Specialty: Halfpipe

Age: 25

The Englewood-born Blunck is headed to his third Olympics. He finished seventh in the halfpipe in both the 2014 and 2018 Games. He nabbed the gold medal in the halfpipe at the 2019 world championships and another gold in the superpipe at the 2017 X Games in Aspen.

Competing: Feb. 17 and 19

The Centennial State will have 23 athletes, by their recognized hometowns, according to the United State Olympic and Paralympic Committee. It is tied for the second biggest contingent with Minnesota and behind only California (29).

Alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin, of Edwards, is the most decorated among the Colorado crew, having won two gold medals (slalom in 2014 and giant slalom in 2018) and a silver (combined in 2018). The two golds are tied for the most all-time among American Alpine racers.

Vail-born skeleton racer Katie Uhlaender will be competing in her fifth Olympic Games, tied for the most on the Americans with Lindsey Jacobelis, John Shuster and Shaun White.

Silverthorne’s Red Gerard returns for his second Olympic Games. In 2018, he became the youngest winter Olympian to win a gold medal at the age of 17, after capturing the slopestyle title in snowboarding. Goaltender Nicole Hensley, of Littleton, will again mind the net as the U.S. women’s hockey team looks to defend its gold. Aspen native Alex Ferriera won silver in the freestyle ski halfpipe in 2018. Alex Deibold won bronze in the snowboard cross in 2014.

Nordic combined racer Taylor Fletcher, of Steamboat Springs, is competing in his fourth straight Olympics, while Aaron Blunck, of Crested Butte, is going to his third. Other Coloradans returning for their second Games, include Taylor Gold (2014), Mick Dierdorff (2018), Alex Deibold (2014), Hagen Kearney (2018), Jasper Good (2018) and Joanne Reid (2018).

Here’s a look at the list of Colorado athletes, including ones not officially listed by the USOC:

Alpine skiing

• Nina O’Brien, Denver
• River Radamus, Edwards
• Mikaela Shiffrin, Edwards

Biathlon

• Joanne Reid, Grand Junction

Bobsled

• Sylvia Hoffman, Colorado Springs

Cross country skiing

• Hailey Swirbul, Aspen

Figure skating

• Mariah Bell, Monument
• Brandon Frazier, Colorado Springs

Freestyle skiing

• Aaron Blunck, Crested Butte
• Alex Ferreira, Aspen
• Hanna Faulhaber, Basalt
• Birk Irving, Winter Park
• Kai Owens, Vail
• Dylan Walczyk, Blue River

Hockey

• Nicole Hensley, Littleton
• Nick Shore, Denver

Nordic combined

• Taylor Fletcher, Steamboat Springs
• Jasper Good, Steamboat Springs

Skeleton

• Katie Uhlaender, Breckenridge

Snowboarding

• Chris Corning, Silverthorne
• Alex Deibold, Boulder
• Mick Dierdorff, Steamboat Springs
• Lucas Foster, Telluride

• Stacy Gaskill, Golden
• Red Gerard, Silverthorne
• Taylor Gold, Steamboat Springs
• Zoe Kalapos, Vail
• Hagen Kearney, Norwood
• Cody Winters, Steamboat Springs

Freestyle skier Aaron Blunck didn’t know if he would make it — “Don’t let me die,” he told his coach at the bottom of the halfpipe — after bashing into the lip of the pipe 15 months ago.

But the whirr of the helicopter blades taking him to the hospital created a peaceful sensation — he was going to make it — and a swift realization: No longer would he take any moment for granted.

The crash in Switzerland during a training run on Oct. 13, 2020, was so severe that a doctor later told Blunck something that gave him chills — he was, indeed, really fortunate.

“I learned to just be thankful to take a breath of fresh air,” said Blunck, who competes Sunday at the Winter X Games before heading to Beijing for the Winter Olympics. “It’s the small things that make the big things and I think we all lose that sight. Because I did.

“I really did think I was going to die that day. I had just proposed to my girlfriend and I had the dogs, and I have a super-loving family and almost having that taken away from you in a matter of a heartbeat? I need to just be thankful.”

