How to watch Mikaela Shiffrin’s first competition at 2026 Winter Olympics

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Province of Belluno — Competition is ramping up ahead of the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics as skiing, hockey, luge and curling events take center stage Tuesday.

After Lindsey Vonn’s crash, skiing remains in the spotlight with another American standout making her first appearance at the 2026 Winter Games. 

Mikaela Shiffrin will begin her quest for Olympic success on Tuesday during the Women’s team event.

The event requires one skier to race down hill, while the other races slalom. Their times are then added together.

The women’s combined downhill run will begin at 4:30 a.m. ET while the slalom run is set to begin at 8 a.m. ET. Viewers around the world can watch on official broadcasters, including NBC and streaming on Peacock and NBC Olympics platforms.

Johnson is seeking a second gold medal of these Olympics, having won Sunday’s downhill, which was overshadowed by a frightening crash by Vonn that left her with a broken left leg.

Vonn would likely have raced in the team combined, paired with Shiffrin, the most decorated skier of all time, who is looking to rebound from a disastrous Olympics in Beijing four years ago, when she didn’t win a medal after entering six events.

Shiffrin, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, also will race in the slalom and giant slalom in Cortina. The American skiing standout cut her program in half for the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, entering in half as many events as she did in Beijing.

Here are all the pairs Team USA will bring to the event:

• Jackie Wiles/Paula Moltzan
• Breezy Johnson/Mikaela Shiffrin
• Isabella Wright/Nina O’Brien
• Keely Cashman/AJ Hurt

The Americans are performing well in the women’s hockey tournament, with expectations that a final between Team USA and Canada will follow. 

Viewers will get their first taste of that matchup on Tuesday, when they face off in a preliminary round. The women’s hockey event starts at 2:10 p.m. ET. 

The last time the two teams faced off in the Olympics was in 2022, when they competed in the final. Canada won over the Americans at the time.

Team USA is entering the tournament as the defending world champions and has won the last six meetings against its biggest rivals.

Germany, Austria and the United States have sliders hoping to be in the mix for medals when the final two runs of the women’s luge singles event take place on the Cortina d’Ampezzo track. Run 3 starts at 5 p.m. local time (11 a.m. ET) and Run 4 begins at 6:30 p.m. local time (12:30 p.m. ET).

A slider from Germany has won the women’s gold in each of the last seven Olympics; the last three of those were by the sport’s all-time greatest, Natalie Geisenberger, who retired after the 2022 Beijing Games. She’s at the track for these games, but only as a broadcaster.

The U.S. has only won one medal in women’s singles luge — Erin Hamlin at Sochi in 2014. Hamlin, like Geisenberger, is at these games as well, also as a broadcaster. She’s helping NBC with its coverage.

Here are the Team USA athletes to watch in this competition: 

• Ashley Farquharson
• Ashley Britcher 
• Emily Fischnaller 

The U.S. will face Sweden for a chance at gold on Tuesday. 

The gold medal game for the mixed doubles curling competition begins at 12:05 p.m. ET. Meanwhile, the bronze medal game, between Italy and Great Britain, will get underway at 8:05 a.m. ET.

Italian curler Stefania Constantini already is proving a darling of these Olympics, and she’ll raise the roof if she wins a medal.

Constantini, who is from Cortina, and Amos Mosaner are the defending world and Olympic champions in mixed doubles.

Copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.