Sports
Keeping up with the Macugas, America’s next first family of the Winter Olympics
Forgive Dan and Amy Macuga if they have to consult a spreadsheet to figure out where their children are.
This is one of those things that happens when your three girls are all skiers on the inside track to make the U.S. Olympic team. There’s a boy, too, who also skis competitively and may eventually end up on the U.S. team, but not in 2026.
Ah, but we digress. For the next 16 months or so, the Macuga sisters of Park City, Utah (where else?), are going to be adding their own chapter to the story of standout sports siblings. You’ve heard of the Manning brothers (football) and the Williams sisters (tennis) and the Korda crew (golf and tennis). Alpine skiing had Phil and Steve Mahre way back when.
But here’s what makes the Macugas different: Through the combined forces of having different body types, different interests and probably a healthy dose of the self-preservation instinct that led them to not want to compete against each other, each Macuga pursued a different skiing discipline. The result: When you meet them, there is a bit of a “Sound of Music” vibe to the Macugas, if the Von Trapp family had been filled with skiers rather than singers.
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“I’m Sam, I’m 23, and I like to fly,” says Sam Macuga the ski jumper.
“I’m Lauren, I’m 22, and I like to go fast.” That’s Lauren Macuga, the alpine racer.
“And I’m Alli, and I’m 21, and I like all aspects, so I do moguls.”
Like Lauren, Daniel Macuga, the baby of the family at 19, skis alpine. He doesn’t compete internationally yet, so he’s a bit more manageable. He might even attend a U.S.-based college full-time first. Time, and results, will tell.
Their endeavors all have a bit of overlap. Alpine skiers fly 60 meters in the air over jumps. Mogul skiers go pretty darn fast while they race over massive bumps while incorporating flips and other tricks into their runs. And there may be no scarier starting gate than the one atop ski jumping’s large hill.
Three sisters on one Olympic team would be any parent’s dream. Three sisters in essentially three different sports in one Olympics is a parenting psychologist’s dream, since the girls have basically never competed against one another, except in Mario Kart and card games.
“When we play games together, it’s so competitive,” Lauren Macuga said. “If we were all in the same sport, it would not be possible.”
Lauren Macuga finished fourth in the downhill in Saturday’s World Cup event in Beaver Creek, Colo. (Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)
It all happened very organically, too. After moving to Park City in 2007, the Macugas signed up their kids for the region’s Get Out and Play winter sports program, a legacy of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City that provides cheap access to winter Olympic sports for children in the region. Each sister liked something else. Their parents did not complain.
“They kind of self-selected,” said Dan Macuga, a marketing executive who has worked with Chevrolet and Usana. “We’ve always told them, ‘As long as you’re having fun, just keep doing what you’re doing.’ It’s not really our decision to make. It’s what makes them happy, and they chose the sport that they wanted to do.”
Logisticswise though, the Macuga family chronicles have long been an exercise in organizational mayhem.
For years, that meant relying on friends and other parents to get some of their kids to the right mountain at the right time. These days, the various U.S. ski teams take care of that part.
The parents just have to try to figure out what continent and country they need to be in to catch up with the children. There’s a Google Sheet filled out months ahead of time with everyone’s schedule.
What’s happening in the coming days?
According to the sheet, on Thursday, Sam is scheduled to be in Engelberg, Switzerland, preparing for qualification the next day. Lauren will be training in St. Moritz, getting ready for Saturday’s Super-G race; Alli is training for the weekend’s moguls competition in Georgia — the country not the state — after traveling from Alpe D’huez in France the day before; father Dan Macuga and Amy are flying to Zurich that afternoon. Daniel, the little brother, is home on duty with the dogs, Yuki, a Siberian husky, and Bowser, a “megamutt,” according to the girls. The four cats kind of take care of themselves.
The spreadsheet is largely for the parents’ use. The children have their own methods.
“My teammates will be like, ‘Oh, where’s your brother? Where are your sisters?’” Alli Macuga said. “I’m like, ‘I don’t know, somewhere across the world? I think they’re in Europe. Maybe like Japan, or like Norway or, I don’t know, Germany.’ It’s always just a guessing game. Or I’ll check Find My Friends (app) and be like, ‘Oh, that’s where they are.’”
