing, including three golds, to reach 14 career Winter Paralympic medals (and 19 medals when including her Summer Games results).
Masters broke the U.S. career winter medals record shared by Alpine skiers Sarah Billmeier and Sarah Will, who each won 13 medals from 1992-2002. Will still owns the American record of 12 Winter Paralympic gold medals, with Masters far back at five.
Masters, adopted at age 7 from a Ukrainian orphanage by a single mom from the U.S., missed the entire 2024-2025 winter season due to several health challenges. Then this past summer, she had hand reconstruction surgery due to an injury that affected her biathlon trigger finger. She has returned to training on snow ahead of the competition season that begins in December.
USA-Canada hockey rivalry not limited to Olympics
In Para hockey, every global championship final in the last decade has been U.S. versus Canada. The Americans won the last four Paralympic titles, but in 2024 the Canadians snapped a two-year, 41-game American win streak to claim the world championship.
But then in May, the U.S. reclaimed the world title with a 6-1 victory over the Canadians. U.S. coach David Hoff called it “awfully dominating.” Canadian coach Russ Herrington called it the best game he’s seen the U.S. play in a long time.
The Americans are led by Declan Farmer, a Princeton economics graduate who made his Paralympic debut at age 16 in 2014. He is the all-time leading U.S. scorer with more than 200 goals and more than 400 points.
Steve Emt of ‘The Last Dance’ will have the first dance for mixed doubles curling
Earlier this month, Emt, a former UConn basketball player, and Laura Dwyer won the U.S. Paralympic Trials in the one event that’s debuting at the Milan Cortina Games: mixed doubles wheelchair curling.
Emt competed in the traditional four-person team wheelchair curling at the last two Paralympics. In between, he made a cameo in “The Last Dance,” meeting Michael Jordan after a 1998 Chicago Bulls game. Their mutual connection was Scott Burrell, a forward on the Bulls team who, like Emt, played at UConn in the early 1990s.
After college, Emt was paralyzed in a 1995 car accident in which he was drinking and driving. He was introduced to wheelchair curling nearly two decades later.
U.S. Para snowboarding dynasty
The addition of snowboarding to the Paralympics in 2014 has been a boon for the U.S. and should continue to be at the Milan Cortina Games. Americans have won twice as many Para snowboarding medals and gold medals as any other nation.
Brenna Huckaby overcame bone cancer to become the most decorated snowboarder in Paralympic history. The mother of two has three gold medals and four total medals between snowboard cross and banked slalom events.
The U.S. is also expected to include two men’s gold medalists from 2018: Noah Elliott, who in 2013 both became a father at 15 and was diagnosed with cancer that led to his left leg being amputated above the knee; and Mike Schultz, 44, a self-taught engineer who founded his own company, BioDapt, that makes prosthetics for adaptive athletes.
Zach Miller, who placed 11th and 15th in his Paralympic debut in 2022, won a medal of every color at the 2023 World Championships. Then in 2024, he made more headlines after alerting a fellow driver on the road that there was a fire in his pickup truck, sharing video of the interaction.
