The college soccer standout skiing at the Olympics. Plus: Madonna, Giannis in on women's soccer

By The Athletic Staff

Sammy Smith’s Stanford biography still lists her major as “undecided,” yet the 20-year-old has already decided on something far more ambitious: racing for an Olympic medal in cross-country skiing barely two months after starting an NCAA championship final in soccer.

This week in Italy, Smith will line up for the United States in the Winter Games, completing a whirlwind transition from Cardinal centre-back to full-time ski athlete. The sequence defies conventional calendars. On Dec. 9 she anchored Stanford’s defence in a 1-0 loss to Florida State in the NCAA final; 48 hours later she was on snow in Alaska, finishing second in a U.S. SuperTour race that kept her Olympic qualification hopes alive.

“I had one shot,” Smith said of the condensed window. That shot came Jan. 17 in Oberhof, Germany, where a career-best World Cup performance locked up the last American berth in the women’s cross-country squad.

The dual-sport experiment has been years in the making. Raised in a household that encouraged seasonal sampling, Smith competed in as many as 11 sports annually—freestyle skiing, lacrosse, tackle football and track among them—before narrowing her focus to soccer and Nordic racing. Even then she refused to choose, spending last winter on the World Cup circuit, returning to Stanford for spring quarter, then repeating the cycle.

Her coaches have learned to expect the unexpected. After the Jan. 17 qualifier, Smith flew straight back to campus for final exams before re-joining the ski team for Olympic prep. “It’s not that I can’t decide,” she said. “I’d rather push limits.”

While Smith chases alpine glory, women’s soccer continues to attract headline-making investors. Pop icon Madonna watched two Tottenham academy matches over the weekend, supporting 13-year-old twins Stella and Estere, who play for Spurs’ under-14 girls side. Madonna’s presence—oversized sunglasses and all—rekindled memories of her Lisbon relocation in 2017 when son David Banda joined Benfica’s academy. Though historically linked to Chelsea through ex-husband Guy Ritchie and Blues board member Barbara Charone, Madonna spent the current visit on the Tottenham side of north London, underscoring Spurs’ expanding investment in girls’ pathways.

From music royalty to NBA royalty: Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo has acquired a stake in Chelsea Women, partnering with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, who purchased roughly 10 percent of the reigning Women’s Super League champions last year. The deal continues a trend of basketball stars—LeBron James at Liverpool, Angel Reese at DC Power, James Harden at Houston Dash—placing financial faith in the women’s game.

Off the pitch, the sport’s accessibility is colliding with safety concerns. Liverpool midfielder Marie Hobinger told investigators she was stalked by 42-year-old Mangal Dalal, who sent messages saying “I know where you park your car,” then waited pitch-side after matches. Dalal received an 18-month community-service sentence and a two-year restraining order in January. The incident is part of a wider rise in threats, prompting Chelsea Women to end uncontrolled post-match autograph sessions and the Women’s Super League to monitor X’s AI tool Grok for generating sexualised player images.

Sammy Smith’s Olympic debut, Madonna’s academy tour and Giannis’s boardroom arrival all illustrate the expanding orbit of women’s soccer—an orbit now stretching from college stadiums to Olympic ski venues, from pop-concert sidelines to Premier League balance sheets.