By FERNANDA FIGUEROA

Whether it’s on indoors halfpipes in New Jersey or the Rocky Mountains slopes of Colorado and Wyoming, there seems to be plenty of programs aimed at developing a diverse new generation of skiers, skaters and snowboarders. Yet that work is not often reflected with the athletes seen at the Winter Olympics.

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A year before the last Winter Games in Beijing, former Canadian figure skater Elladj Baldé started the Skate Global Foundation, a group he says was inspired by his own experiences dealing with adversity as a skater of color.

As athletes prepare to gather next month for global competition at the Milan Cortina Games, organizations like the foundation and the National Brotherhood of Snowsports say they are creating accessibility to the slopes for underserved communities with a charge to develop from recreational-level participation to an Olympic path.

Wealth and access to ski resorts make a significant difference in one’s ability to progress. An athlete’s chance of making an Olympic team increases significantly with intensive training at elite boarding schools or academies that can costs tens of thousands of dollars.

“If there were more organizations like this doing this type of work, I think we would have a lot more funding available for skaters of color to be able to access support and the technical background that they need in order to continue to evolve in the sport,” Baldé said.

The majority of Team USA athletes are white even though the roster is more diverse than some at the Winter Games. The U.S. Alpine skiing team in Milano-Cortina is predominantly white. The U.S. figure skaters competing this year are also include Asian American athletes, but none who are Black or Hispanic. Laila Edwards is a rising star of the powerhouse U.S. women’s hockey team and will be the first Black woman to wear the American sweater on the Olympic stage.

Still, there will be many athletes of color competing next month, the majority from African and Caribbean nations.

Financial grants helping diverse athletes break into winter sports

Baldé, 35, grew up being told he couldn’t skate to hip-hop music, wear his hair out because it was nappy or that he looked like a monkey. Hearing things like that, Baldé said, he would have benefited from more support or ice skaters to look at who may have experienced similar things and could offer ways to overcome the noise.

His foundation is focused on creating more diversity in figure skating, offering $3,000 grants to skaters of color in Canada who are close or on a path to competing at the Olympics.

Baldé said the biggest struggle for him was the lack of representation, but receiving similar grants when he was younger helped him to break into competitions at a higher level.

“To be able to have skaters competing internationally and competing at the Olympics that are Black, Indigenous or skaters of color can really inspire generations of athletes to come into a sport where they might feel like don’t belong without that representation,” he said.

The Canadian Ski Council, which also represents the nation’s snowboarding industry, has created a “go skiing, go snowboarding” initiative designed to help families feel at home on the slopes.

“We have been characterized, somewhat rightfully, as a largely male, largely Caucasian activity,” said Paul Pinchbeck, president of the organization. “But nothing could be further from the truth. I’m really happy to say that in my lifetime we are going to dispel that and we’re going to see a lot more diversity of interest in our slopes.”

Recreational affinity groups stepping up to DEI mission

With about 7,000 members across 62 National Brotherhood of Snowsports clubs in the United States, the group is working to promote and help athletes of color excel, Henri Rivers, the organization’s president, told the Associated Press.

Whether it be Alpine skiing, snowboarding or Nordic skiing, NBS’s mission is to “identify, develop and support athletes of color that are going to win international and Olympic competitions and represent the United States,” Rivers said.

Cost is one of the largest obstacles for those looking to get into winter sports. A single day of skiing can well over $100, not including travel and equipment rental; owning your own gear costs even more. Rivers said NBS provides scholarships athletes can use to cover their coaching, tuition, competition, travel and lodging fees.

“We pretty much cover almost everything you can imagine that can help assist them get into the competitions they need to be represented in,” Rivers said.

Lack of diverse representation still seen as barrier for athletes of color

With Benin, Guinea-Bissau and the United Arab Emirates making their Winter Olympic debut, the Games are also expected to be more diverse and showcase athletes of color.

Rivers said for more representation in any sports, kids need to be able to see themselves in the athletes and coaches.

“I think what you are going to get to witness on a global scale is that athletes of color can compete,” Rivers said. “They can compete in any sport as long as they’re given that type of training and allow to work at it.”

FILE – Erin Jackson of United States competes during the women’s 500 meters at the World Cup speedskating event in Inzell Germany, Jan. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader, File)

U.S. speedskater Erin Jackson, whose championship in the 500 meters in 2022 made her the first Black woman to win an individual gold medal at a Winter Olympics, is aware of the impact representation can have and that for many young girls she will be a reason they compete.

