For winter sports fans, attending the Winter Olympics is a dream. But getting to this year’s Games, which are split between Milan and Cortina, Italy, and begin Feb. 6, is a pricey proposition, with sky-high hotel rates and limited availability. More than one million tickets have been sold to events that include Alpine and Nordic skiing, as well as snowboarding, figure skating, hockey, bobsled, curling and more.
If you’re not going to make it to Europe, you can have an Olympic experience closer to home, watching high-level competitions (some serving as warm-ups for the Olympic events) and even taking part in sports like ski jumping and skeleton at sites across North America (some of the venues have hosted previous Games or will host them in the future). Here are five places where you can channel the Olympic spirit this winter without crossing the ocean.
Steamboat Springs, Colo.
Steamboat has sent a whopping 100 athletes to the Winter Olympics: 13 competed in the 2022 Games in Beijing and at least four — and perhaps more — are headed to Cortina.
While visitors often come to ski at the bigger, fancier Steamboat Ski Resort, local Olympians train on Howelsen Hill, Colorado’s oldest continuously operated public ski area, which sits across the Yampa River from downtown.
Howelsen has more Nordic ski jumps than any other complex in North America, ranging from an eight-meter beginner jump to the 127-meter Olympic-size jump, all built into the contours of the hill. The site also has Alpine terrain, miles of cross-country trails, a terrain park and a moguls course.
Visitors with adventurous children ages 7 to 13 can sign them up for the winter Steamboat Cup race series to sample everything from Nordic jumping to free ride skiing (free with a Howelsen Hill lift ticket; events are on Wednesday and Thursday evenings, with a rotating schedule). Adults can downhill or cross-country ski while observing future phenoms train, or pop into the historic lodge to listen to an Olympics audio tour.
Before the Games begin, there will be an Olympic celebration, with past Olympic athletes and current Olympians heading to Cortina.. There will be a cauldron-lighting ceremony on Jan. 31 in Steamboat Square, as well as a multiday winter carnival with athlete meet-and-greets and an on-the-slopes show with disciplines featured at the Games.
Once the Olympics begin, there will be watch parties around the resort hosted by athletes. New at the resort this year are experiences that let you ski, ride or dine with Olympians, with local athletes like Ann Battelle, Erin Nemec, Mick Dierdorff, Nelson Carmichael and Johnny Spillane taking part (“Ski with an Olympian” is $2,500 for 1 to 5 people, seven hours; “Dine with an Olympian” is $77 for adults and $51 for children, including tax and tip).
Sun Valley, Idaho
Sun Valley also has a robust Olympic legacy, with 56 former and current Olympians hailing from the region. The ski resort’s tradition of naming runs on Bald Mountain after hometown Alpine medalists started with Gretchen’s Gold, named for Gretchen Fraser, the first American to win an Alpine skiing gold medal (in 1948 in St. Moritz, Switzerland) and extends to Kaitlyn’s Bowl, named for the snowboarder Kaitlyn Farrington, who won a gold medal in the halfpipe in Sochi, Russia, in 2014.
The mountain regularly hosts U.S. Alpine National Championships and has hosted World Cup races. This spring, the U.S. Paralympics will hold a training camp at Sun Valley Resort, and the Wood River Valley Nordic trails serve as Olympic training grounds.
Though the outdoor skating rink behind the historic Sun Valley Lodge opened in 1936, it did not become a magnet for Olympians until it expanded to its current near-Olympic size in 1955 (Tenley Albright was the first Olympic gold medalist to perform in a skating carnival there, in 1956). Since then, the rink has hosted Peter Kennedy, Peggy Fleming, Dorothy Hamill, Nathan Chen and Brian Boitano, as well as legions of world champions. Anyone can rent skates or take a lesson. Since boldface names love to practice at the rink, you may end up doing figure eights alongside a champion.
Lake Placid, N. Y.
Both the 1932 and 1980 Olympics were held in the Adirondacks, and today, the four Lake Placid Legacy Sites offer tourists the chance to watch and even take part in Olympic activities. At the Herb Brooks Arena, where, during the 1980 games, the “Miracle on Ice” U.S. men’s hockey team upset the Soviet Union, visitors can watch collegiate championships, national and international figure-skating competitions, or local teams, as well as participate in skating or stick-and-puck sessions.
