No South American nation has won a Winter Olympic medal. None have come close since Argentine bobsleds placed fourth and fifth at the 1928 St. Moritz Games.
That could change at the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics.
Brazil suddenly has medal contenders in women’s skeleton and men’s Alpine skiing.
Nicole Silveira placed third in the World Cup skeleton season opener in South Korea this past Saturday. It is believed she is the first athlete from South America to make a World Cup podium in any Winter Olympic discipline.
Silveira, a 30-year-old registered nurse, was born in Rio Grande do Sul on the southern tip of Brazil. She moved with her family to Canada around age 7.
“From what I remember, they were googling the best city to live in, and the first one to show up was Miami,” Silveira said. “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.”
Silveira did gymnastics, volleyball, soccer and CrossFit growing up. She had just finished her last bodybuilding show in 2017 when she had a life-changing conversation with a stranger at the supplement shop she worked at.
The customer turned out to be part of the Brazilian bobsled team that trained in Calgary. He learned that she was Brazilian and invited her to try out for the Brazil women’s bobsled team, which was also Calgary-based and seeking a third member for a 2018 Olympic bid.
Silveira googled bobsled and gave it a shot. The Brazilian women did not qualify for the 2018 Games. But Silveira liked the touring and community aspects of the sport so much that she took up the Brazil federation president’s invite to try skeleton.
She finished nursing school in 2018 and split her first year sliding head-first on ice in the fall and winter while working 12-hour shifts at Alberta Children’s Hospital in the spring and summer. As her skeleton results improved, she received more funding that allowed her to scale back the overnights at the hospital. She still works enough to keep her license.
Silveira qualified for the 2022 Olympics, where she donned a helmet with artwork of a Brazilian parrot wearing a stethoscope. She placed 13th, the second-best finish by a Brazilian in any Winter Olympic event. Isabel Clark was ninth in snowboard cross’ Olympic debut in 2006.
“They actually stopped a women’s volleyball game on one of the biggest sports channels in Brazil to play my (Olympic) run live,” Silveira said. “After the Games, I think there was a big commotion of this is what winter sport is, or this is what skeleton is, for Brazil.”
Silveira continued competing on the annual World Cup circuit with the rest of the best sliders. She improved her career-best result by one spot each of the last two seasons an eighth-place finish in November 2022, then a seventh-place finish in December 2023.
Then this Nov. 8-9, Silveira placed second and first in two races designated as Asian Cups at the 2018 Olympic track in South Korea. The fields were World Cup quality.
Silveira was faster than 2022 Olympic gold medalist Hannah Neise of Germany, 2023-24 World Cup season champion Kimberley Bos of the Netherlands and 2024 World champion Hallie Clarke of Canada.
The only woman to beat Silveira in either race was her fiancée, 2024 World silver medalist Kim Meylemans of Belgium. Silveira and Meylemans both planned to propose while on a private boat tour in Rio de Janeiro in May and even bought the same rings. Silveira popped the question first.
Last weekend, Silveira placed third and sixth in the first two World Cup races of the season. Silveira and Meylemans share a coach, Richard Bromley, who guided South Korean Yun Sung-Bin to Olympic gold on that same track in PyeongChang in 2018.
Silveira said she has already achieved more this season results-wise than she thought possible. As for a 2026 Olympic placement goal?
Id like to say no, but I think, as athletes, we all do. For me, I think a top eight would be incredible,” she said. “Obviously, we all dream of that medal.
Brazilian Alpine skier Lucas Pinheiro Braathen opened his season by placing fourth in each of the first two World Cups a giant slalom in Sölden, Austria, on Oct. 27 and a slalom in Levi, Finland, this past Sunday.
Braathen, 24, was born in Oslo to a Brazilian mother and Norwegian father who separated when he was 3 years old, according to sponsor Red Bull. Braathen spent most of his childhood in Norway, visiting Brazil annually, including a six-month stay one year.
Braathen said he dedicated his life to skiing since age 9, at first representing Norway. At age 11, he and his dad set a 10-year plan to reach the top 30 in the world by age 21. If Braathen didn’t reach the goal, “my old pops would send me off to college to get a degree,” he said.
At age 20 1/2 in October 2020, Braathen became the first male Alpine skier born in the 2000s to win a World Cup race. He did not finish either of his races at the 2022 Olympics. The next winter, he won the World Cup slalom season title despite missing one of the 10 races in the discipline due to appendix surgery.
Then on Oct. 27, 2023, two days before the start of the 2023-24 season, Braathen announced his retirement in a tearful press conference. Norwegian media reported he had a long-standing conflict with the Norwegian ski federation over athlete marketing rights.
For the first time in years I feel free, and everyone that knows me, they know that if its something that leads me to happiness, its my freedom,” he said.
Braathen went home to Norway, then rented out his Oslo apartment and booked a one-way ticket to Brazil.
“I stranded myself on this island, Ilhabela, outside of São Paulo, the state and city that my family’s from, and just tried to get away from everything that had to do with sports and career,” he said.
He returned to Europe for Christmas and crashed at his girlfriend’s place in Paris. Braathen decided in January that he wanted to unretire. He chose to contact the Brazil federation rather than Norway (though he still needed a release from Norway, which was granted).
“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. “To be able to bring the dance to the snow is what I’m seeking to do.”
This past Oct. 27, Braathen finished fourth in his first World Cup race in 19 months and first race ever representing Brazil. He had the fastest second run of the field and finished just behind three former Norwegian teammates overall.
“IM BACK HOME BABY,” he posted the next day. “Im doing me, and Im proud of it. You can hate it, you can love it, but you cant deny it. Yesterday mightve been the most special day of my life.”
Bruna Moura nearly died trying to get to the Olympics. Now shes back on her skis.
Bruna Moura, a Brazil cross-country skier, returned to competition after nearly dying in a car accident while on her way to the 2022 Winter Olympics.