“It helps to see someone like you achieving something, and we haven’t typically had that in winter sports and speedskating specifically,” she said. “So I really take on the responsibility with pride of being a face that others can look to and maybe get out and try the sports.”

Jackson, who is from Florida, has made increasing diversity in her sport a priority; when she retires, she wants to start an organization to help provide funding for that. She already has worked with Edge Outdoors, a nonprofit based in Washington state that tries to bring women of color to winter sports, helping review scholarship applications.

DEI efforts are having impact on winter sports, study shows

The work NBS, Skate Global Foundation and others are doing to increase diversity is having an impact in snow sports, according to research done by Snowsports Industries America.

Its study, which looked at participation across various snow sports during the 2024-25 season, found that participation amongst all demographics has increased. Participation from Hispanics increased by 4.1% and from Asian Pacific Islanders by 6.1%.

“It is great that the numbers are rising, but I wish they were rising faster,” SIA President Nick Sargent said.

According to the study, the increase in participation from the Hispanic community has helped to mitigate the decline in participation from white communities.

During the 2024-25 season, the number of white skiers declined from 9 million in 2023 to 8.7 million, yet the number of Hispanic skiers remained unchanged at 1.8 million. In snowboarding, white participants declined from 5.8 million to 5.3 million while Hispanic participation has increased from 1.8 million to two million.

“If you are thinking about skiing and snowboarding, it’s a primarily white competitive landscape but they are plenty of people of color that are involved in the space and contributing,” Sargent said.

Olympics Committee offers financial aid to neediest athletes

The task is getting those people of color into an Olympic track if the skills and desire are there.

The International Olympic Committee, through its Olympic Solidarity program, offers scholarships to athletes with the greatest need. The monthly grants help cover costs for training, equipment, travel and participation in qualification events.

At the Winter Olympics in Beijing, 429 scholarships were awarded to athletes. Of those, 236 athletes qualified for the Games and 10 won medals.

FILE – Spain’s Ana Alonso Rodriguez competes during the women’s mixed relay race at the Ski Mountaineering World Cup event in Bormio, Italy, Feb. 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni, File)

For this year’s Games, 447 athletes have received scholarships including, figure skater Donovan Carrillo of Mexico, skeleton athlete Nicole Silveira of Brazil and Ana Alonso Rodriguez, who represents Spain in ski mountaineering.

Carrillo told the IOC that the grants from the IOC helped him to “compete more, attend summer camps and learn from the best coaches,” which ultimately helped him qualify for the Beijing Games after years of limited resources.

“The IOC’s policy is that every athlete regardless of race or anything should be able to access sports free from any barriers,” IOC solidarity program director James Macleod said. “Every athlete should have access to be able to have the possibility to be able to access winter sports.”

FILE – Nicole Silveira, of Brazil, slides during women’s skeleton run 1 at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Feb. 11, 2022, in the Yanqing district of Beijing. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky, File)

AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

By EDDIE PELLS

Whether she is walking a fashion runway, amping herself up at the top of a mountain or digging into one of those physics lessons she takes “for fun,” Olympic champion Eileen Gu can probably boil down her main goals to these: Do her best. And bring as many people along for the ride as possible.

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The world’s best overall freestyle skier has made reaching those goals look remarkably easy over her first four years in the spotlight. So easy, in fact, that it can sometimes also be easy to overlook how hard it really is.

“You know, we’re all risking our lives out here,” she said with a laugh, while contemplating a more in-depth answer about a question that everything eventually seems to come back to with her: How much weight does she put into all the opinions about her choice to compete for her mother’s home country, China, despite being born and raised in California?

The 22-year-old multitasker will, in fact, put her life on the line somewhere between 10 and 15 times at the Milan Cortina Games, trying to duplicate her feat from four years ago when she won medals in all three of freeskiing’s inherently dangerous disciplines, halfpipe, slopestyle and big air.

She will do it inside a cauldron of Olympic pressure, magnified by the geopolitical forces that typically come with the Games and, when the Winter Games roll around, often focus on her.

Lots of folks have takes on Gu. Some of it, she says, descends into “vitriol.” It ranges from “people who thought I wasn’t Chinese enough” when she dyed her hair blonde to those who find fault in her choosing China over the United States, especially with the two major powers increasingly in conflict.

“I can focus my attention on the places where I personally have the most interest and impact, and work as hard as possible to make as much good in the world as I can,” Gu said in an interview with The Associated Press. “And to wish the people who disagree with me to use that energy and make the world better in their own way instead of directing it at me. That’s all I can hope.”

