Olympic athletes sounded the alarm about rapidly disappearing glaciers at the 2026 Winter Games in Milan and Cortina. American skiers Lindsey Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin joined Italian Federica Brignone in highlighting how glacial ice has vanished from mountains where they once competed. Vonn, 41, stated that most glaciers she previously skied on are now gone.

These Olympics made the crisis visible as Cortina's glacier-capped mountains appeared dramatically shrunken compared to years past. Team USA skier AJ Hurt described returning to Sölden, Austria each October to find progressively less snow, questioning whether the season could even start. The athletes emphasized that glacial loss directly threatens winter sports' viability.

Beyond sports, melting glaciers create cascading environmental disasters including landslides, flooding, and rising sea levels that endanger coastal communities. A World Economic Forum report projects that only 10 countries will be able to host future Winter Olympics by 2050. While initiatives like the Goodbye Glaciers Project and Mountain Towns 2030 aim to address the crisis, athletes warn that winter sports participants are witnessing the consequences of climate change firsthand.