These Olympic athletes are leaning on faith going into the Winter Games

(OSV News) -- Among the best athletes in the world preparing in early February to push the limits of the physically possible and vie for the glory of an Olympic medal, some are using their platform to speak about their faith and give glory to God in their victories and defeats.

Ahead of the 2026 Milan Cortina Games which officially begin Feb. 6, meet some athletes who have mentioned their Catholic and Christian faith as part of their journey to the games.

Team USA hockey player Britta Curl-Salemme spoke to OSV News recently about the importance of her Catholic faith.

"I think my life would be pretty chaotic and stressful if I didn't have something steady and consistent that I can go back to that I drew strength from, and that's my Catholicfaith," she said. "Just the routine of in the morning -- I get up and the first thing that I'm doing is going to my Bible."

She features masstimes.org on her Instagram page and said going to Mass every Sunday has helped her keep a good perspective on things.

Curl-Salemme, 25, sees hockey as one of her "paths to be a saint" and said there's a lot to learn from "the daily ins and outs of being on a team and being with tons of different people with different backgrounds and different personalities and the way that, as a team sport, you're tested to sometimes die to yourself and put the team ahead of yourself."

Another Catholic member of Team USA is Jadin O'Brien, a member of the bobsled team who was previously a three-time track and field national champion in the pentathlon for the University of Notre Dame.

O'Brien, 23, relied on her faith to help her through a struggle with Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections, a rare condition that she faced in childhood.

In a documentary "Offering It Up" about her struggle with PANDAS, O'Brien said she hoped that she used her platform "as a successful athlete to glorify God."

In discussing her track career, she told the Milwaukee Catholic Herald in 2023 that "my faith is what keeps me calm before and during big meets. Athletics has helped build my faith by putting me in situations where I can put what I believe into practice."

"Before every track meet, I take some holy water on my thumb and I make the sign of the cross on each location where I will be competing," she added. "Athletics has made my faith stronger because I rely on it so much before and while I compete."

She said her favorite Scripture verse was Jeremiah 29:11: "'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'"

Turns out those plans included being recruited by Team USA Bobsled for the 2026 Olympic Games.

Heading into her first Olympics, she said in a recent interview that her faith is a part of her focus. "Like any big competition I've been a part of, I've had the same mindset, and that is really to cut out distractions, to dive into my faith, and then to just stop thinking and just do," she said. "That's when I perform at my best."

O'Brien's partner in the two-woman bobsled team Elana Meyers Taylor, who recruited her to the sport, has highlighted her own Christian faith throughout her long career. Meyers Taylor is the most decorated Black athlete in Winter Olympic history with three silver and two bronze medals from her past Olympics, and while she's still going for a gold medal, she puts faith and family first.

"God put me here for a specific reason and I don't think it's just to win medals," she said in a 2014 interview. "At the end of the day, I'm in this sport to glorify God, so if that means I come in last place or I win the gold medal, that's what I'm going to do."

Meyers Taylor, 41, is a mother to two sons with her husband, fellow bobsledder Nicholas Taylor. Their sons, Nico and Noah, were both born deaf, and Nico, who was born in 2020, has Down syndrome.

"I pray before every race, every time I walk to the line," she said in a 2022 interview with The Wall Street Journal. "I work every day to live a life that's Christ-like."

By returning to the Olympics, she said she wants to demonstrate what is possible as a parent of a child with special needs. "I want people to see Nico and see what joy we have in our lives," she said. "It can be hard, but I also want to show that you can do it. I wouldn't change our journey for the world."

One story of faith persevering after tragedy is that of Maxim Naumov, a Team USA figure skater who qualified for the games after losing his parents, Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, in a plane collision last year with an Army helicopter over Reagan National Airport in Washington that killed 67 people, including 28 associated with a training camp for figure skaters.

His parents, who were also his coaches and former Olympic pair skaters, had come to the U.S. from Russia in 1998 and transitioned to coaching. After his programs at the national championships in St. Louis, Naumov, 24, held up a picture of himself at age 3 on the ice with his parents on either side of him.

He told The New York Times that Spencer Howe, a fellow Team USA Olympic figure skater who will compete in pair skating with his partner Emily Chan, helped him navigate his grief by sharing his Christian faith.

"In 2022, when Naumov nearly quit the sport because he was sick of being injured and was clashing with his parents on the ice, he asked to stay at Howe's place for a few months. He worked at Starbucks as a barista while taking college classes online," the Times reported. "They clicked so well that Naumov stayed until he moved back into his parents' house last year. They have been through a lot together, and even go to church together."

"I have so much respect and so much love for my brother because, again, he could have gone the opposite way," Howe, who aims to be an Army chaplain following his skating career, told The New York Times of Naumov. "What's made me the proudest to see is that, through all this tragedy, he's looking for a silver lining instead of letting it tear him apart inside."

Naumov made the sign of the cross multiple times before his programs at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. "God is good," he told reporters after earning the bronze medal and a spot on the Olympic team following the event.

In a celebratory skate after the news that he made the Olympic team, the chain holding Naumov's baptismal cross came off.

"It's my cross, it's something that I wear at all times no matter what," he said in an interview. "I keep that on me and I feel like it's protection and even though something happened where it popped off, the fact that it still stayed on my shoulder and was skating with me and grabbing it and holding onto it like that just further was such a wild moment."

In the world of skiing, one Christian athlete who is heading to the Olympics for the first time is Sam Morse, who qualified for the downhill and Super G alpine events after a decade on the national ski team.

In 2019, Morse co-founded the Sam Morse FAST Camp -- Faith And Ski Training -- a Christian ski racing camp in Oregon for teens with a mission to "not only make our athletes faster, but also to tune into that inner joy and peace that comes with knowing we are part of something bigger" with "race training by day and faith training by night."

"My faith is my life," he said in a 2017 interview. "It is the glue that holds it all together. My goal is to be a loyal servant of my Savior and proclaim his name from the highest mountains."

The 29-year-old cited Hebrews 12:1 as a favorite verse: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us."

Another vocal Christian skier is Paul Schommer, who is competing in his second Olympics on the biathlon team. Schommer is a graduate of the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, Minnesota, a Benedictine school where he trained with head coach and former U.S. Biathlon Team member, Chad Salmela.

In 2018, Schommer, 33, told the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, "My identity doesn't come from my results, and it doesn't come from affirmation of others, but it comes through my identity in Christ because he's the one who gives me my meaning."

He added that "prayer is huge" in his life because "it's constantly having that communication with God. It helps me get in the right mindset and gain a good perspective on things. For me, a lot of times I'd see it gets worse when you start praying at God instead of opening up that two-way communication and really listening to him. The most important prayer for me is just shutting up and listening to God."