Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Sunday, February 8th. Today on Forbes, the highest paid

athletes at the 2026 Winter Olympics. The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics will feature roughly

2,900 competitors from more than 90 countries participating in 116 events. And for most of those athletes,

even some of those destined to become champions, their chosen sport isn't paying the bills.

In fact, factoring in substantial travel and training costs, athletic glory on a global stage

might come at a net loss. But at the 2026 games, which officially

began with last Friday's opening ceremony, there is a select group of athletes who can easily

afford the price of gold. For one thing, while the Winter Olympics won't have the NBA,

golf, and tennis stars whose outsized paychecks

loom over the summer games, and frequently place them on the annual Forbes list of the

world's highest paid athletes, the men's hockey tournament in Milan will include 146 players

from the NHL. The league, which hadn't allowed its players to take the Olympic Ice since 2014, has a minimum

salary of $775,000 this season, and nine of the ten members of the Forbes ranking of the

NHL's highest paid players, which also accounts for endorsements and other business income,

are set to suit up over the next couple of weeks.

The loan exception is New York Rangers' goaltender Igor Shestrkin, whose native Russia is barred from the event because of the war in

Ukraine. Topping that list of hockey players is Team USA Forward Austin Matthews, whom the Toronto

Maple Leafs are paying more than $15 million this season,

and who also earns an estimated $5 million off the ice.

Even that $20 million total, however, isn't enough to make him this year's highest-paid Olympian.

That honor belongs to Eileen Gu, an American-born freestyle skier, who represents her mother's native

China in international competition. Forbes estimates that the 22-year-old marketing superstar

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