In Paralympic alpine skiing for visually impaired athletes, a guide skis six feet in front of the competitor, calls the course through an earpiece, and shapes every turn. The relationship takes years to build. Taking away a guide six weeks before the biggest race of the season is like changing a surgeon's hands mid-preparation.

Veronika Aigner's guide was her older sister Elisabeth. In February 2026, Elisabeth was injured at a World Cup event and couldn't compete at Cortina. Veronika arrived at the Games with two replacement guides she'd worked with for weeks, not years, and medaled in every race she entered: four golds and a silver across five events.

The Aigners of Gloggnitz

Veronika grew up on a farm in Gloggnitz, a town in Lower Austria about 80 kilometers south of Vienna. She started skiing before her second birthday. Her mother Petra has visual impairment. Her siblings Barbara, Johannes, and Elisabeth all compete in para skiing. At the 2022 Beijing Games, four members of the Aigner family collectively won nine medals, including four golds for Veronika.

Visual impairment wasn't something the family navigated around. It was part of how they lived, and skiing was something everyone did.

By the time Veronika arrived in Italy for her second Winter Games, she already had more Paralympic gold medals than most athletes accumulate across entire careers. She was 23 years old.

What a Guide Does

In visually impaired para alpine skiing, the guide and athlete are linked by radio. The guide skis the course first, then calls commands from about two ski lengths ahead: "left," "right," "go," "stop," "pitch." They call the course fast enough to match racing speed, and their read of the snow is what keeps the racer safe.

Veronika's relationship with Elisabeth had been calibrated over years of training and competition. Every call, every cadence, the way Elisabeth read a difficult compression: Veronika knew her sister's voice at race speed. When you're pointing downhill at 80 miles an hour, that knowledge isn't abstract.

The Replacement

When Elisabeth was ruled out, Lilly Sammer stepped in. They trained together, built enough shared language to compete at the highest level, and Veronika won three golds in the opening events with Sammer guiding. For the final two races, Eric Digruber called the turns, and Veronika added a fourth gold and a silver.

Across five events with two different replacement guides, she didn't drop a single final: four golds and a silver.

What the Results Looked Like

Para alpine skiing at Cortina and Tofane brought over 30 medal events across five disciplines: super-G, downhill, giant slalom, slalom, and super combined. Athletes compete across standing, sitting, and visually impaired categories. In the VI women's races, Aigner won every discipline she entered.

Patrick Halgren earned silver in the men's standing super-G at the same venue, racing under a tribute to his late twin brother. Aigner's sweep and Halgren's silver were part of the nine days at Cortina and Tesero that made Milano Cortina 2026 an unusually close-watched Games.

For Families Watching

The Aigner family story doesn't work as a simple template, but it's a useful reference point. A mother with visual impairment raised children who compete at the highest level in the same sport. The disability was part of the household, not a complication that required a workaround. The pathway from Gloggnitz to Cortina ran through decades of ordinary family decisions: starting young, practicing together, building something over time.

If your child has visual impairment and you're wondering what the world of para sports looks like, programs for winter adaptive sports are available across the U.S. for beginners, including equipment grants for families who can't absorb those costs directly.

Veronika Aigner won six Paralympic golds before age 24. Her sister's knee will heal.