As for her bigger goals — they remain on track.

FILE – Gold medal winner China’s Eileen Gu celebrates during the venue award ceremony for the women’s halfpipe finals at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Feb. 18, 2022, in Zhangjiakou, China. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco, File)

She told of recently visiting a rural part of northern China and checking out a small ski hill they built for kids, where they offer free ski rentals and lift tickets. It was a strong indicator, she said, of the way snow and action sports are growing in China. Late in 2024, the Chinese government released a study that said 313 million people had engaged in snow sports since the Beijing Games in 2022. That’s about 30 million less than the entire population of the U.S.

“Everybody from a 3-year-old and a family, to a professional athlete to a fashionista can enjoy this sport,” she said. “That’s super special to me, and it has far surpassed any expectation I ever had for it.”

Giving herself a ‘break’ to focus on skiing

Gu did something unusual for herself this school year. The young woman who graduated high school a year early and was aiming for something similar in college gave herself a break at Stanford so she could focus on skiing.

She also heeded the advice of friends (maybe professors and college counselors, too) and decided to major in international relations and simply take quantum physics classes “for fun.”

“It’s wonderful to see how the world works on a granular level,” she said.

Along with her classes at Stanford, she joined the chess club, a book club, a sorority and formed a basketball league.

FILE – China’s Eileen Gu competes during the women’s slopestyle qualification at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Feb. 14, 2022, in Zhangjiakou, China. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco, File)

A highlight from a recent trip to Saas-Fee in Switzerland, where Olympic daredevils go to train, was rounding up a physio trainer from the Chinese team, a Brazilian athlete and some members of the U.S. team for a pickup hoops game at a local school.

“The idea of sports being able to bring people together really is something I subscribe to wholeheartedly,” she said. “I’ve implemented it pretty naturally throughout my life, in different ways. I just believe in it.”

From hoops to fashion and back to skiing, Gu chooses ‘all of the above’

The same woman playing hoops in Saas-Fee was the one you’ve seen on dozens of magazine covers, or modeling in Paris, Shanghai, Barcelona and on runways in Milan, the global fashion center that is also co-host of the upcoming Olympics.

Some athletes feel suffocated by the obligations that fame brings. Gu says she embraces it. She posts handwritten journals on her social media feeds on topics like mental health, communication through sport and overcoming obstacles.

“My hope is that people can read these things and feel actually affected vs. ‘Oh, here’s a picture of Eileen smiling,’” she said. “I really try to do something with my platform. That makes (fame) feel fulfilling and meaningful, as opposed to this deadweight burden, which I’ve never felt.”

All this paints a picture of an athlete with a bright future and possibilities well beyond the mountain.

FILE – Eileen Gu attends the Louis Vuitton Fall/Winter 2023-2024 ready-to-wear collection presented, March 6, 2023 in Paris. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena, File)

“It’s exciting to see her take — you hate to say her ‘brand,’ — but it’s her brand and go where she’s going with it,” said Shaun White, maybe the only action-sports star whose glow radiates far enough beyond the halfpipe to relate to the journey Gu is on. “She has a competitive side. She has modeling. She goes to Stanford. She’s one of those once-in-a-generation athletes who has the whole package.”

Taking care of her ‘day job,’ skiing

The fame, of course, all goes back to Gu’s first love — skiing, taking chances and pushing the boundaries of human performance.

A few weeks ago, she won a slopestyle contest in Laax, Switzerland, the record 20th World Cup freeski victory of her still-young career. She has not been beaten on a halfpipe since February 2024.

She is fully healthy for the first time in at least a year. A concussion in training last January induced seizures in the direct aftermath. It was one of the rare times, she said, that skiing truly left her scared.

“That was really personal and emotional in a way a lot of people did not expect,” she said. “A big reason for that is because I define so much of who I am by my brain.”

But she insists she is fine putting her life on the line to do what she loves. If she does her best, odds are the judges will award her three more Olympic medals in the next few weeks.

It’s not the only way Gu will be judged once the games begin. She’s at peace with that, too.

“I take it with a grain of salt,” Gu said. “Because there’s no way I can be perfect for every person that has a critique of me.”

AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

By PAUL WISEMAN, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Labor Department, citing the partial federal government shutdown, said Monday that it will not release the January jobs report on Friday as scheduled.

In a statement, the department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said: “Once funding is restored, BLS will resume normal operations and notify the public of any changes to the news release schedule.’’ It is also postponing the December report on job openings, which was supposed to come out Tuesday.

