Nicole Auerbach and Kaylee Hartung will have Olympic roles for NBC at the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Games next month.
NBC announced its full roster of 82 commentators for the Games on Tuesday, with Auerbach assigned to cross-country skiing and ski jumping as a reporter, while Hartung will cover freestyle skiing. Both will make their Winter Olympics debuts in the reporter roles.
Beyond excited to cover the Winter Olympics with the incredible @NBCSports team!
You’ll see me in Italy reporting on cross country skiing and ski jumping: https://t.co/RBrghP9BRk
— Nicole Auerbach (@NicoleAuerbach) January 6, 2026
Auerbach joins a cross-country skiing team led by play-by-play announcer Steve Schlanger and analysts Chad Salmela, Kikkan Randall, and Johnny Spillane. For ski jumping, she’ll work alongside Paul Burmeister on play-by-play, Spillane as analyst, and fellow reporter Naoko Funayama. Hartung joins Todd Harris on play-by-play and Jonny Moseley as analyst for freestyle skiing.
The assignment comes more than a year after Auerbach left The Athletic in August 2024 to expand her NBC Sports role. She joined NBC in 2023 as part of the network’s Big Ten College Countdown program in NBC’s first year as a Big Ten rightsholder, then expanded to include college basketball coverage across the Big Ten, Big East, and Atlantic 10, plus launching a podcast and providing written content.
Auerbach spent seven years at The Athletic after joining the startup in 2017 following seven years at USA Today. She was named the National Sports Media Association’s National Sports Writer of the Year in 2020 at age 31, making her the youngest national winner of the award.
Hartung worked for NBC during the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, reporting on track and field and gymnastics for TODAY and NBC News. She’s been Amazon’s Thursday Night Football sideline reporter since 2022, working alongside Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit, while also serving as a contributing correspondent for The Today Show and NBC News since 2023.
Hartung left ESPN in 2017 for CNN, spent time at ABC News starting in 2019, then returned to sports in 2022 with Amazon. At ESPN, she worked on the SEC Network’s primetime football games.
NBC’s Olympic coverage begins with the Opening Ceremony on Feb. 6. Mike Tirico anchors primetime coverage starting Feb. 10 after calling Super Bowl LX two days earlier.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.