“Yeah, Find My Friends is our hero,” Sam Macuga said.
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Alli and Lauren found themselves in the same hotel in Chile this summer for a week of training. That was weird. Basically never happens.
Once they figure out where each other is, sometimes they realize a sister is competing at that very moment. They will tap away on their various gadgets until they find a live stream of the competition somewhere and cheer along from thousands of miles away.
Alli, the mogul specialist, has posted the best results of the family so far, though Lauren showed signs that she might be coming on fast. Racing the famed Birds of Prey track at Beaver Creek in Colorado over the weekend, she finished fourth in the downhill and 12th in Super-G. In the downhill, she missed her first spot on a World Cup podium by 0.18 seconds.
If she keeps that up, she will be following in the footsteps of Alli, who has come a bit out of nowhere the past couple of years to become one of the U.S. team’s rising stars.
Mogul specialist Alli Macuga has been the top performer of the family so far, aiming for a spot on the 2026 Olympic team. (Sarah Stier / Getty Images)
She landed on two podiums last season and finished fifth in the world rankings and has two top-15 finishes to start this World Cup season. There’s not too much mystery surrounding her success. During her early teens, she liked freestyle skiing so much she competed in seven different disciplines, everything from “big air,” which is going off one huge jump and doing some flips and spins, to “big mountain,” which requires flying down a steep descent filled with cliffs and frightening drops.
“I was constantly competing and traveling and not training,” she said.
She decided to choose the two she liked most, which were moguls and big mountain. But at 17, at the junior world championships in big mountain in Switzerland, she crashed on a cliff and fractured her back. That pretty much ended her big mountain career.
Two seasons ago, she was supposed to just have a few starts on the top-tier World Cup circuit and spend the rest of the season competing a level down on the Nor-Am Tour. Then she finished 12th in her first World Cup start. She ended up getting the World Cup Rookie of the Year award and also winning the Nor-Am tour.
She’s pretty sure that not specializing in one discipline too soon and those early years trying out alpine and jumping with her sisters have played a big role in her success.
“They all contributed to each other,” she said.
Lauren Macuga said she got hooked on speed skiing when her coach threw her into a downhill race in Sugarloaf in Maine when she was 16. Nearly all kids start out skiing gates and don’t move into the speed disciplines until they are older.
Lauren had never raced downhill before. She quickly discovered that the race basically happens on ice, rather than snow. She did her first training run fully clothed, wanting some protection in case she fell. She wore pants during the second one.
Her coach told her to aim for finishing within two seconds of the leaders. She finished a little more than a second behind them and got hooked on the adrenaline rush.
The shift to competing in Europe at the highest level has been an education. American mountains, especially in the lower rungs of competition, don’t have the icy steeps of Europe, with jumps over waterfalls and other high-octane challenges. One look at the left-right combination of the “Hot Air” jump in Zauchensee, Austria, last year and she thought it might be the end of her.
“At the start and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, I just want to make it down,’” she said. “I guess the fear factor just kind of turned more into, it was fun.”
A season-best fifth-place finish in Super-G in Kvitfjell, Norway, last season went some distance toward that transformation.
Sam Macuga has further to go to get to that level. The U.S. doesn’t have the history of success in women’s ski jumping that it does in alpine and freestyle. Women didn’t compete in the Olympics until 2014, and funding for an American jumping team can be hard to come by.
But she’s already accumulating points toward a spot on the U.S. team for 2026. Her slight build has always been well-suited to jumping, where being light can help you soar. She’s also got a technical mind and studies electrical engineering at Dartmouth for a quarter each year.
Plus, there is this:
“I like to fly,” she said.
That’s not always the sort of thing a parent likes to hear. And there isn’t much comfort with the other kids, given Alli’s mid-slope flips and Lauren and Daniel tearing down sheets of ice at 80 mph.
Whatever, the Macugas are used to it.
Amy Macuga says she gets nervous for them in the starting gate but not out of fear of an injury.