During that training run in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, Blunck was trying to dial in a difficult trick — a switch double cork 1440, which includes two spins wrapped inside of two flips. It’s one of the toughest tricks in the business.

What happened next remains a blur of sights and sounds to the 25-year-old out of Crested Butte, Colorado, who had been to two previous Olympics, where he had placed seventh both times.

The sights: Seeing the deck of the pipe rapidly approaching and thinking there was no way he was going to get around in time. He hit the frozen edge and slid to the bottom. First, everything went black before a bright, blinding light overtook him.

The sounds: a conversation between him and U.S. halfpipe coach Mike Riddle, who was filming Blunck’s run and quickly jumped into the pipe to be at his skier’s side.

“I just told him I loved skiing. I loved him. I love my family,” Blunck recalled. “But when I tried to stand up for the first time and all of a sudden just like everything went black. And then it was super bright. I knew at that moment, ‘Oh, man, something’s not right at all.'”

Soon after, the buzz of the chopper in the distance.

“I was like, ‘All right, these guys are going to get me to the hospital and everything’s going to be good,'” Blunck said.

Between a grade-three lacerated kidney, broken pelvis and banged-up ribs, he hurt everywhere. But he needed to do one thing as he lay in his hospital bed: Watch the video. Just to know where things went wrong.

He couldn’t get around quick enough. Nothing more.

“So many people, when they get injured, they kind of hold a grudge against themselves,” Blunck said. “They’re like, ‘Why did this happen to me? This is unfair.’ I wanted to watch the video because I wanted to just see where I went wrong to accept it.”

The first night in the Swiss hospital, he couldn’t get out of bed due to the pain. The next day, he walked a little bit and performed a tiny squat.

So elated, he called his then fiancée (now wife) Morgan in the middle of the night to tell her.

Still, doctors cautioned him — he probably wouldn’t be back on the slopes that season even to ski just for fun. As for competing, no way.

“But I’m kind of the person who if you tell me, ‘Don’t touch the hot plate,’ I’m going to touch it,” Blunck cracked.

After recovering in Switzerland for a few days, Blunck returned to Colorado. His rehab included plenty of pool work, where he would walk up and down a lane 10 times.

One day, a big breakthrough: another squat, with no pain.

“I got out of the pool and remember calling my family and being like, ‘I’m back!'” Blunck said. “They’re like, ‘Well, you still have a long way to go.’ I was like, ‘No, you don’t understand. I’m back.'”

He healed fast. Real fast.

Three months after his near-fatal fall, Blunck returned to the halfpipe for Winter X, where he finished an improbable second.

Just not with that trick. He hasn’t tried that trick again. He might never — and he’s OK with that.

All part of his new outlook.

“He just seems to be having even more fun out there,” said Riddle, who competed for Canada and earned a silver medal in ski halfpipe at the 2014 Sochi Games. “In our sport, the things everyone’s doing are scary and risky. So if you’re not having fun, it just makes everything a whole lot harder. He just looks like he’s enjoying it more.”

Because, he is.

With everything, really. He enjoys walking his two French bulldogs, Tank and Isla. Or skiing with Morgan, whom he married on Aug. 5 in Italy.

“(The crash) was a serious eye-opener to how quickly it can go, how it can be taken from you,” Blunck said. “I was given a second chance in a way. I’ve learned how to be thankful for everything I have.”

New Zealand 16-year-old Nico Porteous, throwing the only six-hit runs and the only double-cork 1440, took bronze.

Nevada’s Wise stumbled on his first two laps, joining a coterie of climactic crashes in the carnage-filled contest as skiers pushed to showcase the highest level of pipe skiing on the world’s grandest stage.

Up top, about to drop for his final lap, Wise saw that a new standard for skiing had already been set.

“Freeskiing today won whether I landed my third run or not,” said Wise, who skied three different pairs of skis on his three laps after kicking a ski on his first two laps. “That kind of gave me a little boost.”