The Speed Skating Oval, where Eric Heiden nabbed five gold medals, is an active training facility and open to the public for skating and lessons. Over at the jumping complex, you can get a feel for what the athletes experience by taking a gondola ride to the base of the ski jumping towers and then riding the elevator to the top.
On Jan. 11 and 12, the jumping complex will host back-to-back FIS Freestyle Aerials competitions, including the FIS Freestyle Aerials World Cup Finals, which had been scheduled for Deer Valley, Utah, where there is not enough snow for the event. Visitors can watch both training runs and competitions.
At Whiteface Mountain, you can ski or snowboard on terrain where Olympic athletes have competed, including the steep Niagara run used for the men’s downhill event. The Mt. Van Hoevenberg sports complex lets you learn about sports like biathlon and bobsled and even try skeleton (the event where athletes race lying facedown on small sleds).
For the entire month of February, there will be Olympic celebrations and activations throughout Lake Placid, including public skating events, Olympian meet-and-greets (involving the local athletes Andrew Weibrecht, Paul Wylie and Mike Eruzione) and community viewing parties.
Salt Lake City
The 2002 Salt Lake City Games saw snowboarding go mainstream, Apolo Ohno speed-skate his way to gold, and a figure skating judging scandal that ended with gold medals being awarded to both the Canadians Jamie Salé and David Pelletier, as well as the Russians Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze. The three world-class facilities in and around Salt Lake City (which will host the Olympics again in 2034) are actively training the next generation of athletes and are open to the public.
At Utah Olympic Park in Park City, there are two museums, and visitors can book a session on the bobsled (steered by a pilot) or the skeleton, both of which take place on the Winter Games Sliding Track.
In Kearns, 25 miles southwest, is the Utah Olympic Oval, where the public can glide over the 400-meter track and take figure skating and curling lessons. At Soldier Hollow Nordic Center, about 20 minutes south of Park City, you can take a biathlon lesson (it involves cross-country skiing and shooting), go cross-country skiing, or tube on 1,200-foot sliding lanes (not an Olympic sport, but fun).
At Deer Valley Resort, where the freestyle, moguls, aerials and Alpine racing events took place, it’s a rush to schuss the same terrain as Olympians. The resort’s “Ski With a Champion” experience adds to the Olympic connection. Guests are paired with one of seven participating Olympians or Paralympians, who share tips, tricks and insider stories. (A full-day session starts at $2,700; half-day sessions start at $1,545. Up to six people can take part in each.)
Whistler, British Columbia
In 2010, the Vancouver Olympic Winter Games made history when Whistler Olympic Park combined all three traditional Nordic sport stadiums — cross-country, ski jumping, and biathlon — into a single site. These days, visitors can cross-country ski and snowshoe along 34 miles of groomed trails, take biathlon lessons and even toboggan beneath the ski jumps. A popular activity is night cross-country skiing along lit trails. This season, there’s a new illuminated installation along the Neverland Starlight Loop, featuring light projections and color displays.
There is also a new beginner-friendly bobsled lesson that lets guests ride the first 13 turns of the Olympic track at speeds of up to 71 miles per hour.
Thirty minutes north at Whistler Blackcomb, the ski resort has introduced a Gold Medal Route (one of seven self-guided tours of the mountain called “wonder routes”) that lets participants trace the legacy of the Vancouver games by skiing the men’s Olympic Downhill and Super-G slope to the Timing Flats, where there are signs listing all the gold medalists from the 2010 Games.
The resort also has a “Ski or Ride With an Olympian” program. Participating athletes include Ashleigh McIvor (a gold medalist for SkiCross in 2010), Kristi Richards (2006, 2010) and Mike Janyk (2006, 2010, 2014), among others. A full day starts at 1,549 Canadian dollars, or about $1,123, for up to four people; a full day with a gold medalist is2,899 Canadian dollars, also for up to four people.
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