With Three Olympics in Five Years, Kelsey Mitchell Chases History As Dual Olympian

The Canadian track cyclist won gold in Tokyo in 2021. Just months after her bobsled debut, she is pushing for the podium once again—this time in the Winter Games.

If she makes the podium in Cortina, Kelsey Mitchell will join an elite club of athletes to medal in both the Summer and Winter Olympics. | Tim de Waele/Getty Images

Draped in the Canadian flag and pumping her fists in the largely empty Izu Velodrome in August 2021, Kelsey Mitchell basked in the glow of Tokyo Olympic gold.

Three years later, Mitchell finished eighth in her gold medal defense at Paris 2024. Now, she finds herself back at the Olympics again, this time, as a bobsled brakewoman at Milan Cortina 2026 in a sport she only took up in November 2025.

For Mitchell, that means a chance to chase an opportunity she never dreamed of by competing in three Olympics in five years across two sports, a feat seldom achieved in global sport.

“I like the process of getting better at something,” Mitchell says after arriving in the Cortina athletes’ village. “Bobsled is more of a max-exertion effort and hitting a top speed as fast as I can, then getting in and just holding on, compared to cycling, when it was me against someone else.”

Mitchell won gold for Canada in track cycling at the Tokyo Summer Olympics in 2021. | Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images

The native of Sherwood Park, Alberta, is the 14th Canadian to compete in both the Summer and Winter Games and the fifth Canadian woman to do so. Only the United States has produced more dual-Olympic athletes with 16. 

“I never set out to do something like this as my goal, really,” Mitchell says. “I obviously wanted to try a new sport and do the best I can and see where that got me, but for it to actually bring me to the Olympics is pretty surreal.”

The Canadian Multisport Machine

Canada’s ability to produce multisport athletes is unique, especially given its estimated population of 41.5 million people, similar to that of California. The nation has surpassed 20 medals at four of the last five Summer Olympics, and surpassed the 24-medal mark at each Winter Olympics since 2006. 

The shift from cycling and the move back to Calgary from Canadian cycling’s base in Milton, Ontario, first led her to the speedskating oval, a pathway previously conquered by Clara Hughes, the only athlete to win multiple medals at both the Summer and Winter Games. 

Speedskating, however, didn’t quite go to plan. She skated for only a few months, never grasping the sport or the mechanics needed to use her leg strength to the point where she could see an Olympic future. Yet, it was enough to keep her new goal of becoming a Winter Olympian. 

Eventually, that led her into Calgary’s Olympic Park to try bobsled. It was an opportunity that only arose when she checked her Instagram DMs and saw a message from Canadian bobsled pilot Melissa Lotholz.  

Having seen Mitchell’s relatively underwhelming speed skating foray in Calgary and online, where Mitchell had regularly posted her journey, Lotholz couldn’t help but see the potential of bringing her to the Ice House’s bobsled push track, just a few miles away from the speedskating oval. 

“I saw after the Summer Games you tried speed skating,” Lotholz said in the message in May 2025.  “I can’t help but wonder if you’ve thought about giving bobsleigh a try.”

When fall came around, so too did Mitchell’s first ride down the thunderous ice track in Whistler, British Columbia, the fastest track in the world. Mitchell says she “couldn’t stop smiling,” and from there, she was hooked. 

Mitchell (left) only started sledding in the fall, just months before the Olympics. | Courtesy of Viesturs Lacis, IBSF

Now four months later, she’s followed in Hughes’s footsteps as the latest dual Olympian in Canada’s storied Olympic history. 

“I think women just have more opportunities opening up before them, including pursuing both Summer and Winter Games, and it’s a testament to where we’re at in the world of sport, where, finally, women have the stage that they deserve to be on, and are being celebrated and paid for what they do in ways that they should be paid and compensated,” Hughes says.

For dual Olympians, the sports of choice are often individual sports. While bobsled comes alongside Lotholz, it largely focuses on Mitchell’s cycling leg strength, which earned her the nickname “Quadzilla” among her teammates. 

The adjustment hasn’t been particularly easy. Mitchell had to learn to use her legs explosively, more like pistons in a car engine rather than the power of a turbine needed for cycling. It’s one of the many challenges that comes with learning a new Olympic sport.

Said Hughes: “My first time in Salt Lake City for the 2002 Olympics, I literally still felt like a bike racer. People talk about imposter syndrome, and I’ve never really believed in it, but the closest thing I came to it was those Olympics where I looked around, and there were all these speedskaters, and I’m just a bike racer faking it to a bronze medal.”

After earning two Summer Olympics medals for Canada, Clara Hughes went on to earn four speedskating medals in the Winter Games. | Guy Rhodes-Imagn Images

Mitchell says it was that same struggle for strength that ended her bobsled dreams a decade ago, when she first attempted to enter the sport while playing collegiate soccer at the University of Alberta. 

“I always wanted [to do] bobsled,” she says. “I initially tried out, and I just wasn’t fast enough or strong enough.”

After her first trial, she attended the RBC Training Ground Program in 2018. The program launched in 2016 as a collaboration with the Canadian Olympic Committee, national sports organizations and the Royal Bank of Canada to discover athletes and encourage them to pursue sports they may not have otherwise considered. 

In Mitchell’s case, it led her from the soccer pitch to the velodrome and, a decade later, back to bobsled. Like Canadian cycling, Canada’s bobsled team often draws on RBC Training Ground, which has previously produced three Olympic gold medalists in bobsled. 

“I’m proud of myself that I didn’t give up and came back around and tried again when I had the opportunity,” Mitchell says. “I hope my story hits people who either try out at the RBC Training Ground or in life in general, that sometimes it might not be your time, and you just have to be patient and wait for your moment.”

Three Olympics in Five Years

As for Mitchell’s fate in Cortina, she’s ready to just take it all in, aiming to follow Hughes’s footsteps of winning medals at both Games. 

And she’s embraced the new challenge far beyond just the sport, but into the everyday grind. That includes hours of polishing sled runners, the oblong metal beams that run across the ice, and carrying and loading sleds onto trucks, unlike anything she ever faced in cycling or soccer. 

Mitchell (back of sled) is paired with pilot Melissa Lotholz in the two-woman event. | Courtesy of Viesturs Lacis, IBSF

“It’s a full-on labor job, and then you’re expected to perform when you’re at the top of the hill, so that’s been very different from cycling, where I’m used to having all my mechanics and coaches take care of all the little things,” she says. 

“It’s a different stressor on the body, which I didn’t think was going to be a thing. I’m still learning, but I’m here at the Olympics, which is pretty crazy.”

And when she pulls the brakes for the last time this February, Mitchell will know her Olympic dream is not over. After all, the 2020 track cycling gold medalist has her sights set on the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Games. For those keeping score, that would make it four Olympics in seven years in two sports.  

---