His back-to-back switch double-corks were staggeringly huge; a linking of two of the hardest tricks in ski pipe. Wise won gold in Sochi in 2014 in the first-ever Olympic running of halfpipe skiing. It was snowing hard that night and the Russian pipe was in bad shape. It was not a good debut for the sport. PyeongChang was much better.

“For me, this is the most satisfying competition I have ever had,” said Wise, whose wife, daughter and toddler son joined him in South Korea. “Just making the team after the hard couple of years between Sochi and here felt like a lifetime accomplishment. I feel like we got to put on the show that everybody missed out on in Sochi.”

Ferreira, 23, was the only skier in the 12-man final to stay on his feet while improving on each of his three runs, a consistency he credited to training. He boosted more than 20 feet out of the pipe on his hits, spinning five double-cork tricks in all three of his runs. As his dad, a former professional soccer player from Argentina, rattled a cowbell the size of a pasta pot and led a horde of local kids in the international “Ole” soccer anthem, Ferreira posted the highest scores in the first two laps of the three-run final. His third run was less than a point behind Wise’s 97.20.

“Victory lies within the preparation and I was prepared for this day and I worked extremely hard,” said Ferreira, who just missed the cut to make the first-ever Olympic pipe squad with his best friend Torin Yater-Wallace in 2014.

Sochi veterans Yater-Wallace of Basalt and Crested Butte’s Aaron Blunck struggled to stay clean in their runs on Thursday, with the top qualifiers finishing out of the podium hunt. Blunck finished 7th, the same spot his finished in Sochi four years ago.

It was a fiery throwdown, with several uncharacteristic bobbles by top skiers. Yater-Wallace slammed hard on his final run. France’s Kevin Rolland fell on all three of his first hits, a massive switch double cork. His French teammate Thomas Krief fell on his first run and dropped from the contest. New Zealand’s Byron Wells slammed in practice moments before the start of the contest and was hauled away in a sled. His brother Beau James Wells soared with technical and lofty tricks to finish fourth.

The Wells brothers’ Kiwi teammate, the spry Porteous, weaved four double-corks in a row into his first run for the first time in his life. For his second run, he linked five doubles in a row for yet another first in his career. His first hit, a tail-grabbed double-cork 1440, was one of the first-ever in a pipe contest. No question Thursday was the best ski performance in his life. The world will see plenty more from this kid. He is the future of pipe skiing, even though he rides without poles.

“I just had to go for it. You are at the Olympics. Why not take advantage of it and harness the adrenaline and really go for it,” said Porteous, whose bronze marked a landmark day for New Zealand.

Minutes before Porteous dropped in for his first run, New Zealand’s Zoi Sadowski-Synnott won bronze in the Olympic debut of women’s snowboard big air, ending New Zealand’s 26-year drought of Winter Games medals.

“That was an absolutely huge inspiration for me and really got me going for the day. I would say we broke the curse today,” Porteous said.

Despite the struggles of Blunck and Yater-Wallace, Wise said it was a good day for freeskiing, a sport that thrives in the U.S., where the world’s highest concentration of Olympic-caliber halfpipes fosters the next generation of aeronautical skiers.

“What is so impressive is the danger and risk involved in going that high and doing those tricks … the sport is just so beyond what we were doing,” said Jonny Moseley, the freeskiing pioneer who uncorked the sport����ap inverted spinning frenzy with his off-axis “dinner roll” in the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic moguls contest, which the judges shunned. “Those runs by Alex and David Wise were the most impressive things I have ever seen in the halfpipe or freestyle ever.”

SNOWBOARDING

Pushed forward a day because of predicted bad weather, the first finals of Olympic snowboarding’s Big Air will start with the women at 5:30 p.m. The last run is scheduled for 6:30 p.m.

In Big Air, the rider launches off just one very large jump and does tricks for the judges. Don’t worry if you can’t tell a frontside 1080 from a backside 1440; most of us can’t either. Judges are also looking for how high the athletes get and whether they have a clean landing. The U.S. has four athletes competing in this event including slopestyle gold medalist Jamie Anderson and 17-year-old Hailey Langland, who has won this event at the X Games.

