These two athletes could deliver South America’s first medals in the Winter Games

Never has a South American country won a medal in a Winter Olympics. Two athletes are hoping to change that on Saturday.

Alpine skier Lucas Pinheiro Braathen, born in Oslo to a Brazilian mom and Norwegian dad, is ranked second in the world in both giant slalom and slalom. Those competitions are set to take place in the Saturday and Monday as part of the ongoing Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.

Nicole Rocha Silveira, who was born on the southern tip of Brazil and moved to Canada around age 7, is ranked ninth in the world in women’s skeleton. She made three World Cup race podiums over the last two seasons and was fourth at the 2025 World Championships.

She competes on Friday and Saturday in Cortina d’Ampezzo, with the times from four runs (two each day) combined to determine medalists.

Pinheiro Braathen and Silveira each carried the Brazilian flag at different sites during the Opening Ceremony last week.

Though both learned their sport in the Northern Hemisphere, they each proudly wear the Brazilian colors.

Pinheiro Braathen was the world’s top-ranked in slalom, then skiing for his native Norway, when he shockingly retired at age 23 — two days before the start of the 2023-24 season. In a tearful press conference, he hinted at a long-standing conflict with the Norwegian ski federation over athlete marketing rights.

Pinheiro Braathen booked a one-way ticket to Brazil, a country he visited annually as a kid. He got stranded on Ilhabela, an island outside São Paulo. Some time later, he decided he wanted to unretire and ski for Brazil, for what he got a release from Norwegian federation.

“I fell in love with sports over there (playing soccer on the streets of São Paulo), so to be able to come full circle, to be able to represent them in the World Cup of a sport, it truly means a lot,” he said in 2024. “To be able to bring the dance to the snow is what I’m seeking to do.”

When Pinheiro Braathen became the first Brazilian skier to make an Alpine World Cup podium in 2024, he broke into a samba in the Colorado snow. When he won a World Cup last November, he screamed “Vamos Brazil!” into a finish area camera, beamed as the national anthem, “Himno Nacional Brasileiro,” blared inside the Arctic Circle in Finland, draped the Brazilian flag around his neck.

“Norway taught me how to be an athlete, how to brave the cold,” Pinheiro Braathen said. “Brazil taught me how to be myself.”

Silveira stands out in her sport, too. She races in skeleton — where athletes slide head-first down the same icy chutes as bobsledders and lugers.

Silveira, who has also worked as a nurse at Alberta Children’s Hospital in Calgary, competes wearing a helmet with artwork of a Brazilian parrot wearing a stethoscope.

Her family wasn’t supposed to end up in Canada.

“From what I remember, they were googling the best city to live in, and the first one to show up was Miami,” Silveira said in 2024. “My dad went to Miami alone just to kind of scope it out. He thought there was too many Brazilians in the area already. The second place that they chose was Calgary.”

In 2017, she was a bodybuilder working at a supplement shop when she chatted with a customer who was part of the Brazilian bobsled team that trained in Calgary. One thing led to another, and she dived into bobsled’s sister sport of skeleton.

In 2022, she placed 13th in her Olympic debut, the second-best result for a Brazilian in any Winter Olympic event. The best was Isabel Clark’s ninth-place finish in snowboard cross in 2006.

“I think a top eight would be incredible,” Silveira said in 2024 of the Milan Cortina Games. “Obviously, we all dream of that medal.”