By Maura Sullivan Hill, Team FSO writer
Photos courtesy Sonja Hilmer
Part of the fun of the Olympics these days is seeing all the immediate, behind-the-scenes updates from the athletes on social media. There’s the Olympic team merch they receive on arrival, what’s on the menu in the dining area, and the room tours in the Olympic Village. Many of the athletes bring items from home to make their stays more comfortable.
At the 2026 Olympics in Milan, U.S. Figure Skating wanted to make sure their athletes not only felt at home during the Games, but also had a special keepsake to take home. Every Team USA skater received a custom ink drawing in their room in the Olympic Village, depicting the skater performing on the ice.
U.S. Team Leader Tiffany Hyden came up with the idea, and she knew just who could help her execute it: Sonja Hilmer, an artist and senior competitor on Team USA.
“Tiffany is my former solo dance coach,” Hilmer said. “She came to me with the idea of copying the style of Italian fashion ink drawing, so that was my job to emulate that and learn how to make it look kind of like that, but also like the people we were representing. Because they are very representational artworks.”
The Idea
Hyden approached Hilmer with the idea in August 2025, but the bulk of the creation happened after the 2026 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in January, once the Olympic team was officially announced.
“It was a grind, but it was great,” Hilmer said. “The first one finished was [ice dancers Madison] Chock and [Evan] Bates, and it gave me a chance to do a team on that paper and see how that fit in those dimensions. I had a number of sketches [of skaters] that I kept leading up until Nationals, and then when they announced the team, I picked who I needed and moved forward from there.”
The Creative Process
Throughout the season, Hilmer collected reference photos of skaters in contention for the Olympic team from Instagram, skating news websites, and skating photographers, including Figure Skaters Online’s own Robin Ritoss. Then, she’d create a sketch of the skater or team based on the photos, before scanning it into Photoshop on her computer. In Photoshop, she went over the drawing with the brushstrokes that she would eventually do on paper – almost like a rough draft. Next, she’d use a projector to impose that Photoshop image on the actual paper to trace the outline of her sketch and add the actual brushstrokes on the paper.
Hilmer used paper from Blick Art Materials, one of her sponsors, to create the artworks, and the ink was from Italy. The poses she chose to render for each athlete capture them at their best — like Ilia Malinin mid-backflip, and Madison Chock and Evan Bates in their signature lift from the season, with her matador skirt in her hand.
And while Hilmer couldn’t choose a favorite among the pieces she created, she did say that doing the hairstyles was the most enjoyable part of the process.
“There’s a lot of variety in the hair for texture between not only the photos I picked, but the different hairstyles that all these skaters have,” she said. “There’s the classic bun, and a lot of them have some half up, half down. I was really excited to do the men’s hair because I think they have some iconic windblown looks. And for me, that also aided in making it look like that skater, because I wasn’t doing any faces. So using the different kinds of brushstrokes to get hair texture, was, I think, my favorite part.”
The Reactions
The Olympian subjects of the art loved how it turned out. Hilmer shared that many of the athletes said it blew their minds: “It was great hearing back,” she said. “[The art] is such a unique, representational way to relate to how the sport is seen and movement, but it is also very Milan. And that was a big driving point for the style – it had to be Milan and Italian-feeling. I hope that it feels like part of the whole journey of, ‘Look, you did it!’ [for the athletes].” 
Amber Glenn commented on Hilmer’s Instagram post about the art, saying: “Absolutely amazing 😍 can’t wait to bring it home with me.” And ice dancer Christina Carreira commented, “Thank you so much!! We love them🥹❤️.” Pairs skater Ellie Kam commented her praise for the artist with, “So insanely talented Sonja 🤯.”
Not only did the athletes themselves love the art, but there has been a huge fan response. Hilmer is now selling stickers and prints of the artworks for skating fans, and you can order on her Instagram, @gosanjaygo_03.
Hilmer is well-known in the skating world for bringing her art to the ice, whether she is designing her costumes or recording blade sounds for the iconic tap-dancing step sequence in her short program this year. This project was just the latest opportunity.
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