Milan-Cortina 2026. The world is watching athletes compete for gold. We're watching what they're building when the cameras turn off.
Behind the breathtaking moments on snow and ice, there's a different competition happening, one with no judges, no podium, and no four-year wait. It's the race to own your career.
At WEVOLV, we believe the most intelligent move an athlete can make is to treat their career as a business from day one. This Winter Olympics, five athletes are giving us a masterclass in exactly that.
Shiffrin is the most decorated alpine skier in history: 108 World Cup victories, three Olympic gold medals, eight world championship titles. In May 2025, she joined the ownership group of the Denver NWSL expansion franchise.
In her own words: "To be part of it, and to help bring professional women's soccer to Colorado, is not only an incredible investment opportunity, but it is both an honor and a joy."
That word, investment, is doing a lot of work. Women's sports franchise valuations are climbing fast. Denver's expansion fee alone was $110 million. Shiffrin didn't wait until retirement to act on that trajectory. She bought in while her brand equity was at its peak, which means she pays peak-athlete prices for pre-peak franchise values.
That's not luck. That's timing with intent.
Just this week, Shiffrin won her third Olympic gold medal in the slalom at Milan-Cortina 2026, her first Olympic medal in eight years. The 30-year-old's performance was dominant, finishing 1.5 seconds ahead of the silver medalist. The 12-year gap between individual gold medals marks the longest in Winter Olympics history.
The WEVOLV Principle: Your leverage is highest while you're competing. Use it.
Eileen Gu — Building a Business That Doesn't Need Her to Win
In 2025, Eileen Gu earned $23.1 million, making her the fourth-highest-paid female athlete in the world according to Forbes, behind only Coco Gauff, Aryna Sabalenka, and Iga Swiatek. Of that $23.1 million, just over $100,000 came from competing on the slopes.
She is 22 years old.
Gu has constructed a dual-market brand empire spanning Western luxury (Louis Vuitton, Porsche, Tiffany & Co.) and Chinese consumer brands (Luckin Coffee, China Mobile) simultaneously, two audiences, two revenue streams, one athlete. She's also a Stanford student studying international relations, and was recently named Senior Associate at Benchmark Capital, one of Silicon Valley's most prestigious venture capital firms.
She framed it plainly in a recent interview: "It's important to show young people that you don't have to wait until you're older. You can do it all now."
Here at the 2026 Games, she has already won two silver medals, in slopestyle and big air. That brings her career Olympic medal count to five across two Games, making her the most decorated freestyle skier in Olympic history. Whether she medals or not in her remaining event, her business runs.
The WEVOLV Principle: Separate your income from your performance. Build revenue that doesn't depend on whether you win or lose.
Vonn retired in 2019 as one of the most decorated alpine skiers of all time with 82 World Cup victories and three Olympic medals. Most assumed her story was finished.
Instead, she became an investor in two NWSL franchises, the Utah Royals and Angel City FC . She joined the advisory board of Athena Capital, a women-led venture capital and private equity firm. She launched her own clothing brand, VONN Collective, in collaboration with HEAD. She built a real estate portfolio and wrote a New York Times bestselling book.
Then, in 2024, she had a partial knee replacement, and came back to professional competition at age 40.
In Cortina this month, she tore her ACL in a training crash, opted against surgery, and still completed her Olympic training run wearing a large brace one week later. She ultimately did not finish the race, but the story was already complete.
She described joining Athena Capital this way: "Competitive skiing is all about operating under pressure and being precise with your every move. That's very similar to what venture capitalists do: evaluating potential, taking calculated risks, and trying to stay on top of everything you're doing."
She didn't wait for retirement to build her empire. She built it in parallel, so when she was ready to stop competing, she didn't have to start over.
The WEVOLV Principle: Build your post-career business during your career. Retirement isn't an ending, it's a transition into the ownership era.
Shaun White — Don't Just Compete in the Ecosystem. Build It.
White retired after the 2022 Beijing Olympics with three Olympic gold medals, 15 X Games gold medals in snowboarding, and a career that made him synonymous with the sport.
Since then, he has founded WHITESPACE, his own premium snowboard and apparel brand, designed personally by him, sold direct to consumer. He launched The Snow League, the first professional halfpipe competition league for snowboarding and freeskiing, with a prize purse of over $1.5 million in its first season. He has invested in training camps, indoor snow facilities, and youth snowboard programs.
His reasoning for the league was direct: "There's not a common thread that connects all the events throughout the season, and it's such a shame because as an athlete, you're trying to decide what's best. These athletes deserve a legit professional league."
He identified a problem he had lived personally, athletes in action sports have historically lacked a stable income structure, and built the solution rather than waiting for someone else to do it.
WHITESPACE doesn't endorse Shaun White. Shaun White owns WHITESPACE. The Snow League doesn't employ Shaun White. Shaun White founded The Snow League.
The WEVOLV Principle: When the industry structure fails athletes, build a better one. Ownership means controlling the platform, not just performing on it.
Kim arrived in Milan-Cortina as the two-time defending Olympic halfpipe champion, chasing a historic three-peat. A dislocated shoulder in January left her participation in doubt. She came anyway, competed with the injury, and won silver, losing by a razor-thin margin to 17-year-old Gaon Choi of South Korea in one of the most dramatic finals of these Games.
Her response afterward: "A month ago it wasn't looking too good for me to even come out... the fact that I was able to come out here makes me so proud. I'm so happy to walk away with a medal."
But Kim's biggest move wasn't on the halfpipe. In 2021, she co-founded TOGETHXR alongside Alex Morgan , Sue Bird , and Simone Manuel , a media and commerce company built specifically to amplify women athletes' voices in sports. Four of the most decorated American female athletes in history looked at sports media's coverage of women and said: we'll build the platform ourselves.
That's not an endorsement deal. That's ownership of the narrative.
The WEVOLV Principle: When the infrastructure around you isn't built for you, build it yourself. Own the platform, not just the performance.
These athletes come from different sports, different countries, and different stages of their careers. But the thread connecting them all: They don't wait.
They don't wait for retirement to start investing. They don't wait for someone else to build the league. They don't wait for permission to own their brand. They don't wait for the industry to tell their story correctly.
They treat their athletic career as the foundation of a larger business life, not the whole thing.
At the Winter Olympics, we celebrate what these athletes do on snow. At WEVOLV, we celebrate what they're building everywhere else.
#WEVOLV #WinterOlympics #MilanCortina2026 #AthleteEmpowerment #FinancialLiteracy #Ownership #WomenInSports #TheIntelligentAthlete #SportsBusiness
Claim your WEVOLV profile and understand every deal before you sign it.
Claim my profileThe system wasn’t made for you. WEVOLV was.
Join over 300+ athletes managing their careers on WEVOLV