BOBSLED

The only women’s bobsled event will finish today. The third heat will be at 4:40 a.m. and the final heat at 8 a.m. All four heats count in the final score. Watch for the way both riders push at the start before hopping into the sled. Once on the course, the brakeman in the back tucks her head down and tries to stay still during the bumpy ride. Keep an eye out for the Nigerians, who are in their first Olympics, and for the ever-popular Jamaicans. The women are their only bobsled entry this year.

CURLING

If it is Wednesday, or any other day that ends in “y,” there must be curling. The men play a round just after midnight, but not the doping-scandal-plagued Russians. The women play at 4:05 a.m. At 5:05 p.m., we finally move out of the round robins, and the men and women play tiebreaker games. Watch for the funky shoes the players wear. One foot is designed for sliding on the ice and the other for traction when sweeping.

ICE HOCKEY

The women will play for medals today. The puck drops at 9:10 p.m. for the much-anticipated gold-medal game between the U.S. and Canada. Canada has taken home the gold medal in this event at the last four Olympics. The Americans will be trying to win their first gold since 1998, when women’s hockey made its debut in the Olympics.

For night owls, the women’s bronze-medal game between Finland and the Russians is at 12:40 a.m. Also at 12:40 a.m., the Russian men will play a quarterfinal match against Norway. The quarterfinals continue at 5:10 a.m. with Canada facing Finland and Sweden playing Germany.

FREESTYLE SKIING

Tricks, flips and speed will thrill freestyle skiing fans as medals are won in men’s ski cross and the halfpipe. In ski cross, four skiers take the course at the same time, racing each other to the bottom around sharp turns and jumps. The clock is the only judge. Seeding runs start right after midnight and the big final is at 10:35 p.m. The men’s halfpipe final run starts at 7:30 p.m. with the last three at 8:22 p.m.

Colorado was represented well with the state’s three best halfpipe skiers — Aaron Blunck, Alex Ferreira and Torin Yater-Wallace — topping the qualifying contest heading into Thursday’s destined-to-be-epic Olympic final.

SPEEDSKATING

Both the men’s and women’s team pursuit will be early in the morning. The first women’s race is at 4 a.m., when the Dutch go up against the Americans for six laps of the 400-meter track. The women’s medal finals start at 5:52 a.m. The American men race the Canadians at 5:13 a.m. and the medal finals start at 6:11 a.m. The race is similar, but the men skate eight laps. The team’s time is based on when the last of three skaters crosses the finish.

“She really cares. She cares about her athletes to the core and that����ap what is amazing about her,” Wise said.

Elana Chase is the secret weapon that has nourished the U.S. Ski Team’s halfpipe squad, a foursome of aeronautical warriors who have battled through personal and physical setbacks to reach the Olympics, where each are poised as top contenders for medals in Thursday’s final. Chase has coached all four at various points in their career. She fostered Wise through his early years as pro skier. She housed the teenage Aaron Blunck for two years while he honed his craft at Ski & Snowboard Club Vail. For more than a decade, she has been the coach for Torin Yater-Wallace and Alex Ferreira, whose personal and professional skills she has helped cultivate since they were waist-high rippers.

For just about every run down the halfpipe for the past decade, Chase has been there, bumping fists with Ferreira and Yater-Wallace the moment before they drop in. They’ve grown from upstarts to superstars.

“Having Elana up there is a special thing for Alex and I. Having that person that you know you work so well with and have had your whole entire life,” said Yater-Wallace, who qualified third behind Ferreira and Blunck in Tuesday’s qualifying contest, fueling hopes for an American sweep of the halfpipe podium. “It����ap amazing to have Elena right there giving Alex and I the best advice we could want and with her it����ap a lot less of her coming to us. It����ap us going to her and she’s always known that that����ap the way we work. Why would you not want the person you’ve worked with and done best your whole life with there for you?”

