Sophia Gibb went to two Paralympics as a swimmer and came home with two medals. She was world champion in 2017. By the end of 2022, she was done competing. Six years later she's in Italy covering the Winter Games for NBC.

From the Pool to the Press Corps

Gibb grew up in Fairplay, Colorado, a small mountain town her family chose for the trails, the altitude, and the wide open space. She has achondroplasia, the most common form of dwarfism, and her parents had no framework for it when she was born.

She started in alpine skiing. A knee surgery in high school changed that plan. She switched to swimming, made the U.S. Para Swimming national team, and in 2017 became the world champion in the 100m breaststroke SB6. She was part of the U.S. relay team that won gold at those same championships in Mexico City. By the time she retired, she had collected silver at Rio and bronze at Tokyo, along with years of competing at the highest level of her sport.

The Next Chapter

After retiring, she joined NBC as a contributor for the 2024 Paris Paralympic Games, becoming the first person with dwarfism known to serve as a Paralympic commentator for the network.

Now NBCUniversal, which announced its full 24-person commentary team for Milano Cortina 2026 on February 26, has her on-site in Cortina d'Ampezzo as a reporter alongside Andy Stevenson. NBC News correspondent Emilie Ikeda will roam all three competition clusters as a reporter, while Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer Andrea Joyce anchors from Milan.

Paralympic snowboard silver medalist Mike Shea is also making his NBC debut at these Games. The team has two former Paralympians calling events they once competed in.

Why That Changes Something

For most of the Games' history, the broadcast side has been staffed by able-bodied journalists doing their best with a world they learned about professionally but never lived. The coverage has gotten better over time. But there's still something different about hearing an athlete explain what it costs to get to a starting line, what a classification means in practice, or why a certain course configuration is more brutal than it looks.

Gibb knows what it feels like to have everything lined up against you physically and still show up. So does Shea. When one of them is talking about a Paralympic athlete finding an extra gear at the end of a race, they're drawing on their own experience of competing at that level.

NBCUniversal is broadcasting more than 270 hours of Paralympic programming across NBC, Peacock, USA Network, CNBC, and NBC Sports Digital. Peacock carries all events live, with a record number of hours scheduled for primetime on NBC.

For families watching with kids who have disabilities, the voices explaining these Games include people who have been exactly where those athletes are standing. The Games run March 6 through 15 and you can watch live on Peacock.