CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — American skier Jacqueline Wiles has big plans for Super Bowl Sunday.
It starts with going for gold in the women’s downhill at the Milan Cortina Olympics. Then the Portland, Oregon, resident will cheer on her NFL team, the Seattle Seahawks, against the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl.
And what if — and yes, it’s a very big if — Wiles and the Seahawks both win?
“That,” Wiles said, “would be an insane day.”
While Wiles
is hardly known outside skiing circles compared to her much more famous teammate and mentor, Lindsey Vonn, she tends to excel in Cortina.
It’s where she scored her first World Cup points in 2014 — which earned her a trip to her first Olympics a month later at the Sochi Games. It’s where she earned a World Cup podium finish in 2018 in a race won by Vonn. And where she returned to the podium in 2024 after a six-year absence that included a nearly two-year injury layoff.
At age 33, she says this will likely be her third and final Olympics and she led the opening downhill training session on Friday. Then in Saturday's training, she lost control and had to make a big recovery and nearly came to a complete stop to wipe snow off her goggles.
“It was very foggy on that gate and I just missed my timing and got kind of hit by the bumps and then rotated and spun around,” Wiles said. “I made the best of what I could for the rest of the way down and I feel like I executed what I wanted to. ... I feel like I have a really good plan for tomorrow.
“I’m not here just to go to another Olympics,” Wiles said Friday. “I really want to be a threat."
Whatever happens, though, Wiles said she just loves being in the Dolomites.
“Walking through town everyone has fur coats on, you kind of have that old Italian mobster feel, the food’s amazing, so it’s just a cool place to be,” she said. "The skiing is always amazing, the dry grippy snow is always a blast to be on.”
Where other skiers might hold back when they are thrown into full throttle going through the Tofana Schuss, the dark and narrow chute between cliffs of Dolomite rock on the upper portion of the course, that’s where Wiles — who has a pilot’s license — likes to accelerate to 80 mph (130 kph).
Wiles, U.S. head coach Paul Kristofic said, is “a pure downhiller” and “pure of heart."
“It’s about skiing the hill and not worrying so much about line and really capitalizing on her natural tendencies to ski like a downhiller and take speed everywhere on the racetrack,” Kristofic said. “Her natural flow on a race course and speed is fantastic.”
As a Seahawks fan in Portland, which is located less than three hours by car from Seattle, Wiles said she grew up “watching all their games.”
Now her ski racing schedule coincides with most of the football season.
“I wish I could go up to Seattle more to watch,” she said. “But in the fall, I’ve gone a couple times over the last five years. … I loved the Pete Carroll, Russell (Wilson) era, (DK) Metcalf, (Doug) Baldwin. … I was a big, big fan. The last couple years, I didn’t get to watch as much, but I’m always rooting for them.”
On Sunday — actually it will be Monday in Cortina by the time the Super Bowl kicks off — she might be able to root for her team with an Olympic medal hanging around her neck.
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AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
