The 2026 Winter Paralympics closed Sunday evening at the Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium with the cauldrons extinguished and the Agitos flag lowered. The final medal table took until Sunday afternoon to settle. China led all nations with 14 golds. The United States finished second with 13, including the hockey championship won 6-2 over Canada in the last event of the competition. Team USA's complete final count: 13 gold, 5 silver, 6 bronze, 24 total medals across nine days and four sports in Milan, Cortina, and Tesero.

Team USA by the Numbers

Para cross-country skiing at Tesero carried the American total. Jake Adicoff won four individual golds in four different formats: the sprint, the middle-distance, the pursuit, and the 20km. He entered every cross-country event on the schedule and finished at the top in all of them. Sydney Peterson swept her category with three individual golds. Oksana Masters collected two golds and a bronze at Tesero, added a biathlon bronze on Day 1, and earned a fifth medal in the final competition days for a total of five across her sixth Winter Games. Kendall Gretsch won biathlon gold on Day 1 and biathlon sprint pursuit gold on Day 7, picking up two bronzes as well across biathlon and cross-country.

Para snowboard delivered two of the most anticipated American results. Noah Elliott won the SB-LL1 banked slalom gold, the result he described before the Games began as the one he came to Milan specifically to claim. Kate Delson won the SB-LL2 banked slalom in her Paralympic debut, at 20, with a run that cleared the field. Both stood on the top step at Livigno on Day 7, within hours of each other.

Andrew Kurka took alpine bronze in the men's sitting super-G at Tofane, his fourth Games and the third in which he has won a medal. Patrick Halgren won silver in men's standing super-G, his first Paralympic podium. Brenna Huckaby medaled in snowboard.

The para ice hockey program closed the American count with gold on Sunday morning. The final score was 6-2 against Canada. Jack Wallace scored three goals and an assist. Goalkeeper Griffin LaMarre posted the highest save percentage in the tournament at 85.71%. Josh Pauls became the only player in history with five consecutive Paralympic hockey gold medals. Declan Farmer finished as the all-time career scoring leader in Paralympic ice hockey, with 14 goals and 24 points across these nine days, both the single-Games records for goals and points, which he set and then extended throughout the tournament.

The Final Medal Table

China led from early in the competition and finished with 14 golds. The United States held second with 13. Italy, on home soil, had its best Winter Paralympics ever, surpassing its all-time medal record from Lillehammer 1994 and finishing fourth in gold. Austria's Veronika Aigner won four individual golds. China's Cai Jiayun won three biathlon golds in the standing category.

Ukraine boycotted the opening ceremony march in Verona, competing for nine days alongside the political backdrop that framing created, and finished seventh overall with 17 total medals. They led the gold medal table outright through the first three days before the cross-country skiing and snowboard results shifted the standings.

Three countries reached the Winter Paralympic podium for the first time. Kazakhstan's Yerbol Khamitov won gold in biathlon, the country's first-ever Paralympic gold medal at the Winter Games. Brazil's Cristian Ribera won silver in para cross-country sitting, the first Winter Paralympic medal in Brazilian history. Latvia won bronze in wheelchair curling mixed doubles.

Belarus, competing under the Neutral Paralympic Athletes designation, earned what stands in the record books as the first Winter Paralympic gold in Belarusian history, from Raman Svirydzenka in para cross-country sprint standing.

Performances That Stood Apart

Two individual performances at these Games are worth putting in context. Jake Adicoff's four-gold sweep across sprint, middle distance, pursuit, and 20km is not an easy result to achieve in a single Games. Each format rewards different physiological outputs. A cross-country sprinter needs an explosive short-course engine; the 20km is a different calculation entirely. He won all four. No other para cross-country skier at these Games went four for four.

Farmer's record-setting in para ice hockey may prove durable. He broke both the single-Games goals record and the single-Games points record, then continued building those totals through the gold medal game. Four consecutive hat tricks in four preliminary games. He entered the tournament needing 34 career points to break the existing all-time record and left it with 58.

Wheelchair Curling

Steve Emt and Laura Dwyer made history at these Games as the first U.S. mixed doubles pair in Paralympic history. They reached the bronze medal game before losing to Latvia 11-10 in extra ends after holding the lead through most of the match. China won the gold medal final over South Korea in extra ends, making Wang Meng and Yang Jinqiao the first mixed doubles Paralympic champions in wheelchair curling history, since this was the event's debut at the Games.

What's Next

The next Winter Paralympics go to the French Alps, March 1-10, 2030. It will be the first Winter Games held in France since Albertville 1992.