A Look Back At 10 Memorable Performances By Team USA Men In Winter Sports In 2023

The men of Team USA winter sports put together another banner year in 2023. From breakout performers to established stars, American men delivered several record-setting showings, world titles and other notable firsts.

You can follow along on their journeys throughout the year at TeamUSA.com, but to celebrate the new year here are 10 of the most impressive performances by U.S. men (and one mixed team) in winter sports from 2023:

Jake Adicoff, Para Nordic Skiing

A cross country skier since his elementary school days, Adicoff retired from the sport in 2018, satisfied with a career that spanned a pair of Paralympic Winter Games and earned him a silver medal. Then, in 2021, he got that itch again. The visually impaired skier from Sun Valley, Idaho, came back to win three more medals at the 2022 Winter Games, and he’s been scratching that itch to great success ever since. In 2023, Adicoff, then 27, put together what might have been his best performance yet. At the world championships in January in Sweden, Adicoff and guide Sam Wood earned two gold medals to go with two additional silvers.

Zack DiGregorio and Sean Hollander, Luge

The longtime and decorated U.S. luger Chris Mazdzer raced into retirement at December’s world cup in Lake Placid, New York. DiGregorio and Hollander showed that the U.S. team remains in good hands. The 2022 Olympians, who have been racing together since 2020, opened the season with a win in men’s doubles. That marked the first U.S. win in any world cup race since Summer Britcher won women’s singles in 2018, but it was the first U.S. win in men’s doubles since December 2005, when the standout U.S. team of Mark Grimmette and Brian Martin won for the 11th and final time together. Massachusetts native DiGregorio, 22, and the 23-year-old Hollander, of Lake Placid, have a ways to go to catch that decorated tandem, but you’ve got to start somewhere, right?

Korey Dropkin and Cory Thiesse, Curling

The South Korean ice has been kind to Team USA. Five years after John Shuster and the U.S. men’s team broke through to win Olympic gold there, the mixed doubles team of Dropkin and Thiesse secured the country’s first curling world title in 20 years at the same Gangneung venue in April. The pair from Duluth, Minnesota, came together after falling short of the 2022 Olympics with other partners. No duo was better in 2023. After Dropkin and Thiesse (née Christensen) went undefeated at nationals, they rolled 7-2 through pool play to start the world championships. In the playoffs, Dropkin, then 27, and Thiesse, 28, defeated two-time defending champs Scotland, Canada and then Japan to earn the title. It was the first world championship for Team USA in mixed doubles, which has been contested annually since 2008. In fact, this world title was the first for any U.S. curling team since Debbie McCormick skipped the American women to victory in 2003. Thiesse, as a third, also helped the U.S. women finish seventh at their world championships in 2023.

Declan Farmer, Sled Hockey

Farmer has been feasting on international competition since making his Paralympic debut as a 14-year-old in 2014, and the high-scoring forward from Tampa, Florida, is only just now entering his prime years. Farmer, who turned 26 in November, led a U.S. sweep over Canada in a three-game series in March. In June he tallied nine goals and an assist over five games as Team USA won a third consecutive world title in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. After taking a quick break to accept the inaugural Para Sport Award for Best Male Winter Athlete in September, Farmer was soon back on the ice for the International Para Hockey Cup in Czechia where, you guessed it, Farmer led the tournament with 10 goals and 13 points en route to another Team USA victory.

Birk Irving, Freeskiing

In a discipline with several American standouts, no one shined brighter than Irving in 2023, who won a Winter X Games silver medal and then the world cup crystal globe in men’s halfpipe. The 2022 Olympian from Winter Park, Colorado, had two of his most memorable performances in his home state. After a win at Copper Mountain to open the season in December 2022, Irving threw down his best-ever X Games finish the following month in Aspen. He closed out the world cup season with another win in February at Mammoth Mountain in California. Irving, now 24, opened this season with another podium finish when he finished third at Copper Mountain, but he’ll have plenty of competition from his fellow Americans, including Alex Ferreira, who took third at the 2023 world championships and has already opened 2023-24 with a pair of wins.

Ilia Malinin, Figure Skating

He’s not called the “quadgod” for nothing. The 2022 junior world champion in men’s figure skating nearly shot all the way up to senior world champ in 2023 thanks to his prowess with the four-revolution jumps. After winning his first U.S. title to open the year, the teen from Vienna, Virginia, landed a record-setting six quad jumps during his free skate to win the bronze medal at the world championships in March in Japan. Among them was the first successful quad axel — with four-and-a-half revolutions — at an ISU championship event. Malinin came into the grand prix season this fall looking to showcase a more complete skating ability, with less emphasis on the quads. It seems to be working. The skater, who turned 19 in December, won Skate America and finished second in the Grand Prix de France before wrapping up 2023 with his first senior-level championship at the Grand Prix Final, where he landed five of his six quads in the free skate.

Zach Miller, Para Snowboarding

Americans have rarely strayed far from the podium since snowboarding became a Paralympic sport in 2014, and Miller did his part to uphold that tradition in 2023. The 2022 Paralympian from Silverthorne, Colorado, put together his best season to date, with top-six finishes in every competition he entered. The highlight came at the world championships in March in La Molina, Spain, when Miller earned a full set of medals — gold in dual banked slalom team, silver in dual banked slalom and bronze in snowboardcross. In recognition of his standout season, the 24-year-old Miller accepted the ESPY for “Best Athlete with a Disability” in July in Los Angeles.

Ben Ogden, Cross Country Skiing

The American women have built themselves into a cross country skiing power. Ogden and the men appear well on their way to following suit. The rising star from Landgrove, Vermont, put together a historically strong 2022-23 season. Behind four top-10 individual finishes in world cup races, Ogden, who turned 23 in February, not only finished eighth in the season standings but also earned the green bib as the circuit’s U23 champion. It marked the best season by a U.S. man since Bill Koch won the world cup title in 1983. With Ogden and fellow 23-year-old JC Schoonmaker, the American men now have a potent 1-2 punch. That showed in the Dec. 9 classic sprint in Östersund, Sweden, when Schoonmaker finished third and Ogden fourth, marking career bests for both.

Aaron Pike, Para Nordic Skiing

The OG of Team USA’s dual-sport Para Nordic skiing contingent enjoyed his long-awaited breakthrough in 2023. Pike, who is originally from Park Rapids, Minnesota, has competed in every Paralympics since 2012 — three as a wheelchair racer, three as a sit skier. He’d also competed in seven world championships across the two sports. As of January, he can now officially call himself the best in the world — twice. Pike earned his first medals at a global championship in dominant fashion this past January in Sweden when he won the long-distance biathlon and mixed cross-country relay events, along with two silver medals. Pike, 37, has since qualified for a seventh Paralympics next year in Paris after being the second American to cross the finish line at the New York City Marathon in November.

Jordan Stolz, Speedskating

Stolz grabbed headlines when he qualified for the 2022 Winter Games at age 17. A year later, he grabbed ahold of the record book with a historic 2022-23 season. Stolz, of Kewaskum, Wisconsin, opened the season in November 2022 by becoming the youngest man to win a world cup race. Competing against his peers at the junior world championships in late January, Stolz won an amazing six medals, four of them gold, as well as the overall title. Then, a little over a month later at the world championships in the Netherlands, he became the youngest man to win a world title and the only man to win three world titles in a single year, doing so in the 500-, 1,000- and 1,500-meter events. That’s to say nothing of the nine other world cup medals and various records he set in 2022-23. Now 19, Stolz has already gotten off to a strong start in 2023-24, with two wins and six podiums in three world cup stops so far.