The Highest-Paid Athletes At The 2026 Winter Olympics In Milan Cortina
The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics will feature roughly 2,900 competitors from more than 90 countries participating in 116 events, and for most of those athletes—even some of those destined to become champions—their chosen sport isn’t paying the bills. In fact, factoring in substantial travel and training costs, athletic glory on a global stage might come at a net loss.
But at the 2026 Games, which officially begin with Friday’s opening ceremony, there is a select group of athletes who can easily afford the price of gold.
For one thing, while the Winter Olympics won’t have the NBA, golf and tennis stars whose outsize paychecks loom over the Summer Games—and frequently place them on the annual Forbes list of the world’s highest-paid athletes—the men’s hockey tournament in Milan will include 146 players from the NHL. The league, which hadn’t allowed its players to take the Olympic ice since 2014, has a minimum salary of $775,000 this season, and nine of the ten members of the Forbes ranking of the NHL’s highest-paid players—which also accounts for endorsements and other business income—are set to suit up over the next two weeks. (The lone exception is New York Rangers goaltender Igor Shesterkin, whose native Russia is barred from the event because of the war in Ukraine.)
Topping that list of hockey players is Team USA forward Auston Matthews, whom the Toronto Maple Leafs are paying more than $15 million this season and who also earns an estimated $5 million off the ice. Even that $20 million total, however, isn’t enough to make him this year’s highest-paid Olympian.
That honor belongs to Eileen Gu, an American-born freestyle skier who represents her mother’s native China in international competition. Forbes estimates that the 22-year-old marketing superstar has hauled in $23 million off the slopes over the past 12 months (along with around $100,000 in prize money).
Gu and her fellow Olympians could further boost their bottom lines with a podium performance this month. Endorsement contracts in Olympic sports sometimes contain financial incentives for athletes who win medals, and a victory can attract new sponsors, such as Wheatiesin the afterglow of the Games.
In addition, certain countries are willing to pay their athletes bonuses for capturing medals. The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee, for instance, has pledged $37,500 for every gold, $22,500 for every silver and $15,000 for every bronze at this year’s Games. For athletes from host country Italy, the figures range from about $71,000 to $213,000—and two other delegations are willing to shell out nearly $800,000 for a champion.
The Americans stand to profit just from showing up, though. After Ross Stevens, founder and CEO of asset manager Stone Ridge, donated $100 million to the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee last year, each U.S. Olympic and Paralympic athlete will eventually receive $200,000regardless of their results at the Games.
Here are the highest-paid athletes from five high-profile sports being contested at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.
Freestyle Skiing: Eileen Gu, $23 million
Four years after Gu became the youngest Olympic freestyle skiing champion ever as well as the first freestyle skier to win three medals at a single Games, the 22-year-old Snow Princess is set to defend her golds in big air and halfpipe while trying to improve on her silver medal in slopestyle. Despite a crash, Gu won a World Cup slopestyle title on January 17 to build momentum heading into the competition in the Italian Alps, which begins with qualifying on Saturday. Although the $55,000 that Gu collected in December for winning a halfpipe event in the upstart Snow League represents a jump from the roughly $20,000 she typically receives for prevailing on the World Cup circuit, the vast majority of her income comes from endorsements, including Chinese brands Anta, Bosideng, Mengniu Dairy and Luckin Coffee. Gu, who was a member of the United States’ World Cup team in 2018 and 2019, recently defended her decision to switch her allegiance to China, telling Time: “The U.S. already has the representation. I like building my own pond.”
Julian Avram/Icon Sportswire/Getty Images
Hockey: Auston Matthews, $20 million
The last time NHL players competed at the Olympics, in 2014, Matthews was still two years away from becoming the league’s first overall draft pick. Now, the 28-year-old Toronto Maple Leafs center will help Team USA try to avenge an overtime loss to Canada in the final of last year’s 4 Nations Face-Off—where he served as the American captain—after a disappointing exit in the quarterfinals at the 2022 Games. Matthews is the only player to have cracked $20 million in a season in the 15-year history of Forbes’ NHL earnings list—he also did it last year—and is among hockey’s most marketable stars, raking in an estimated $5 million off the ice annually on top of his four-year, $53 million playing contract. The latest addition to his sponsor stable is Mito Red Light, joining brands such as Nike, Prime sports drinks and Uber Eats.
