Everyone in Brenna Huckaby’s life was skeptical about snowboarding at first — herself included.

The Baton Rogue, La., native never dreamt of gliding down snow and executing tricks on its powdery surface. Her athletic talents were focused on flipping barefoot above a springy gym floor, hopefully working towards a gymnastics scholarship to her hometown Louisiana State University.

But cancer took away those plans, Huckaby recalls in a recent interview with PEOPLE about the path that led her to 2026 Winter Paralympics. At 14, Huckaby was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a rare bone cancer, that ended with her right leg being amputated and her dreams of a gymnastics career dashed. 

“It also left me with trying to figure out my identity,” Huckaby, now 30, says. She wasn't thinking about sports anymore; “For me, it was really just getting up off the couch, putting my prosthetic leg on, making myself some lunch. That was really hard after losing my leg.”

Then came a life-changing trip to Utah a year later.

“My hospital was taking kids with cancer who lost mobility on a rehabilitation ski trip and at first, I was like, ‘Sounds like my doctor just really wants to go skiing and is trying to find a way to get an organization to pay for it,’ “ Huckaby recalls, laughing. “But their idea was if they could take kids who lost mobility from cancer to the mountains where they could ride down and conquer an actual mountain in a sport that's objectively difficult, then when they got home, they would be able to conquer their figurative mountains, like getting up off the couch.”

She decided to give it a shot, asking "to snowboard because it reminded me of a balance beam, and at that time of my life, I would've given anything to have just a piece of my old life back," she says. Organizers thought it might be too soon after her amputation, but, Huckaby remembers, "I was like, ‘No, please. I'm strong. I promise.’ So I did. I was able to snowboard. I immediately fell in love. It was hard. I wasn't very good. But I knew just deep down, I was like, 'This is something I can be good at.' "

It’s easy to say in hindsight, but “good” might be an understatement: A decade and a half and a properly fitted snowboarding prosthetic later, Huckaby is now one of the best snowboarders in the world. She's got four Paralympic medals overall (three golds), 10 medals at World Championship events, and is now gearing up for her third appearance on the sport’s biggest stage in March at the 2026 Winter Paralympics in Milan, where she could break the record for most-decorated female Paralympic snowboarder.

But for her mom Kristie, who had accompanied Huckaby on that fateful first trip to Utah, no matter what came of her daughter’s experience after discovering the sport, the victory was in gaining back her confidence.

“[My mom] was like, ‘The moment that you strapped into the snowboard and you could actually go down the hill, it was like this light was back in your eyes again,’ “ Huckaby remembers. “She used to say, ‘I had my Brenna back, the Brenna before cancer.’ And she would do anything to keep that there.”

In practice, that looked like relocating to Utah so Huckaby could continue to develop her skill in the sport.

"For [my mom], it was so that I could heal from cancer. But for me deep down, I had heard about the Paralympics and I was like, ‘Okay, I like to be the best at everything I do. How can I be the best in snowboarding? Oh, the Paralympics are a thing? I'm going to do that,' " she says. "In the back of my mind, I was going to be a Paralympian, but for my mom, she was just watching me heal post cancer.“

Now Huckaby’s own daughters, Lilah and Sloan, will be in attendance at this year’s Paralympics, watching their mother’s inspiring journey play out live.

“As a mom now, I often try to put myself in my mom's position," Huckaby says. “I can't even conceptualize the fact that my mom was like, ‘Okay, I have two other kids, ‘I have a husband, I have a whole life in Louisiana, but I'm going to uproot everything and go to Utah with my daughter on a hope and a dream.’ I had been snowboarding two times and she's like, ‘You're going to love it.’ And I did. But to just trust your daughter that much, that this is something that she loves and is going to help her with her life — and then to actually do it? It's crazy. I'm so grateful to my parents for that.”

To learn more about all the Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls, come to people.com to check out ongoing coverage before, during and after the games. Watch the Milan Cortina Olympics and Paralympics, beginning Feb. 6, on NBC and Peacock. (edited) 

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Alex Hall has been skiing for so long he doesn’t remember the first time he rode down a hill. But the U.S. Olympian can pinpoint exactly what drew him specifically to the sport of freestyle.

“I've always been on skis,” Hall, 27, tells PEOPLE ahead of the 2026 Winter Olympics. “I've always loved skiing, but specifically with freestyle skiing I really got into it when I saw some videos of my dad doing pretty much what freestyle skiing was way back in the day, before it was an official sport. It used to be called ‘hotdogging.’ “

Hall was enraptured by the old footage of his father, Marcus Hall, “hotdogging” on the snow, trying tricky maneuvers and goofing around with his friends as they pushed the limits with what could be done on a pair of skis. Watching those tapes, the Alaskan-born skier knew he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps ... er, ski tracks.

“I loved watching videos of him,” says Hall, who grew up in Switzerland, where his parents were professors. “It inspired me to try freestyle and try flips and tricks on my skis, and it all just went from there. We’d love to go out together and just try new things on our own.”

From then on Hall and his older brother Aldo, a snowboarder, could frequently be found always filming each other doing new tricks.

“My parents met skiing, so it's definitely always been in the blood,” Hall says. “My dad's from Salt Lake City, and so is his whole family. It's definitely been a family tradition our whole lives.”

