Vermont skier Mac Forehand, offering what the New York Times deemed “a sport-defining performance,” won a silver medal Tuesday in the big air event at the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.
The 24-year-old Stratton Mountain School graduate from Winhall has a history of amazing spectators each time he skis down a hill, up a ramp and into the air to perform head-turning acrobatic tricks, flips and spins.
On Tuesday, Forehand was neck-and-neck with Norwegian skier Tormod Frostad in the three-round competition when the Vermonter tried a new move he learned just last week — a “2160-degree nose-butter triple cork” more easily seen than summed up — that skyrocketed him into the lead with a score of 193.25.
“We’re going to the future, friends,” the NBC commentator said. “That’s a ‘never been done.’”
In response, the Norwegian went on to perform an equally indescribable “right nose-butter double bio 1620” to narrowly take the gold by a score of 195.50.
Forehand is the fifth U.S. Olympian with Vermont ties to medal this month:
— Ben Ogden, 25, of Landgrove, won silver in the men’s cross-country sprint 50 years after fellow Vermonter Bill Koch scored the nation’s first Nordic medal.
— Ryan Cochran-Siegle, a 33-year-old second-generation Alpine racer from Cochran’s Ski Area in Richmond, repeated his medal-winning feat of four years ago by snagging silver in the men’s super-G.
— Stratton-trained athlete Jessie Diggins, the most-awarded U.S. cross-country skier of all time, nabbed bronze in the women’s 10-kilometer freestyle.
— And Paula Moltzan, 31, of Waitsfield, earned bronze in the women’s Alpine combined event.