Blunck, Ferreira, Yater-Wallace and Wise are more than just extraordinary skiers. They deflect praise to each other. They are humble and grateful, often talking about the honor of representing their country and the blessing of skiing for a living. They maintain a keen focus on their sport, hoping their exceptional talents drive more skiers to the pipe. Yes, they battle each other but after more than a decade of halfpipe havoc, they remain loyal to each other. It����ap a rare interview where they don’t applaud one another.

“The reality is hanging out with these guys and watching them ski is humbling,” Wise said.

Ron Wallace, Torin’s dad, obviously taught his son well; he similarly deflected a compliment when hearing that his son inspires a stranger.

“That����ap all Torin. He made this all himself,” Wallace said.

The families of Yater-Wallace, Ferreira and Blunck are tight. They’ve been hanging together for more than a decade, just like their boys.

One thing they all emphasized at the start, just as their boys were landing sponsors and garnering international attention, said Torin’s mom, Stace Yater-Wallace, is “don’t get a big head.”

The boys listened. And alongside their hard-working, ski-town parents who sacrificed to elevate their boys’ talents, Chase, who has coached and trained more than two dozen of the world’s top skiers, can be credited in part with that humility and introspective approach Blunck, Ferreira and Yater-Wallace have.

As for Chase, she eschews the spotlight. She wants all the attention on her athletes.

“You should really ask them about this,” she said, responding to a question about her contributions to her enviable roster of star skiers, many of whom refer to her as their “secret weapon.”

“Elana is the best. I’ve never seen a better coach,” said Ferreira, an ever-smiling Aspen native who exudes gratitude.

Chase has always elevated personal development focusing on thankfulness ahead of athletic talent. Her coaching chorus? “Be a good person. As much as you are a good skier, you are going to be person a lot longer than you are a competitive skier,” she said. “There’s energy in how you put good things out to other people and you inspire them and they admire you and they put energy and support back into you. I think it����ap really how you are as a person more than a skier and what you put out there because it all comes back tenfold.”

She was talking as she carried her trademark snow blade skis to the lift to begin her shift in the halfpipe starting house before Tuesday’s qualifying contest. “The most important thing is recognizing your place in the universe,” she said. “This is sports and what does that really matter, but it inspires people. Especially when you do it through massive adversity and you learn how to fall down and get back up. That����ap what people connect with. Winners are forgotten tomorrow. Champions last a lifetime.”

There’s a trust between Chase and her students.

“I’m always in their corner and my only purpose is to help them. I have no other agenda and they know that,” she said. “They trust me, which is crazy when I think about it, but they trust me with their lives. So if I suggest something, they know it’s always in their best interest.”

Ferreira, 23, has worked with Chase since he was 12. Her influence, for Ferreira, reaches well beyond the halfpipe. He considers Chase his “second mother.”

“One minute we are working in the halfpipe and working on tricks and the next minute she’s teaching me about life stuff and how I can build my credit,” Ferreira said.

Chase said Ferreira is a role model for not just athletes, but coaches who can use his laborious ascent over a decade in the pipe as a bearing for greatness.

“Alex’s trajectory through this sport, from day one, with all his ups and downs, is exactly how you would want it to go as a coach. That����ap exactly who you want to reference when you are trying to get the next kid to step up to something or step up as a person,” Chase said. “Nice guys finish first. That����ap my hashtag. You can be the guy or girl who opens doors for people and helps old ladies across the street, but you better be fierce on the snow. And there’s no reason you can’t be both.”

Her skiers, she said, know who they are and they can see what they accomplish on this brightest of stages. But they have to ski for themselves. If they get distracted by rivals, coaches, parents, teammates, and, yes, even by country, they could lose that elusive edge that makes them ski at their very best.

“If you think about the magnitude of the Olympics and all that stuff, you are going to get yourself in a zone where you might not be skiing for the right reasons,” Chase said. “You gotta do it like you did when you were eight years old. You are skiing for you. You are skiing for your personal goals and you are skiing with a purpose.”