“They hit the ground pretty hard, and like any parent, you can have that inkling to start running toward them, but you also know that with the team that they’re in good hands,” Dan Macuga said. “You know that people (are) taking good care of them and wouldn’t let them do something that they thought it was gonna hurt them.”
Plus, they have a spreadsheet to manage, which is enough to worry about.
“We used to operate off a whiteboard,” Lauren Macuga said. “We have upgraded.”
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(Top photo of, from left, Alli, Lauren, Amy, Dan and Sam Macuga at the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Gold Medal Gala in New York in October 2023: Michael Loccisano / Getty Images)
Sports
Law firm fighting for women’s sports in SCOTUS battle comments on ruling possibly impacting SJSU trans lawsuit
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A law firm leading the charge in the ongoing Supreme Court case over trans athletes in women’s sports has responded after a federal judge suggested the case’s ruling could impact a separate case involving a similar issue.
Colorado District Judge Kato Crews deferred ruling in motions to dismiss former San Jose State volleyball co-captain Brooke Slusser’s lawsuit against the California State University (CSU) system until after a ruling in the B.P.J. v. West Virginia Supreme Court case, which is expected to come in June.
Slusser filed the lawsuit against representatives of her school and the Mountain West Conference in fall 2024 after she allegedly was made to share bedrooms and changing spaces with trans teammate Blaire Fleming for a whole season without being informed that Fleming is a biological male.
Meanwhile, the B.P.J. case went to the Supreme Court after a trans teen sued West Virginia to block the state’s law that prevents males from competing in girls’ high school sports.
The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is the primary law firm defending West Virginia in that case at the Supreme Court, and has now responded to news that Slusser’s lawsuit could be affected by the SCOTUS ruling.
“We hope the ruling from the Supreme Court will affirm that Title IX was designed to guarantee equal opportunity for women, not to let male athletes displace women and girl in competition. It is crucial that sports be separated by sex for not only the equal opportunity of women but for safety and privacy. Title IX should protect women’s right to compete in their own sports. Allowing men to compete in the female category reverses 50 years of advancement for women,” ADF Vice President of Litigation Strategies Jonathan Scruggs said.
Slusser’s attorney, Bill Bock of the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, expects a Supreme Court ruling in favor of the legal defense representing West Virginia, thus helping his case.
(Left) Brooke Slusser (10) of the San Jose State Spartans serves the ball during the first set against the Air Force Falcons at Falcon Court at East Gym in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on Oct. 19, 2024. (Right) Blaire Fleming #3 of the San Jose State Spartans looks on during the third set against the Air Force Falcons at Falcon Court at East Gym on October 19, 2024 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. ( Andrew Wevers/Getty Images; Andrew Wevers/Getty Images)
“We’re looking forward to the case going forward,” Bock told Fox News Digital.
“I believe that the court is going to find that Title IX operates on the basis of biological sex, without regard to an assumed or professed gender, and so just like the congress and the members of congress that passed Title IX in 1972, allowed this specifically provided for in the regulations that there had to be separate men’s and women’s teams based on biological sex, I think the court is going to see that is the original meaning of the statute and apply it in that way, and I think it’s going to be a big win in women’s sports.”
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared prepared to rule in favor of West Virginia after oral arguments on Jan. 13.
Slusser spoke on the steps of the Supreme Court on Jan. 13 while oral arguments took place inside, sharing her experience with a divided crowd of opposing protesters.
With Fleming on its roster, SJSU reached the 2024 conference final by virtue of a forfeit by Boise State in the semifinal round. SJSU lost in the final to Colorado State.
Slusser went on to develop an eating disorder due to the anxiety and trauma from the scandal and dropped out of her classes the following semester. The eating disorder became so severe, that Slusser said she lost her menstrual cycle for nine months. Her decision to drop her classes resulted in the loss of her scholarship, and her parents said they had to foot the bill out of pocket for an unfinished final semester of college.
President Donald Trump’s Department of Education determined in January that SJSU violated Title IX in its handling of the situation involving Fleming, and has given the university an ultimatum to agree to a series of resolutions or face a referral to the Department of Justice.
