Despite competing alone on the halfpipe, the Irving siblings have spent nearly every day together since they began pursuing an Olympic skiing career.

Older brother Birk joined the Winter Park Competition Center around the age of eight. His younger sister Svea, who started skiing at three, was quick to follow. 

Now 23 and 26, the siblings’ multiyear journey from Winter Park to the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Team has brought them together once again, this time to chase the dreams of a lifetime. For the first time, they will both be skiing for the national freeski team in the halfpipe events at the Olympic Games.

Since a five-week stint of contests in December, the duo has been all over the world together: they started in China for their first Olympic qualifying halfpipe competition. From there, they headed to the second round of qualifiers at Copper Mountain, and after a brief Christmas break, they flew to Calgary, Canada, for the third stage before booking it to Aspen for the fourth and final contest.

“Honestly, the qualification process is the worst,” said Birk, who made his Olympic debut in the 2022 games in Beijing, China, where he finished fifth. “Like, it’s the hardest thing, and I think it helped me, having done it before.”

Depending on each other

The preliminary stages were a bumpy road for a first-time qualifier like Svea, who dealt with a patella tear early in the season that forced her to pull out from her first competition. At the Copper Mountain event, she was also disqualified after a fall that broke her helmet. 

Birk’s presence has been a guarantee in a season filled with uncertainties, she said. In fact, the stretch of downtime between qualifying for Team USA and flying to Italy was the longest amount of time they spent apart since the ski season began.

“Knowing that we both get to go to the Olympics together is super special,” Svea Irving said. “This is a very hectic time, but it’s been nice because for the last four or five months we’ve both been on the road nonstop.”

Birk acknowledged how special the chance is to watch each other compete in a high-pressure setting but said he actually prefers not to view Svea’s events because of how invested he is in her performance.

“I don’t like to watch her because it’s more nerve-wracking than watching anyone else,” he said. 

The sport is also individualistic by nature. Each competitor makes their way down the 22-foot halfpipe alone, executing tricks on each wall before a panel of judges. Every score is a reflection of their own performance, which means the siblings ultimately have to focus on themselves first.

Qualifiers put pressure on

For this Olympic cycle, the pressure was on after the freeski team’s qualification criteria shifted. Qualification for the last Olympics, held in Beijing in 2022, was based on cumulative World Cup points earned across multiple seasons. But this time around, athletes were evaluated exclusively on their 2025-26 season performance and their single best result from the five Olympic qualifying events.

“This year was fully driven on points,” Svea Irving said. “Nothing from the previous season mattered. It was just this season and those five events, so you had to perform and get the best result on your team or you wouldn’t qualify. And that’s, I think, a very hard thing to grasp.”

As a result of her early-season struggle, she relied on the last two Olympic selection events to get her best result. She ended up snagging a spot on the team with a score of 83.20 at the Snow Rodeo World Cup in Calgary, Canada, but without that score, which also gave her a third place podium spot, she would have had to beat out her U.S. National teammates at the finals in Aspen. The cutthroat qualification process meant that no athletes were guaranteed invitations.

“That sucks, because these are people you’ve grown up skiing with, and you don’t want to take that opportunity from anyone, but obviously this is what you’ve worked for,” she said.

Birk ultimately earned his position through the selection events. He capped his qualifying runs with a fifth-place finish at the Toyota U.S. Grand Prix in Aspen that kept him near the top of the World Cup standings and positioned him for the fourth and final men’s team slot in Milan Cortina.

A family affair

In 2022, the Irving family was unable to fly out to Birk’s first games in Beijing, so instead they threw watch parties at Winter Park Resort and downtown venues such as the Foundry Cinema and Bowl throughout the Olympics.

“The local community was super cool about hosting such a big event for everybody to watch,” Birk said. “It was pretty cool to see that happening back home.”

As hometown watch parties are planned, the support will continue from Grand County as Svea and Birk make their way to Italy. This year, the siblings will be joined by their parents, Brendan and Stephanie, as well as their grandparents and some extended family.

Brendan is the director of ski patrol at Winter Park Resort, and Stephanie was a competitive alpine skier and coach who spent about 30 years as a Spanish teacher at Middle Park High School before retiring to guide ski touring at the resort.

“I’m just so glad that they’re both going to the Olympics, because it was a really hard qualifying year,” Stephanie Irving said. “We knew Svea was in early on, but Birk was the fourth spot, so it was a nail-biter for sure.”

The Irvings will soon see their hard work play out on the sport world’s biggest stage. They flew to Milan on February 4. Halfpipe qualifiers are scheduled for Feb. 19 in Livigno, a small ski village tucked into the Western Alps on border of Italy and Switzerland. If they make the top 12, Birk’s shot at an Olympic podium would happen during men’s finals on February 20, with Svea aiming for a medal in the women’s finals on Feb. 21.