Team USA also has the highest-paid player in the women’s hockey tournament with Hilary Knight, who normally lines up for the Seattle Torrent of the Professional Women’s Hockey League. Forbes estimates that the 36-year-old forward’s robust group of nine partnerships, including Chipotle, Hershey’s and Red Bull, has her income this year approaching $1 million.
Alpine Skiing: Lindsey Vonn, $8 million
Vonn tore a ligament in her knee in a crash last week, but the 41-year-old American has been adamant that she will find a way to ski at these Games—her fifth in an Olympic career that stretches back to 2002 and already includes three medals for Team USA. (She missed the 2014 Games because of a knee injury and sat out 2022 during a five-year hiatus from competitive skiing.) Vonn returned to the World Cup slopes last season with the help of a partial knee replacement—the opposite knee from her latest injury—and she became the circuit’s oldest downhill champion ever at an event in December, winning another race in January.
Vonn, who works with more than a dozen brands, including Delta Air Lines, Land Rover and Rolex, edges out her American teammate Mikaela Shiffrin in the financial race. Forbes estimates that the 30-year-old slalom champion, who has won three medals across three previous Olympic appearances, has more than doubled her income since the 2022 Gamesto roughly $7 million annually.
Snowboarding: Chloe Kim, $4 million
A shoulder injury during a practice session in January left Kim’s status for these Games in doubt, with an MRI revealing that she had torn her labrum, but the 25-year-old American snowboarder noted in a video on Instagram that it could have been worse. “I haven’t gotten nearly the amount of reps that I would have liked, but that’s OK,” said Kim, who has rediscovered her love of snowboarding since winning halfpipe gold at the last two Olympics. Kim, who works with brands such as Breitling, Monster Energy and Nike, will be challenged by rivals including South Korea’s Gaon Choi and Japan’s Sena Tomita in her event, which will hold qualifying on Wednesday, but her stiffest challenge on snowboarding’s financial leaderboard comes from Australia’s Scotty James, a 31-year-old two-time Olympic medalist who is earning an estimated $3 million. James and Kim, along with Eileen Gu, will soon be working together as “founder athletes” of the X Games League, which says they will advise on competition formats and the athlete experience.
Jean Francois Monier/Getty Images
Figure Skigt: Ilia Malinin, $700,000
Four years ago, men’s figure skating was dominated by a Quad King: Nathan Chen, the first skater to land six quadruple jumps in one program. Now, the sport has an actual deity—the Quad God. Ilia Malinin, a 21-year-old American whose parents skated for Uzbekistan at the 1998 and 2002 Winter Olympics, is the first skater with seven quadruple jumps in a program and the only one to have landed a quadruple axel. He has not yet hit the earnings peak of Chen, who topped $1 million leading up to the 2022 Games, and he is well below the heights once reached by Kim Yuna, a two-time medalist for South Korea who was the world’s fourth-highest-paid female athlete in 2014 with an estimated $16.3 million. (For now, Malinin’s U.S. teammates Madison Chock and Evan Bates are not far behind him, either, with the married ice dancers banking more than $1 million combined over the past 12 months, according to Forbes estimates.) However, Malinin has been building up his endorsement portfolio since claiming gold at the 2024 world championships—his partners now include Coca-Cola, Samsung and Honda—and as he takes the ice on Saturday in the team figure skating event, he is poised for a star turn in Milan that could catapult him into a new marketing stratosphere.
METHODOLOGY
Forbes’ Olympian earnings figures include both on-field income from salaries, bonuses and prize money and off-field income from endorsements, licensing, appearances and memorabilia, as well as cash returns from any businesses in which the athlete has a significant interest. Estimates in freestyle skiing, Alpine skiing, snowboarding and figure skating reflect the past 12 months; estimates in hockey reflect the 2025-26 NHL league year. Investment income such as interest payments or dividends is not included, but Forbes does account for payouts from equity stakes athletes have sold.
Earnings numbers above $1 million have been rounded to the nearest $1 million; numbers under $1 million have been rounded to the nearest $100,000. All figures are listed in U.S. dollars, and have been converted at the current exchange rate when necessary. Forbes does not deduct for taxes or agents’ fees.
With additional reporting by Matt Craig.
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