The Olympics are all about winning medals. Everyone knows that the ultimate goal is to stand atop that three-tiered stand and have a hunk of gold slipped around your neck as your national anthem plays for the adoring crowd.
Just ask Jack Hughes, right?
That achievement, however, is only within reach for a select few athletes. There are just 116 events at the Milano Cortina Olympics, which means even factoring in team sports, the vast majority of the 3,500 participants will leave Italy without a medal.
The goal, for most, is to create a moment. In many cases, those experiences, lessons or memories are just as important as a prize that ends up tucked away in a sock drawer or safe deposit box.
So to recap how athletes with New Jersey ties fared at the 2026 Winter Games, let’s look back on the moments that they — and we — will remember:
ISABEAU LEVITO: A sublime debut provides a promising glimpse into the future
In a diva-worthy red dress, Isabeau Levito made her first appearance in the Olympic spotlight one that the Mount Holly native will never forget. Her short program was a tribute to Italian icon Sophia Loren, and she performed it to near perfection in an arena just a short drive from where he grandmother lives in Milan.
An early fall in her free skate two nights later knocked her from medal contention. But, at just 18, this moment felt more like the beginning than the end for the South Jersey skater. Four years is a lifetime in a sport dominated by younger competitors, but Levito looks like the future of American figure skating.
“This has been like a fantasy,” Levito said.
She arrived in Italy a little known name outside of the figure skating community and became one of NBC’s biggest stars throughout the Games. That first performance will be the one we remember from 2026, but chances are, it won’t be the last time she skates on this stage.
JACQUIE PIERRE: A hockey player brings a New Jersey cheering section to Italy’s underdogs
The Italian women’s hockey team didn’t need to import fans to Milan, but Jacquie Pierre made sure it had extra support from New Jersey. The Montclair native’s own personal cheering section arrived with cardboard cutouts of the former N.J. high school star, whose long, winding hockey journey took her from the rinks of Essex County to the Italy’s underdog team.
Pierre honored her late father, Al Pierri, an Italian immigrant who died of a heart attack while playing hockey in 2012. The 35-year-old also honored her life’s work, using the Olympic stage to create more awareness about climate change through the group Eco Athletes. And she helped lead the Italians into the quarterfinals, where they lost to Team USA, the eventual gold medal winners.
“We knew that we were coming in as the underdogs, the lowest-ranked team, but we also believed in ourselves,” Pierri said.
JESS PERMUTTER: A snowboarder asks — and receives — a message from her gold-medal hero
It was a good life lesson, brought to you by a 16-year-old snowboarder who wasn’t afraid to seize her opportunity behind the microphone at the world’s biggest sporting event:
Sometimes, you just gotta ask.
Jess Perlmutter ended a U.S. snowboarding press conference by asking if anyone could help her meet Alysa Lui, the star American figure skater. Sure enough, Lui recorded a video message for her fellow Americans to offer encouragement and ask for a snowboarding lesson someday.
Perlmutter had a made-for-TikTok Olympics. Not only did her comments about using the trip to Italy as an excuse for missing her high school homework assignments go viral, but her phone flew out of her pocket while she was competing in the slopestyle finals. Oh, and she finished sixth, a performance that firmly establishes herself as the future of the sport for Team USA.
ALEX CARPENTER: Snubbed in 2018, a women’s hockey star gets her golden moment
She could have been bitter. She probably should have been bitter. Alex Carpenter had helped Team USA win four world championships and a silver medal in the 2014 Sochi Olympics when, inexplicably, she was left off the 2018 team that won gold in South Korea.
“I don’t think it’s worth being bitter about. It was outside my control,” Carpenter said. “It was decisions they made and I can’t do anything about it now.”
Well, there was one thing she could do. The 31-year-old forward registered six points (three goals) in seven games as the Americans beat Canada in overtime for the gold medal.
Carpenter spent part of her childhood in Morristown while her father, NHL veteran Bobby Carpenter, coached for the Devils. She now has a gold medal to go with her two Olympic silvers.
KELLY CURTIS: A skeleton racer wears two uniforms — and does so proudly
Kelly Curtis, a 37-year-old Princeton native, competed in her second Olympics in the skeleton. She finished in 12th place, improving on her 21st at the Beijing Olympics in 2022, and also finished finished 10th in the mixed team event with Daniel Barefoot.
Curtis, a staff sergeant in the Air Force’s World Class athlete program, became the first Black woman to compete for Team USA in the skeleton four years ago. She asked to be stationed at Aviano Air Base in Italy to be closest to the site of these Olympics, and as a result, was never far from the men and women who wear her other uniform.
“To have the privilege of wearing the red, white and blue to represent not only my country but the Air Force, my family, my community, it meant so much,” Curtis said. “It’s such a great privilege to be able to earn that uniform.”