The jobs report and other key economic statistics were previously delayed by a record 43-day government shutdown last fall.

Economists had expected the January jobs report to show that employers added 80,000 jobs last month, up from 50,000 in December.

The delay in data comes at a bad time. The economy is in a puzzling place.

Growth is strong: Gross domestic product — the nation’s output of goods and services — advanced from July through September at the fastest pace in two years.

But the job market is sluggish: Employers have added just 28,000 jobs a month since March. In the 2021-2023 hiring boom that followed COVID-19 lockdowns, by contrast, they were creating 400,000 jobs a month.

Economists are trying to figure out if hiring will accelerate to catch up to strong growth or if growth will slow to match weak hiring, or if advances in artificial intelligence and automation mean that the economy can roar ahead without creating many jobs.

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By JESSICA HILL

DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) — Scotty’s Castle, a 1920s vacation home for a millionaire couple and the domain of a famous con man, was a top attraction in Death Valley National Park before it closed from a flash flood. After 10 years of repairs, the landmark is offering limited tours.

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The castle nestled into a desert hillside tells the perfect Wild West story of a cunning cowboy, a search for gold, a shootout with bandits and friendship. It is a great tale — even if some of it was made up.

“The story of how it came to be in this extremely unlikely place is what makes it so special,” said Abby Wines, acting deputy superintendent of Death Valley National Park.

The National Park Service opened up the grounds for limited flood-recovery tours in the coming months, and its full reopening is eyed for a few years from now.

Around 1.4 million people visit the park located in California and Nevada every year. It is well known as the hottest place in North America and as the driest and lowest place in the continent at 282 feet below sea level.

Gold, bandits and unlikely friends

In its heyday, the castle was “the stage for a massive practical joke on all of America,” Wines said.

Chandeliers and sunlight illuminate a room at Scotty’s Castle, Friday, Jan. 23, 2026, in Death Valley National Park, Calif. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Walter Scott, a con man nicknamed “Death Valley Scotty” and a former rider for the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show, took up gold prospecting, convincing people to invest in a fictional gold mine in Death Valley, where he thought none of his investors would dare to visit.

He struck the mother lode when he met Albert Johnson, who made his money in mines and health insurance. He invested in the mine but traveled to Death Valley to see where his money was going. Scott tried to scare the man off by staging a gunfight with bandits.

Johnson realized it was a scam, but he didn’t mind. He found the dry desert air good for his health, and he enjoyed the adventure, Wines said. He brought his wife, Bessie Johnson, and they became friends with Scott.

Over nine years, they built a vacation home they called Death Valley Ranch. But Scott lived on the grounds until he died, and everyone referred to it as Scotty’s Castle. He is buried on top of a hill overlooking the property.

Clouds drift over Scotty’s Castle, Friday, Jan. 23, 2026, in Death Valley National Park, Calif. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Inspired by the sandstone buildings and red tile roofs of Stanford University, where Bessie Johnson went to school, the castle is decorated with stucco walls, painted tiles and elaborate woodwork. A music room with a player pipe organ, arched ceilings and a stained-glass window served as a space for entertaining guests. Outside, a weather vane of Scott is perched on the roof, and a clock tower overlooks the valley. An incomplete pool shows the point in history when Johnson’s business failed and he couldn’t afford to restart construction.

Visitors stopped by the castle to see Scott and his famed gold mine when Death Valley became a national monument in 1933. Continuing his charade, he would tell visitors he built “his” castle on top of the mine. Servants went into tunnels beneath the castle and banged on pots and pans, creating the illusion of a working mine, Wines said. The Johnsons found the story entertaining.

A picture of Albert Johnson is on display in a window at Scotty’s Castle, Friday, Jan. 23, 2026, in Death Valley National Park, Calif. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Long road to restoration

When it was open, Scotty’s Castle drew 100,000 visitors every year. Guides dressed in period costumes gave tours of the castle, still with its original furnishings.

Interest in the castle remains high; the $35 flood recovery tours scheduled through March are already sold out. The proceeds will go toward completing the restoration, which will cost around $90 million.

Sunlight streams into a building at Scotty’s Castle, Friday, Jan. 23, 2026, in Death Valley National Park, Calif. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Repairs, which involved a lot of utility work, have taken longer than expected because of multiple setbacks, including a fire in 2021 and historic rainfall in recent years.

“I think what most people connect to when they come out here is the story of the friendship between the rich couple, Albert and Bessie Johnson, and Death Valley Scotty, the man who started the relationship by convincing them to give him money for a gold mine that never existed,” Wines said.