With dozens of cheering and flag-waving family and friends lending a home-turf vibe, Crested Butte’s Aaron Blunck finished first, followed by Aspen’s Alex Ferreira and Basalt����ap Torin Yater-Wallace. Their teammate, David Wise, who won the first gold medal in ski halfpipe in the Sochi Olympics, finished eighth. The strong showing fueled hopes for a Team USA sweep of the halfpipe podium.

“Chances are pretty good,” Wise said.

“It’s definitely a possibility,” Ferreira said.

“That would be unreal,” Yater-Wallace said.

The fiercest foursome of pipe riders ever assembled loves to throw the largest hits in the pipe. And the extra-long PyeongChang pipe can accommodate their magnitude. Where all four skiers have been known to run out of room when they are boosting five hits, this Olympic pipe easily fits their biggest hits, including left and right double-corks — both forward and switch.

“Conditions are optimal not just for pipe skiing but the conditions are optimal for us American pipe skiers because all four of us really like to go big,” said Wise, whose deep bag-of-trickery might be the most technical in all of halfpipe skiing. “We are going to be able to do the tricks we want to do.”

Blunck finished first with a huge second run in the best-of-two qualifier. He led the group of 27 of the world’s top skiers — which was whittled down to 12 for the best-of-three finals — with a near-flawless run that culminated with a lofty rightside double-cork 1260.

Blunck, who competed in the 2014 Sochi Olympics at age 17, refocused on his skiing after the common Olympic hangover left him questioning his love for competitive pipe skiing. Up at the top of the pipe Tuesday, he needed to land his run clean to make the finals. He relied on the mantra he deployed through the grueling Olympic season that packed four consequential qualifying contests into a two-month span: focus on fun.

“I just thought about it and I didn’t care about the results. I just wanted to ski. I really wanted to land a run but at the same time, I’m just happy to be here and honored to be on this team of really talented people,” said the 21-year-old Blunck.

Coaches for the American ski and snowboard teams intentionally sculpted an intensive qualifying process to reach the Olympics, including four contests this season at Copper Mountain, Breckenridge, Snowmass and California’s Mammoth. It was purposely pressurized and physically exhausting; designed to hone the skiers and snowboarders for the Olympics. It worked with the snowboarders for sure, with Red Gerard and Jamie Anderson winning gold in the snowboard slopestyle contests and Shaun White, Chloe Kim and Arielle Gold taking home medals in the halfpipe. On Tuesday, California’s Brita Sigourney won bronze in the halfpipe and the entire U.S. men’s team qualified for finals, giving further support to the demanding qualification process that sharpened the Olympic pipe skiers.

“That����ap what the U.S. Team is trying to do, make it as rigorous as possible so we can endure the different types of conditions and pressure,” said Ferreira, who had a massive cheering section with friends and family waving signs and wearing “Go Alex” hoodies. “I guess it was a good thing. We are doing well, right?”

Torin Yater-Wallace’s lead-up to PyeongChang was even more exacting as he recovered from injuries and didn’t lock his spot until the final qualifying contest in Mammoth in late January.

He stuck his first qualifying run with aeronautical precision, giving him enough points to secure his spot in finals, allowing him to take it easy on his second run without risking a crash.

Putting down the first run, he said, was unreal. Especially considering his first Olympics, when a punctured lung and broken ribs slowed his ramp-up to Sochi. The next year, he suffered an infection that nearly killed him. Those hurdles made sticking his first run even more special.

“Regardless of the circumstances, it����ap always an amazing feeling and, obviously, I’ve had some unfortunate instances I have dealt with that just added to that feeling,” said the 22-year-old Yater-Wallace. “It was just such a relief to land that first one after my less-than-stellar performance in Sochi dealing with my lungs and ribs back then.”

All four Americans said they were hoping for a finals showdown that highlighted the athleticism and progression of their sport. With New Zealand brothers Byron and Beau-James Wells joining their 16-year-old Kiwi teammate Nico Porteous, along with Canadian pipe veteran Mike Riddle and the podium-threat Kevin Rolland of France competing in Thursday’s contest, the Olympic pipe finals most certainly will be one for the ages.

