The 10 Best Films About the Winter Olympics. In this series of sports-themed articles, we’ll be reviewing the best sports films from auto racing and baseball to tennis and surfing. These Best Of lists will include both popular and lesser-known films from a specific sports film subgenre and our plan is to release each list monthly near a major sporting event.
With the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics starting this weekend, there’s no better time to review some of the best films featuring winter-based Olympic sporting events and athletes. The Winter Olympic Games includes a variety of competitive events from figure skating and ice hockey to ski jumping and alpine skiing. For all of these sports, we’ve compiled a list of must-see films that feature both individual and team Olympic achievements from Team USA’s upset of the USSR Men’s Hockey Team at the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid in Miracle on Ice (1981) and Miracle (2004) to Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards’ inspirational ski jump run in Eddie the Eagle (2016) to the infamous Jamaican bobsled team’s debut in Cool Runnings (1993) both of which occurred at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary.
Once we’ve completed the list of best films by individual sport, we’ll have a cumulative article with the absolute 50 best sports films. For now, you can view our tentative schedule below and we’ll try to fit in some articles for some other sports such as Volleyball and Rowing that aren’t typically depicted in many films:
- Best Films About Football
- Best Films About Baseball
- Best Films About Surfing
- Best Films About Basketball
- Best Films About Summer Olympic Sports
- Best Films About Soccer
- Best Films About Running
- Best Films About Tennis
- Best Films About Auto Racing
- Best Films About Hockey
- Best Films About Wrestling
- Best Films About Winter Olympic Sports
- Best Films About Boxing
- Best Films About Golf
- The 50 Best Sports Films
For our rankings we’re going to use some criteria to help define and refine our list. First, the film must primarily be about the winter Olympics. We will use broad criteria here as quite a few films about the Olympics don’t show performances at the actual Olympic event (likely due to a film’s budget). We’ll also include films that feature events such as figure skating that typically feature a National Championship that are pre-qualification tournaments for the Olympics.
Second, the more sports action is shown in the film, the higher it will rank on our list.
Third, there are numerous films that are Winter Olympics-adjacent that are basically romantic dramas. We will include a few of these on our lists, but most of these films have little to do with the Olympics (or focus on the sport shown in the film), so they will be deprioritized for this list.
Fourth, in the 1990s, there was a string of Made-for-TV movies that covered famous Winter Olympic athletes including Tonya Harding, Nancy Kerrigan, Dan Jansen and Oksana Baiul. Most of these films are low budget and not very good, but we will include the better ones in our list of honorable mentions below.
And fifth, we had to follow our rule for all of KBZ’s film listings where we only list films that have a 4.0/10 or higher rating. For this list, we will move our release date criteria of 1970 or later back one year to include Downhill Racer (1969).
Our complete list of Sports Dramas features over 587+ films from 1942 – 2024 and our complete list of Sports Comedies features over 254+ films from 1968 – 2024. Though we don’t yet break down films by sports discipline, we will list every individual sport-related film in their respective articles. You can also subscribe to our newsletter to get updated as we release future articles on each sport and add the latest and greatest subgenre films to our collection.
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The 10 Best Films About the Winter Olympics
Films that didn’t make our list (and only for completists): Top of the Hill (1980), Going for the Gold: The Bill Johnson Story (1994), A Brother’s Promise: The Dan Jansen Story (1996), Ice Princess (2005), The Cutting Edge: Going for the Gold (2006), Love On Ice (2017), Two for the Win (2021) and Breaking Through (2022).
Honorable Mentions: The Other Side of the Mountain (1975), Miracle on Ice (1981), Tonya & Nancy: The Inside Story (1994), Ice Angel (2000), Men with Brooms (2002), Heavyweights (2006), The Cutting Edge: Chasing the Dream (2008), Take Off (2009), Ice Castles (2010), A Patriotic Man (2013), Torvill & Dean (2018), Olympic Dreams (2019) and Jump!: The Heroes Behind the Gold (2021).
#10
Downhill Racer
Plot: An ambitious young skier, determined to break all existing records, is contemptuous of the teamwork advocated by the US coach when they go to Europe for the Olympics.
KBZ’s Take: Some people might find this film too slow, but this Robert Redford and Gene Hackman film does an admirable job of showing the daily grind of an amateur skier. It’s also one of the best films of this particular subgenre that balances exciting scenes of skiing with romantic melodrama.
Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
Plot: The story of Olympic gold medal winner Oksana Baiul. She began her training as a figure skater at the age of three and matured into a world champion despite personal tragedy, fierce competition and political upheavals in a fast-changing world.
KBZ’s Take: We mentioned earlier in this article that there were a string of Made-for-TV films that focused on famous Winter Olympic athletes including Tonya Harding, Nancy Kerrigan and Dan Jansen. This biopic about Oksana Baiul is the best of the lot even though it lacks prolonged ice skating scenes of Baiul in actual Winter Olympics competition.
Where to Stream / Buy: YouTube
#8
Run-Off
Plot: An odd group of women, including a North Korean defector, a short track skater and a middle school student, comes together to form South Korea’s first female ice hockey team.
