What are these past suburban Winter Olympians up to now?
While the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 are set to begin early next month, it’s still unknown how many suburban athletes will be part of Team USA when the competition begins in Northern Italy.
But the area has been a fertile ground for Winter Olympians over the years, from champion figure skaters to fearless ski jumpers.
We caught up with a handful of past Olympians to see what they’re up to today. Here are their stories:
Michael Glasder
Glasder, 36 and a 2008 graduate of Cary-Grove High School, started ski jumping at 5 years old at the Norge Ski Club in Fox River Grove. He missed qualifying for Olympic teams in 2010 and 2014, both by one position, but made Team USA for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
There he helped his team place ninth on Large Hill jumping while finishing 32nd individually on Normal Hill and 46th on Large Hill. A veteran of five World Championship teams, his personal record is 209 meters.
Other recent Norge Olympians include Kevin Bickner of Wauconda and Casey Larson of Barrington.
Glasder now works as a project manager for Gallant Building Solutions, a commercial construction company in Crystal Lake. In June, he’ll marry Shannon Stevens of Algonquin.
Though he no longer competes at the highest levels, he’s still involved in the sport. Glasder recently was named vice president of the Norge Ski Club, where he continues to coach jumpers three days a week. He’ll jump for fun a couple times a winter, but his focus is on his students.
“I get more enjoyment now seeing the kids progress and succeed than actually jumping myself,” Glasder said.
Alexa (Scimeca) Knierim
The “accumulation of every single second since I was 7,” Addison native Alexa Knierim says of the sixth-place pairs figure skating finish she and partner Brandon Frazier accomplished to help the United States win a team gold medal at the 2022 Beijing Games.
Four years earlier, Knierim and husband Chris Knierim earned Olympic bronze at the Pyeongchang Games.
Now living in Des Plaines, the 2009 Addison Trail High School graduate left competition after the 2022-23 season.
“I wanted my next chapter of life,” she said.
That next chapter included the birth of her first son, Braxton, in July. The Knierims on Dec. 21 brought him onto the ice for a holiday show at Oakton Sports Complex in Park Ridge, where Alexa and Chris coach alongside fellow Olympians David Santee and Timothy LeDuc.
After training and competing worldwide for 26 years, Knierim enjoys finally being near her parents and siblings.
“It’s nice not to worry about the holidays, if I’m going to miss out,” she said.
David Santee
A 1975 Maine South High School graduate, Santee placed sixth in men’s figure skating singles at the 1976 Innsbruck Games and fourth at Lake Placid in 1980.
He competed in seven World Championships from 1976 to 1982, and in 1981, earned silver behind Scott Hamilton. At 13 years old, Santee became the youngest Junior Nationals winner in 1971, then made the podium seven times in eight Senior Nationals.
Being inducted to the U.S. Figure Skating, Ice Sports Industry and Chicago Figure Skating Club halls of fame, plus the Maine South Hall of Honor, “kind of speaks to my longevity,” he said.
Now 68, Santee has two sons and two grandchildren. He and his brother, Jimmie, also an elite skater, learned at Oakton Ice Arena in Park Ridge, where David returned for two terms as skating director before retiring in 2022 — though he still coaches there.
A former analyst for ABC, he’s been an International Skating Union technical specialist since 2004 and a U.S. Figure Skating judge. Santee recently worked in England, Beijing and Abu Dhabi, and will judge at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in St. Louis Jan. 7 to 11.
Nancy Swider-Peltz Sr.
The first four-time U.S. Winter Olympian, the world record-setting long track speed skater competed in the 1976, 1980, 1984 and 1988 games and skated in eight U.S. Trials.
Swider-Peltz Sr. placed seventh in the 3,000 meters at the 1976 Innsbruck Games. At the 1988 Trials, she split time between racing and nursing her daughter, Nancy Jr. — who in the 2002 Trials raced against her mother, then 45, and was fourth in team pursuit at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. (Nancy Sr.’s son, Jeffrey, skated on multiple World Cup teams.)
Swider-Peltz Sr. is in the U.S. Speedskating Hall of Fame as well as the Wheaton College Hall of Honor — as an All-American swimmer.
Now living in Wheaton, Swider-Peltz Sr. is married to Jeff Peltz, an employee at Wheaton College and a Thunder football coach since 1982.
As a coach with the Park Ridge Speedskating Club from 1985 to 2023, Swider-Peltz Sr. helped lead eight speed skaters to Olympic teams.
Despite replacement surgery on both knees, a hip and an ankle, Swider-Peltz Sr. still coaches masters skaters at the Pettit National Ice Center in West Allis, Wisconsin.
Joni Cotten
A member of Elk Grove High School’s Class of 1971 and a 30-year Mount Prospect resident, Cotten was an alternate on the United States women’s curling team that placed fourth at the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City — “by a rock,” she said.
Also a member of four women’s national championship teams, Cotten helped an underdog squad win the United States’ first and only women’s world title in 2003. A former USA Curling coach of the year, she coached a women’s national championship team in 2006. Cotten returned to action in 2012 and helped win a national senior title.
Cotten has lived two blocks from Prospect High School since she and her husband of 51 years, Marc, moved there after getting married. They have two children and three grandchildren. Once the sole female coach on her son Eric’s baseball team, she’s now helping grandson, Jackson, for his first curling bonspiel.
“A plant geek,” since 1998, Cotten works at Hawthorn Gardens in Hawthorn Woods.
In 2024, Cotten was inducted into the USA Curling Hall of Fame. On Jan. 30, she’ll join two other Olympians at a Chicago Curling Club event in Northbrook.