Six Jewish athletes to watch at the 2026 Winter Olympics
Alongside Israel’s nine Olympians at this year’s Milano Cortina Games, there are also a slew of Jewish athletes worth keeping an eye on.
Here are six of the biggest Jewish names to watch when the Olympic torch is lit in Milan.
Aerin Frankel, star goalie for Team USA
Boston Fleet goaltender Aerin Frankel has made a name for herself as a star in the ascendant Professional Women’s Hockey League. But the 26-year-old turns it up another notch in international play.
Frankel was Team USA’s starting goalie for the Women’s World Championships from 2023 to 2025, leading the US squad to gold medals in 2023 and 2025 and silver in 2024. She was also on the US roster for its 2021 and 2022 silver medal runs. During the 2023 tournament, Frankel became the first US women’s goaltender in 26 years to start five consecutive games at an Olympics or World Championship.
Known as the “Green Monster,” a nod to Fenway Park’s iconic left-field wall, Frankel makes her Olympic debut this year.
The Hughes brothers, and Boston’s other Jewish goaltender
On the men’s side, Team USA will feature a trio of Jewish ice hockey stars all making their Olympic debuts: brothers Quinn and Jack Hughes and Jeremy Swayman.
Quinn Hughes, 26, a defenseman for the Minnesota Wild, was the 2024 winner of the NHL’s James Norris Memorial Trophy for the league’s best defenseman. He was traded to the Wild (for Israeli-American Zeev Buium) after several seasons as the captain of the Vancouver Canucks. He has played for various US teams dating back to 2015, highlighted by a gold medal at the 2017 World U18 Championships.
Middle brother Jack Hughes, 24, is a star center for the New Jersey Devils, where he plays alongside youngest brother Luke Hughes. Jack, the first overall pick in the 2019 NHL Entry Draft, is a three-time All-Star and was named tournament MVP of the 2018 World U18 Championship.
He and Quinn have played together on multiple US teams. Their mother, Ellen Weinberg-Hughes, was herself a hockey star and is a member of the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.
Swayman, 27, was a star at the University of Maine before joining the Boston Bruins in 2021. The Alaska native co-won the William M. Jennings Trophy in 2022-23 for allowing the fewest goals in the NHL and was named an All-Star in 2024. Swayman, whose father is Jewish, had a bar mitzvah as a teen.
Emery Lehman, US speed skater
The elder statesman of the US Jewish Olympic cohort, Chicago native Emery Lehman, 29, returns for his fourth straight Winter Olympics. He won a bronze medal in Beijing in 2022. He has also won several gold medals at international speed skating competitions.
Lehman, whose mother has previously worked for the American Friends of the Hebrew University of Israel, first began speed skating as a child to improve his ice hockey skills. He became a national champion at 13 years old and qualified for his first Olympics, the 2014 Sochi Games, at 17.
In Italy, Lehman will compete in the 1,500-meter race and the team pursuit.
Kayle Osborne, Canadian ice hockey goaltender
New York Sirens goalie Kayle Osborne completes the quintet of Jewish ice hockey players headed to Milan.
The 23-year-old Ontario native almost played for Canada at the Maccabiah Games as a teenager before going on to a standout career as a goalie at Colgate University, where she was a finalist for the NCAA’s Women’s Hockey Goalie of the Year honor.
She is making her Olympic debut.
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