BORMIO, ITALY — The Stelvio Ski Centre hadn’t produced much joy for Americans during the men’s Alpine skiing events of the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan.
Until now.
Ryan Cochran-Siegle won silver during the men’s super-G competition on Wednesday, Feb. 11, defending his silver medal in the same event at the 2022 Beijing Games. Cochran-Siegle’s victory comes on the 54th anniversary of his mother, Barbara Cochran, winning slalom gold at the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo.
Cochran was in the stands for the race and proudly cheered on her son. She was spotted on the NBC broadcast recording a video of Cochran-Siegle as he was awarded silver during the medal ceremony. Cochran-Siegle said he felt ‘happy’ and ‘overwhelmed’ to share this moment with his family and teammates.
‘I’ve been able to draw inspiration from other Team USA athletes so far … seeing just how hard they’ve been skiing,’ Cochran-Siegle said, mentioning downhill Olympic champion Breezy Johnson and cross-country sprint silver-medalist Ben Ogden. ‘Seeing their performances, I think reinstilled the belief in myself and that inspiration was really key.’
Cochran-Siegle was the third overall racer down the mountain and slid into first place with a time of 1:25.45. However, it wasn’t enough of a lead to hold off Swiss sensation Franjo von Allmen.
Allmen moved into first place with a time of 1:25.32 — 13 hundredths of a second ahead of Cochran-Siegle — and held onto the top position to pick up his third Olympic gold medal of the Games. Allmen took gold in men’s downhill and team combined earlier in the week. He’s the third skier to win three Olympic golds in a single Games and first since France’s Jean-Claude Killy in 1968.
Cochran-Siegle was able to hold off Marco Odermatt of Switzerland, who won bronze with a time of 1:25.60 despite entering the race as a heavy favorite. Odermatt leads the 2025-26 World Cup season standings in overall, super-G, downhill and giant slalom. He has won the last three super-G season titles.
The 33-year-old Vermont native had been considered Team USA’s best hope for a medal in men’s Alpine skiing. Reaching the podium is a bit of an upset in skiing circles, given he finished 18th in the men’s downhill four days before the super-G.
Cochran-Siegle revealed he was battling an illness throughout his ‘disappointing’ downhill result, adding he vomited in the ski gondola and again in the bathroom just hours ahead of pushing out of the starting gate.
‘It wasn’t my best day. Tough when you wake up feeling nauseous,’ Cochran-Siegle recalled. ‘I was really trying to focus on the race, but I was definitely dealing with a little bit of a stomach issue. … I tried to ski my hardest, definitely didn’t have it in my legs … a little sickness, really throws you off. And I think that was disappointing all the work that goes into it.’
Cochran-Siegle had fared well previously in Bormio, Italy, though.
On Feb. 4, three days before the downhill competition, Cochran-Siegle posted a top downhill training time of 1:56.08. That was 0.16 ahead of Italy’s Giovanni Franzoni and .40 faster than anyone else in the field.
He said he felt back to 90 percent on Tuesday and spent his day resting and hydrating to fully recoup for Wednesday’s super-G event. Cochran-Siegle said he ‘woke up feeling a lot better this morning.’
‘Just having energy in my legs too, I think was giving me confidence and that helped,’ Cochran-Siegle said. ‘When I’m coming off a tough race, sometimes it takes a little bit to kind of reset. So yeah, I just had to kind of move on. Sometimes it’s good to be a goldfish.’
Cochran-Siegle’s second-place finish is his best Super-G result since the 2022 Beijing Olympics, where he finished 0.04 of a second behind Austria’s Matthias Mayer to claim silver. Though Cochran-Siegle’s silver in Beijing was Team USA’s fourth in the super-G, no American had won the event since it debuted in 1988, with Norway and Austria splitting the past seven golds.
Ahead of the medal ceremony on Wednesday, Cochran-Siegle told his fellow medalists that being the runner-up was ‘easier’ this time around during a candid conversation caught on the NBC broadcast.
‘Today was easier because I was further behind you. I was four hundredths (of a second behind) last time,’ Cochran-Siegle told Allmen and Odermatt. ‘My mom won in ’72 by two hundredths of a second.’
Cochran-Siegle, who works in his family’s maple syrup shop, is from a skiing family and credits his mother for his success.
‘She taught me that a positive mindset can carry you through the toughest moments, and that even when the pressure is high, never forget to have fun,’ Cochran-Siegle said of his mom, according to Team USA’s website. ‘That joy is where the magic begins.’
Other Americans in the 2026 Super-G: Sam Morse (finished 23rd), Kyle Negomir (26th) and River Radamus (DNF). Super-G combines the speed of downhill with the precision of slalom. It features wider curves than the other two slalom races and is held on the same slope as downhill.
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