After spending nearly all his live in Switzerland, at 16, Hall made the decision to move back to the United States and go to a ski-specific high school in Park City, Utah, about 30 miles away from where his dad grew up.

“I knew if I made that change, I'd be taking the next step towards really trying to attain a dream like [the Olympics],” Hall says.

Hall honed his craft, becoming one of the sport’s rising stars and amassing a large social media following posting videos of himself testing out new tricks. By 2015, when he was 17, the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Team had come calling. But still, Hall felt like he had work to do to reach the pinnacle of winter sports.

“The Olympics weren't always in the picture,” Hall admits. “Maybe they just felt so farfetched that I never really dreamed too much about them in that sense. I'd say it really all settled in when I actually made my first team in 2018, competing for the US in freestyle skiing.”

Hall had made it to the Olympics, but finished 16th overall in slopestyle at the 2018 PyeongChang Games. He was determined to not just get back to the global stage in 2022, but stand on the podium. 

At the Beijing Winter Olympics that year, Hall exceeded perhaps even his own expectations with a rousing run that earned him Olympic gold, adding to an already full trophy case, alongside Hall’s 12 X Games medals, including six golds and three silvers across four different events.

“Winning a gold medal in China was an amazing memory,” Hall says. “Landing that run and doing it the way I wanted to with more of a creative approach and not necessarily following the rules – that was a very proud moment, always a fond memory.”

Hall says he’s “hyped” about jetting off to his third Olympic Games come February, noting that his Italian mother and the rest of his immediate family and friends will be there in attendance for the first time since 2018 (after sikipping the games to Covid-related restrictions in 2022).

“It's going to be pretty sweet,” Hall says, admitting his family being there will undoubtedly add “some pressure” to his run at another podium finish. 

But he knows that it all started with having fun on the slopes with his family, and that won't ever change: "I know they'll still like me even if I do bad!”

To learn more about all the Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls, come to people.com to check out ongoing coverage before, during and after the games. Watch the Milan Cortina Olympics and Paralympics, beginning Feb. 6, on NBC and Peacock. (edited) 

Read the original article on People

Mystique Ro kept it secret for weeks, but then her mother started to notice the strange bruises on her arms.

“Where did these come from?” Ro’s mother, Tamara, asked.

“Don't worry about it, it’s fine!” the future Olympian snapped back. 

But soon, Tamara found out what her daughter had been keeping from her: She was quitting track and field, and giving a new winter sport — one she had never seen before — a try.

Weeks earlier, decorated U.S. bobsledder Elana Meyers Taylor sent out an email blast to college coaches across the country letting them know Team USA was looking to recruit new athletes for winter sports such as bobsledding, skeleton, and more.

Ro, a track and field hurdler at Queens University of Charlotte, figured: “Why not?”

“I heard of bobsled from the famous Cool Runnings and I had watched Vancouver 2010,” Ro, now 31, tells PEOPLE with a laugh, saying she thought, “Let’s see what happens."

Ro did the Team USA combine and did well enough to get an invite to join the team. But after considering Ro’s 5-foot-4 frame, the U.S. coaches thought the former track and field star might be too small for bobsledding and encouraged her to try skeleton — a similar sport that instead sees an individual rider fly down the track on their own personal sled, rather than as part of a four person team (that Cool Runnings reference).

The transition was tough, Ro recalled to PEOPLE ahead of her Olympics debut. It was especially challenging to mentally overcome the fear of flying down a hill around 80 miles per hour with nothing but a heavy metal sled separating her body from the ice.

“I was kind of hesitant because skeleton's is a crazy sport,” Ro says. “Who wants to go head first like that? I was like, ‘Not me.’ And so they kind of got me to come back to driving school. We went down about the halfway mark and I said, ‘No, thank you! We're going way too fast. I can't see anything. I don't know what's happening. I'm hitting everything, and it hurts.’ But over time it starts to grow on you, and obviously you have to go from the next run to the next one. You kind of have to trick yourself into saying, ‘It's a game. It's more fun as you get better because you're not hitting stuff!’ So over time, I realized it is actually fun. And I found I had an aptitude for the start, which is very advantageous, so I’ve been doing it ever since.”

Ro has done much more than simply getting the hang of skeleton, however: She’s become one of the top sledders in the world in the matter of eight years.

The Nokesville, Va., native took home an individual gold at the Pan American Games in 2024. The next year, Ro took home an individual silver at the World Championships and was also part of the gold medal-winning U.S. team.

And soon, Ro will be competing for the biggest prize in the sport: an Olympic medal.

Ro’s mom will be looking on with family and friends at a watch party being hosted at a local bar, half a world away, as her daughter launches herself again and again down an icy hill as fast as she possibly can.

“It's been a challenge with trying to explain to her why I want to throw myself down a mountain at 80 miles an hour, because there's no logic for a parent about why you keep doing it on repeat when things go awry,” Ro laughs. “So over time when they start to understand it, they get comfortable and they can support you a little bit less hesitantly.”

As for Ro, that hesitation left her body long ago. Now, it’s all about gunning for the gold and taking in the moments she’s dreamt about since she was young.

“This is something that kids dream about,” Ro smiles. “I’m like, ‘Oh, cool, we're here.’ This is something to be really excited about.”

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