Bowdoin Grad Jake Adicoff Claims Second Paralympic Gold in Milano

Jake Adicoff broke a pole in the middle of Wednesday's race at the Tesero Cross-Country Skiing Stadium in Val di Fiemme, swapped it on the fly with guide Reid Goble and coaches, and still crossed the finish line 1:48.7 ahead of the field to claim his second gold medal at the Milan-Cortina 2026 Paralympic Winter Games.

The 30-year-old Bowdoin College graduate won the men's visually impaired 10 km classic in 28:03.6, one day after taking gold in the 1.5 km sprint alongside guide Peter Wolter. Wednesday's dominant performance brought his career Paralympic medal total to six: three gold and three silver across four Games.

"Today was a really hard day of ski racing," Adicoff told NBC Sports. "It's just so broken down and sloppy out there. And so it was a fight, but happy to have it."

Racing in the interval start format, Adicoff began the course a full minute behind China's Yu Shuang. He erased that gap by midrace and built a lead of over a minute, which swelled to its peak of 1:52 at the halfway point before he and Goble settled into what he described as a controlled final stretch. Silver went to Inkki Inola of Finland and bronze to Zebastian Modin of Sweden, 2:21 behind Adicoff at the finish.

"The whole strategy with the race was to try and get a comfortable gap in the first two laps and then stay upright for the last two, and that's what we did," Adicoff said. His coaches offered somewhat contradictory guidance late in the race: "One of the coaches said, 'Relax,' and then he also said, 'Rip them to pieces,' so we were kind of confused."

Adicoff grew up in Sun Valley, Idaho, and has no vision in his right eye and limited vision in his left after contracting chicken pox in utero. He first joined the U.S. Paralympic Nordic Skiing national team in the 2013-14 season and made his Games debut at Sochi 2014 while still in high school. A silver in the 10 km at PyeongChang 2018 preceded a retirement, a return in 2021, and three medals at Beijing 2022, including relay gold alongside the U.S. mixed team.

Off the snow, Adicoff graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick in 2018 with a degree in mathematics and computer science and worked as a software engineer before returning to full-time competition. Bowdoin's connection to one of Team USA's most decorated Para-Nordic skiers has made his Milan-Cortina run a closely watched story along the midcoast.

Adicoff has also made history at these Games as the first out gay man to win an individual Winter Paralympic gold medal, a distinction he earned with Tuesday's sprint victory. "The higher you get in sport, the less out people that you see," he told Outsports. "And I think going to the Paralympics, being a gay athlete there, showing that it's possible to reach this upper echelon of sport as an out athlete and as a Para-athlete, that's super important to me."

Two events remain in what Adicoff has framed as a "4 in 4" pursuit: the relay on Saturday and the 20 km free on Sunday. "We're still mining," he told NBC Sports. "We got two more races, two more golds.