AJ Ginnis, former U.S. Ski Team athlete, to be first 2026 Olympic torchbearer
Greek Alpine skier AJ Ginnis, a world slalom silver medalist and former U.S. Ski Team member, will be the first torchbearer of the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympic torch relay that starts Nov. 26.
Ginnis, who eyes his Olympic debut in February at age 31, will receive the flame in the ancient Olympic site of Olympia, Greece, to start the torch relay. A Greek athlete traditionally is the first torchbearer before an athlete from the Olympic host nation.
'It is a great honor for me, something that I never imagined as a child,' Ginnis said, according to the Greek Olympic Committee.
The relay will culminate at the Feb. 6 Opening Ceremony at the San Siro Stadium in Milan.
The relay typically spends multiple days in Greece, the birthplace of the Olympics, before moving to the host nation.
For Milan Cortina, the Italy portion of the relay will start Dec. 4 in Rome.
Ginnis missed most of last season due to knee surgery.
In 2023, he earned what is believed to be Greece's first world championships medal in any Winter Olympic program event when he took slalom silver.
The best Greek finish in any event at a Winter Olympics was 13th in women's skeleton in 2002.
Ginnis previously raced for the U.S. at the 2017 Worlds, then was dropped from the national team after the 2017-18 season following several injuries and a best World Cup finish of 26th at the time.
He switched to his birth nation of Greece, where he had learned to ski at Mount Parnassus, a 2 1/2-hour drive from Athens. He moved to Austria at age 12 and then Vermont three years after that.
Ginnis has undergone at least seven knee surgeries in his career. He tore an ACL in summer 2021, ruling him out of the 2022 Winter Games.
He thought he was done with ski racing when he went to Beijing to work the 2022 Olympics for NBC.
'When I came back, I told myself, my goal is to go into the next Olympic cycle being a medal contender,' he said at the 2023 Worlds. 'Fighting back from injuries, getting cut from teams, trying to fundraise for what we're doing now. ... This is a dream come true on every level.'
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