Among the department’s findings, it determined that a female athlete discovered that the trans student allegedly conspired to have a member of an opposing team spike her in the face during a match. ED claims that “SJSU did not investigate the conspiracy, but later subjected the female athlete to a Title IX complaint for ‘misgendering’ the male athlete in online videos and interviews.”
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SJSU trans player Blaire Fleming and teammate Brooke Slusser went to a magic show and had Thanksgiving together in Las Vegas despite an ongoing lawsuit over Fleming being transgender. (Thien-An Truong/San Jose State Athletics)
SJSU Athletic Director Jeff Konya told Fox News Digital in a July interview that he was satisfied with how the university handled the situation involving Fleming.
“I think everybody acted in the best possible way they could, given the circumstances,” Konya said.
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Sports
Myles Garrett cited for speeding a ninth time, an elite pass rusher seemingly always in a rush
Myles Garrett is in a hurry to become the greatest pass rusher in NFL history. The Cleveland Browns All-Pro defensive end set the single-season sack record in 2025 and has cracked the top 20 career leaders after only nine seasons.
“I’m going to take that down, and I prefer I take it down in the next five years,” Garrett told Casino Guru News last month.
Off the field, however, his urgency to get from point A to B is a problem. He’s accumulating speeding tickets at an alarming rate.
On Feb. 21, Garrett was handed his ninth speeding ticket since his NFL career began in 2017. He was cited for driving 94 mph in a 70-mph zone on Interstate 71 between Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio.
The citation from the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office says Garrett was driving his green 2024 Porsche at 1:35 a.m., returning home after attending a Miami of Ohio basketball game in Oxford.
Body cam footage shows the officer telling Garrett that she kept the charge under 100 mph so that a court appearance wouldn’t be mandatory. Garrett reportedly still holds a Texas driver’s license — he attended Texas A&M — and told the officer that he did not have an Ohio license.
Cleveland Browns’ Myles Garrett wears a jacket displaying his girlfriend Chloe Kim before the women’s snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy.
(Lindsey Wasson / AP)
The officer wrote that the famously affable Garrett was “kind and cooperative,” and that drugs and alcohol were not a factor.
Garrett’s need for speed flies in the face of his persona. He has written poetry since high school, peppers social media with inspirational sayings and donates time and money to several charities.
His girlfriend is two-time gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympic snowboarder Chloe Kim, for whom he wrote a poem he shared on social media: “You enrapture fools to kings, and exist without a peer, put on this Earth for many things, but our love is why you’re here.”
Verse hasn’t slowed his roll. On Aug. 9 he was cited for ticket No. 8, clocked at 100 mph in a 60-mph zone in a Cleveland suburb a day after the Browns returned home from a preseason game at Carolina.
Garrett’s seventh ticket followed a frightening crash in 2022. He flipped his gray 2021 Porsche 911 Turbo S off State Road in Sharon Township and he and a female passenger were injured. He was cited for failing to control his vehicle due to unsafe speeds on what had been a slick roadway.
A witness told a responding police officer that Garrett’s vehicle went airborne, took out a fire hydrant and rolled three times. Garrett sustained shoulder and biceps sprains and was sidelined for the Browns’ game that week against the Atlanta Falcons. His companion was not seriously injured.
Cleveland television station WKYC reported that in September 2021 Garrett was stopped twice in a 24-hour period — for driving 120 and 105 mph. The infractions occurred on Interstate 71 in Medina County, where the speed limit is 70 mph, and he paid fines of $267 and $287.
A year earlier, Garrett was cited for driving 100 mph in a 65-mph zone of Interstate 77 — again while driving a Porsche — and paid a $308 fine. He accumulated his first batch of speeding tickets in 2017 and 2018, and the police reports recite similar circumstances: Garrett driving well over the speed limit, cited without incident, paid a nominal fine.
The piddly fines certainly aren’t a deterrent. Garrett, 30, and the Browns agreed to a four-year contract extension in March 2025 that made him the highest-paid non-quarterback in NFL history at the time. The deal pays the seven-time All-Pro more than $40 million a season and includes more than $123 million in guaranteed money.