KBZ’s Take: Korean films often have a unique mixture of drama and comedy that takes some time to adjust to for international audiences. There’s a host of Korean sports-themed films from Take Off (2009) to Dream (2023) that use this dramatic narrative (often based on historical events) with varying degrees of comedy.
Run-Off is a sequel of sorts to Take Off and uses the same drama/comedy style as its predecessor while focusing on an entirely new sport – hockey. Though both films are worth watching for your pre-Winter Olympics warm up, we would suggest watching Run Off first if you only have time for one film.
Where to Stream / Buy: Tubi
#7
Ice Castles
Plot: A young girl is on top of the world until a tragic accident dashes her hopes and dreams of becoming a world-class figure skater. Only with the help of those who love her can she prove to the world — and herself — that she still has the potential to realize her dreams.
KBZ’s Take: We’ll start off by noting you can’t go wrong with either the original Ice Castles or its 2010 remake. Both films follow the same plotline and while younger audiences might prefer the updated version, we selected the original for this spot.
Though it’s a Winter Olympics-adjacent film focused on ice skating, it does feature a heartwarming and inspirational romance that fans of the subgenre will enjoy.
Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
Plot: When a much-publicized ice skating scandal strips them of their gold medals, two world class athletes skirt their way back onto the ice via a loophole that allows them to compete together as a pairs team.
KBZ’s Take: We noted in previous articles that Will Ferrel had a string of sports-focused comedies in the 2000’s from Kicking & Screaming (2005) to Semi-Pro (2008). Blades of Glory isn’t the funniest of his films from this period, but it does a great job of skewering the celebrities and politics of professional figure skating.
Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
Plot: Two former Olympians, one a figure skater and the other a hockey player, pin their hopes of one last shot at Olympic glory on one another. That is, of course, if they can keep from killing each other in the process…
KBZ’s Take: One of the most well-known romantic sports dramas from the 1990s, The Cutting Edge has become required viewing for any young ice skater looking to break into the world of figure skating. Though the film spawned two sequels in The Cutting Edge: Going for the Gold (2006) and The Cutting Edge: Chasing the Dream (2008), we would only recommend the original for it’s great chemistry between leads D.B. Sweeney and Moira Kelly and initial use of the now famous sports line, “Toe pick!”.
Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
#4
I, Tonya
Plot: Competitive ice skater Tonya Harding rises amongst the ranks at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, but her future in the sport is thrown into doubt when her ex-husband intervenes.
KBZ’s Take: Before she became a household name in films such as Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) and Barbie (2023), Margot Robbie gave an award-worthy performance as the infamous Tonya Harding. Though Allison Janny would go on to win all the major supporting actress awards in 2018 (as Harding’s stepmother, LaVona Golden), it’s still a film led by Robbie that injects a dark comedic edge to one of the most infamous scandals in Olympics history.
Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
Plot: Cut from the Olympic ski team, British athlete Michael “Eddie” Edwards travels to Germany to test his skills at ski jumping. Fate leads him to Bronson Peary, a former ski jumper who now works as a snowplow driver. Impressed by Edwards’ spirit and determination, Peary agrees to train the young underdog. Despite an entire nation counting him out, Eddie’s never-say-die attitude takes him all the way to a historic and improbable showing at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta.
KBZ’s Take: Eddie the Eagle is a film that shouldn’t work but it does. It’s formulaic, predictable and targets the heart with its abundance of sentimental cues. But even though you can see everything coming from a mile away, it still gets you rooting for Eddie (Taron Egerton) and his coach Bronson Peary (Hugh Jackman).
Egerton and Jackman’s performances help elevate this film to one of the best crowd pleasers of the subgenre.
Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
Plot: When a Jamaican sprinter is disqualified from the Olympic Games, he enlists the help of a dishonored coach to start the first Jamaican Bobsled Team.
KBZ’s Take: Fish Out of Water Comedies are one of the most prevalent themes in the Sports film genre from Tom Selleck’s journey in Japanese Baseball in Mr. Baseball (1992) to the American Samoan soccer team attempting to field a team in the 2014 World Cup in Next Goal Wins (2023). However, there’s no sports comedy more bizarre (and funny) than Cool Running’s story about the Jamaican Bobsled Team.
This classic, real-life underdog tale became the story of the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. And while the film does take some creative license with the actual competition, it’s still a heartwarming comedy that hits all the right notes and is a great family film to watch in anticipation of the Winter Olympics.
Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
#1
Miracle
Plot: When college coach Herb Brooks is hired to helm the 1980 U.S. Men’s Olympic Hockey team, he brings a unique and brash style to the ice. After assembling a team of hot-headed college all-stars, who are humiliated in an early match, Brooks unites his squad against a common foe: the heavily-favored Soviet team.
KBZ’s Take: Miracle was our #1 pick for our article of The 20 Best Films About Hockey and was an easy pick for our top slot here as it’s the best film about The Winter Olympics with one of the most inspirational stories of the sports film subgenre. This is a classic sports underdog tale with Cold War themes playing throughout the buildup of the match between Team USA and the Soviets.
But where the film truly excels is in the recreation of the exciting Olympics match with some of the best cinematography and action of the entire sports subgenre. This is a film that is a must-see for any sports fan and is one of the best sports films of all time.
Additional Lists: The 20 Best Films About Hockey #1
Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