“I’m really, in all honesty, just excited about the sport putting on a show. That����ap the one thing that was lacking in Sochi is that we didn’t get to put on a show the world deserved to see,” said Wise, who won gold despite competing in a snowstorm in a poorly maintained halfpipe.

First-time Olympian Ferreira agreed.

“I just hope everyone skis to their best ability and we showcase halfpipe skiing on the world stage in a great light,” he said, giddy that his journey includes Yater-Wallace, his friend since they first started pushing each other in the pipe as grade-schoolers. “I can’t believe I get to compete with Torin, one of my best friends, at the Olympics. I did not see that coming when we were 10 years old, but it’s super cool.”

The 242-athlete U.S. Olympic Team heading to PyeongChang is the largest delegation from any nation in the history of the Winter Olympics. Colorado, the ski capital of the nation, is sending more athletes than any other state to the Winter Games, with 23 men and 13 women competing in 17 disciplines. Nineteen of those athletes will be competing in their first Olympics.

Colorado is home to three Olympic halfpipe skiers, three moguls skiers, three Nordic combined skiers, three Super-G skiers, three snowboard cross racers, three hockey players, three slalom skiers, two slopestyle and big air snowboarders, and two halfpipe snowboarders.

Red Gerard, the 17-year-old snowboard slopestyle phenom from Silverthorne, is the youngest U.S. Olympic Team athlete from Colorado and Crested Butte slalom skier David Chodounsky is the veteran at age 33.

The U.S. Olympic Team will be looking for its 100th gold medal in PyeongChang, with the count currently at 96. In the 2014 Sochi Winter Games, Coloradans accounted for three of America’s 28 medals, with Mikaela Shiffrin earning gold, Gus Kenworthy earning silver and Boulder’s Alex Deibold grabbing bronze.

Here’s a look at the Colorado athletes (Tap on their names for more details):

Alpine skiing
David Chodounsky, Crested Butte
Wiley Maple, Aspen
Alice McKennis, New Castle
Sarah Schleper, Vail
Mikaela Shiffrin, EagleVail
Lindsey Vonn, Vail

Biathlon
Joanne Reid, Boulder

Bobsled
Lauren Gibbs, Denver
Nathan Weber, Pueblo West

Cross country
Simi Hamilton, Aspen
Noah Hoffman, Aspen

Freestyle skiing
Casey Andringa, Boulder
Aaron Blunck, Crested Butte
Chris Del Bosco, Vail
Alex Ferreira, Aspen
Tess Johnson, Edwards
Jaelin Kauf, Vail
Gus Kenworthy, Telluride
Keaton McCargo, Telluride
Torin Yater-Wallace, Basalt

Ice hockey
Nicole Hensley, Lakewood
Troy Terry, Highlands Ranch
Mike Testwuide, Vail

Nordic combined
Ben Berend, Steamboat Springs
Bryan Fletcher, Steamboat Springs
Taylor Fletcher, Steamboat Springs
Jasper Good, Steamboat Springs

Skeleton
Katie Uhlaender, Breckenridge

Snowboard
Chris Corning, Silverthorne
Mick Dierdorff, Steamboat Springs
Red Gerard, Silverthorne
Arielle Gold, Steamboat Springs
Hagan Kearney, Telluride

Kyle Mack, Silverthorne
Jake Pates, Eagle
Meghan Tierney, Edwards

Specialty: Ski halfpipe

Age: 22

Shaking off a down season after competing in ski halfpipe’s Olympic debut in Sochi as a wide-eyed 18-year-old, Blunck can call the 2017-18 season his best ever. With his easy style and technical command at qualifying contests in Copper, Breckenridge and Snowmass, Blunck punched his second Olympic ticket. With a majority of the world’s best halfpipe skiers hailing from the U.S., Blunck’s hard-earned ascendancy to U.S. Skiing’s second Olympic pipe team delivers hope he can find the podium in PyeongChang.

Competing: Feb. 20 qualifying, Feb. 22 finals.