He set the NFL single-season sack record with 23.0 last season, surpassing the 22.5 accumulated by T.J. Watt and Michael Strahan. Garrett has 125.5 career sacks, averaging 14 a season, a pace that would enable him to break Bruce Smith’s career record of 200 in five years.
“That is definitely on my mind to go out there and get,” Garrett said. “That’s a goal I’ve had for years now since college.”
Garrett has declined to discuss his driving habits.
“I’d honestly prefer to talk about football and this team than anything I’m doing off the field other than the back-to-school event that I did the other day,” he told reporters after ticket No. 8 in August, referring to a charity appearance.
“I try to keep my personal life personal. And I’d rather focus on this team when I can.”
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Former ESPN broadcaster Keith Olbermann once again incited backlash on social media Wednesday after he called late legendary college football coach Lou Holtz a “legendary scumbag” in an X post on the day Holtz was announced dead.
“Legendary scumbag, yes,” Olbermann wrote in response to a clip of Holtz criticizing former President Joe Biden in 2020 for supporting abortion rights.
Olbermann received scathing criticism in response to his post on X.
“You’re a scumbag that needs mental help,” one X user wrote to Olbermann.
One user echoed that sentiment, writing to Olbermann, “You’re the real scumbag here. Lou Holtz had more class, integrity, and genuine decency in his pinky finger than you’ll ever show in your lifetime.”
Another user wrote, “You’re a grumpy, lonely, Godless man. All the things Lou Holtz was not.”
Keith Olbermann speaks onstage during the Olbermann panel at the ESPN portion of the 2013 Summer Television Critics Association tour at the Beverly Hilton Hotel July 24, 2013, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)
Olbermann has made it a pattern of sharing politically charged far-left statements that are often combative and ridiculed on social media, typically resulting in immense backlash.
After the U.S. men’s hockey team’s gold medal win, Olbermann heavily criticized the team for accepting an invitation from President Trump to the State of the Union address. Olbermann wrote on X that any members of the men’s team who attended the event were “declaring their indelible stupidity and misogyny,” while praising the women’s team for declining the invitation.
In January, Olbermann attacked former University of Kentucky women’s swimmer Kaitlynn Wheeler for celebrating a women’s rights rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court during oral arguments for two cases focused on the legality of biological male trans athletes in women’s sports.
Former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz listens before being presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House in Washington, D.C., Dec, 3, 2020. (Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“It’s still about you trying to find an excuse for a lifetime wasted trying to succeed in sports without talent,” Olbermann wrote in response to Wheeler’s post.
In 2025, Olbermann faced significant backlash after posting (and later deleting) a message on X aimed at CNN contributor Scott Jennings, that said, “You’re next motherf—–,” shortly after the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk.
Holtz was a stern supporter of President Donald Trump, even saying in February 2024 that Trump needed to “coach America back to greatness!”
Near the end of Trump’s first term, shortly after former President Joe Biden defeated him in the 2020 election, Trump awarded Holtz with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award of the United States.
After Holtz’s death was announced Wednesday, several top GOP figures paid tribute to the coach on social media.
Those GOP lawmakers included senators Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala.; Todd Young, R-Ind.; Tom Cotton, R-Ark.; and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; representatives Greg Murphy, R-N.C.; David Rouzer, R-N.C.; Erin Houchin, R-Ind.; and Steve Womack, R-Ark.; and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis; Indiana Gov. Mike Braun; U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon; and Rudy Giuliani.
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Lou Holtz, former Notre Dame football coach, addresses the America First Policy Institute’s America First Agenda Summit at the Marriott Marquis July 26, 2022. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc)
At the time of publication, prominent Democrat leaders have appeared silent on Holtz’s passing, including prominent Democrats with a football background.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who worked as an assistant high school football coach; Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who was a recruiting target for Holtz in 1986 as a college prospect; Rep. Colin Allred, D-Texas, who played in the NFL; and Rep. Kam Buckner, D-Ill., who played football for the University of Illinois, have not posted acknowledging Holtz’s death.
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