Former Trojan swimmer aims to be first USC medalist in the Winter Olympics

Carsten Vissering hates the cold. Growing up in Maryland, he experienced all four seasons — and he hated the cold ones. He’s never skied, snowboarded or ice-skated. He’s a champion swimmer, and chose USC specifically for the weather. Yet he somehow found his way to bobsledding and less than four years after first trying the sport, he’s representing Team USA in the 2026 Winter Olympics.

“If I could talk to my freshman-year self and say, ‘You’d be an Olympian in a different sport,’ I don’t think I would have been able to comprehend that idea,” said Vissering, a 2020 graduate of the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

From an outside perspective, he just might be one of the most unlikely Winter Olympians in history. However, looking at his athletic accomplishments — USC swimming and weightlifting standout, Pac-12 champion and All-American — and talking to him for five minutes, and it’s not hard to see why he’s donning the red, white and blue at the Milano Cortina Winter Games. Vissering willed his Olympic dreams into a reality in a sport that he knew nothing about for most of his life, and now he has a chance to bring home a medal and become the first Trojan to ever do so in the Winter Olympics.

“It’s been surreal because it’s this event that you talk about so much growing up, and now you’re actually here,” Vissering said. “It almost feels like I’m in a lucid state when I walk outside and see the mountains in the morning with the fog, and I’m wearing Team USA gear. It’s just like, wow, I am an Olympian.”

(Summer) Olympic dreams

Growing up in the greater Washington, D.C., area, Vissering took to swimming early in life. By age 10 he was winning East Coast tournaments and won a bronze medal at the 2013 world junior championships. He swam with the same club as four-time Olympian and 14-time Olympic medalist Katie Ledecky. The Olympics have always been on his mind.

“The swimming identity is so baked into me — I still have dreams where I’m at swim meets,” Vissering said with a laugh.

That’s what brought him to USC. Aside from the warmth and California sunshine — even Maryland was too cold for him — Vissering wanted to swim for renowned former USC head swim coach Dave Salo. Upon hearing Salo talk about his non-traditional coaching style on a podcast — more out-of-pool training than repetitive reps in the pool — Vissering knew that USC was a system he could thrive under.

“I went to his program because he took very unconventional approaches to swimming,” Vissering said. “His methodologies are heavily used now, but at the time, he was unique for it, but he also embraced having this different approach.”

For Salo, it was Vissering’s strength and speed in the water — particularly in the breaststroke — that caught his attention. That strength only increased after Vissering took a semester abroad in Australia. Salo allowed him to participate in the overseas study program only if he kept in shape, and Vissering came back looking more like a rugby player than a swimmer.

“I don’t know if he spent a whole lot of time in the water, but he came back very strong,” Salo said with a chuckle.

Salo left USC in 2020, and four years later accepted an assistant head coach position with Arizona State University. Throughout all the changes and moves, he has kept in contact with Vissering.

“As a career coach, you hope that you don’t see them hate what they were doing or resent or regret what they did for their sport career, and that they find new avenues to compete,” Salo said. “I think that’s what I’m proud about with Carsten, is that we nurtured him as an athlete … which allowed him to go into something else.”

For Vissering, Salo’s coaching and mentorship — though in a completely different sport — is one of the main reasons he’s in Milano Cortina.

“If coach Salo wasn’t my college coach, I don’t think I’d be here at the Olympics and in bobsled today,” Vissering said. “He had that profound of an impact on me.”

USC Olympian: The lifter who swims

Though he came in as a lanky kid, he quickly found the weight room. By the time his senior year rolled around, Vissering had grown into his 6’5” frame and looked more like a tight end on the Trojan football team. The comparison is appropriate as his lifting feats were more in the average football player range than that of most swimmers.

“I put up very, very unusual weight room feats for a swimmer, like stuff that you would see in the football weight room instead of swimming weight room,” he said. “Towards the end of my swimming career, the gym was my favorite part of training — I actually liked it more than the pool training.”

After shattering USC records and winning two Pac-12 championships, Vissering felt like he had taken swimming as far as he wanted to take it. Though he had grown up with Olympic dreams, he said he simply didn’t feel like he wanted to continue pursuing swimming to the level it was going to take to be an Olympian — much to the chagrin of his family and coaching staff.

“They wanted me to keep pursuing trials, compete for Tokyo, compete for Paris, but I was like, my heart’s not in it right now,” Vissering said.

However, he still had a drive to compete. He loved powerlifting and explosive movements like box jumps, but he didn’t really know how or where he could combine those. Then he came upon an article about bobsledding.

“I was like, wait, so there’s a sport where you basically have to become a weightlifter married to a track sprinter?” Vissering said. “That sounds awesome — that’s right up my alley.”

The winding road to Milano Cortina for USC Olympian

To say that there were a few learning curves in transitioning from swimming to bobsledding would be an understatement. Before Vissering even stepped foot in a sled, the odds seemed stacked against him.

“I had size, I had strength, and I had the passion to pursue it, but I knew nothing about the sport,” he said.

As a student of sport, Vissering found a former U.S. national team member who wrote a doctoral dissertation in kinesiology on what makes a good bobsledder. The prospective bobsledder decided to reach out and set up a phone consultation with the former national team member. The call didn’t exactly inspire confidence.

“He told me at the end of it, in a very respectful manner, he said, ‘Hey, you seem like a good kid, and I just want to be honest with you, and up front, but I don’t think you’re going to go far in the sport,’” he said.

However, Vissering is not an easy person to dissuade when he sets his mind to a task. He took the blunt advice well, because he honestly wasn’t looking to go to the Olympics. He simply liked the explosivity of the sport and wanted to give it a try.

“It was like bringing on a new identity, or rebuilding yourself into something new,” Vissering said. “So, it didn’t bother me at all, that he said that I probably wasn’t going to go far because I was grateful just to be able to try.”

His optimism and perseverance paid off. He eventually earned a spot in the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation 2025-26 Bobsleigh World Cup, where he and his pilot Kris Horn finished in fourth place, earning them spots on the U.S. Olympic Team.

Now, roughly eight years after winning an NCAA title in swimming, Vissering is an Olympian, in a way neither he nor his coaches would have ever thought.

“From a young age, there was this idea that I could be an Olympian — I just find it crazy that I had to take a little side path to get here,” Vissering said. “It’s been surreal, because it’s this event that you talk about so much growing up, and now you’re actually here.”