Daily Olympic Briefing: U.S. women’s figure skating, Mikaela Shiffrin take over Day 11

That modified after information broke final Wednesday that 15-year-old Russian Kamila Valieva, one of many largest gold-medal favorites amongst all 109 occasions at these Winter Video games, was on the middle of why the workforce occasion medals ceremony was postponed.

Valieva is allowed to skate regardless of testing optimistic for a banned substance on Christmas, a court docket dominated Monday. The check consequence was reported by the lab final week, and she or he remains to be topic to a disciplinary course of. More on that complicated matter here.

Valieva’s applications, filled with quadruple jumps, triple Axels and precocious artistry, have been must-see all season. She has competed 5 instances internationally and posted the world’s prime 5 whole scores throughout all competitions, distancing the second-ranked lady by 35.29 factors.

She is going to skate Tuesday’s quick program beneath utterly completely different scrutiny and circumstances. How will the 15-year-old deal with it? That shall be one of many questions as she takes the ice at, as scheduled, 8:52 a.m. ET.

Valieva practiced twice on Monday after a court docket dominated her eligible to compete for now. In her second session at evening, she fell as soon as through the 13 quadruple bounce makes an attempt and as soon as through the 4 triple Axel makes an attempt that figure skating expert Jackie Wong saw.

Quads should not allowed in ladies’s quick applications. A triple Axel would be the most tough bounce carried out Tuesday, and Valieva seemingly will not be the one lady attempting it.

She has scored greater than 90 factors in her final two shorts. No person else within the Olympic discipline has damaged 80 internationally this season.

Valieva’s Russian teammates, Anna Shcherbakova and Aleksandra Trusova, have lengthy been thought-about the silver- and bronze-medal favorites in both order. All of them practice at Moscow’s Sambo-70, the skating membership with coach Eteri Tutberidze, who guided the 2018 gold and silver medalists.

The Russian Olympic Committee is bidding to develop into first nation to brush the Olympic ladies’s determine skating medals.

“My finest is not corresponding to the Russians,” American Karen Chen, who was the highest non-Russian ultimately 12 months’s world championships in fourth, mentioned final month.

In 2014, Valieva, then 7, watched on TV as Yuliya Lipnitskaya, one other 15-year-old Tutberidze pupil, held the Olympic crowd in her palms skating because the lady within the pink coat to music from “Schindler’s Record.”

“From that second on, every single day, I mentioned, ‘Mother, I actually wish to go to the Olympics!” Valieva instructed NBC Sports activities in Russian throughout a November shoot.

Valieva was then instructed that she could be heading to the Winter Video games quickly.

“I hope the whole lot works out,” she replied.

SEE MORE: Johnny and Tara disagree with allowing Valieva to compete

Alpine Snowboarding

Italian Sofia Goggia races to develop into the second skier to win a number of Olympic downhill titles, three weeks after a gnarly race crash put her doubtful for the Video games. On Jan. 23, Goggia did the splits and tumbled in a super-G, spraining her left knee, partially tearing a ligament and struggling a “minor” fibula fracture. She made it again for each downhill coaching runs in Yanqing, inserting twelfth and fourth, adequate to stay the gold-medal favourite.

Mikaela Shiffrin mentioned she is going to race, however she has began simply three downhills within the final two years with a finest end of seventeenth. Competing within the downhill will assist her for Thursday’s mixed. She is reigning world champion in that occasion, which is one run on the downhill course and one run of slalom.

Snowboarding

Anna Gasser, the defending gold medalist from Austria, and New Zealand’s Zoi Sadowski-Synnott, who gained slopestyle final week, are within the 12-woman huge air remaining. Jamie Anderson, the 2018 silver medalist and two-time slopestyle gold medalist, missed a remaining for simply the second time in 5 years. Julia Marino, whose slopestyle silver was the U.S.’ first medal of the Video games, scratched huge air after a fall in follow final week.

Not one of the 2018 males’s huge air medalists made it again for this 12 months’s remaining. Sebastien Toutant, the gold medalist, was the one one who even made it to China, and he bowed out in qualifying. Canadian Max Parrot, the most cancers survivor who gained slopestyle gold, topped qualifying. Canadian legend Mark McMorris and Individuals Red Gerard (2018 slopestyle gold medalist) and Chris Corning additionally certified.

Freeskiing

China’s Eileen Gu, the 18-year-old who gained huge air final Tuesday, certified third for the slopestyle remaining and can bid to develop into the primary freestyle skier to win two golds in a single Olympics. Gu took second in her earlier slopestyle begins this season, as soon as behind Estonian Kelly Sildaru and as soon as behind Frenchwoman Tess Ledeux. Gu’s finest occasion, halfpipe, is later this week. Switzerland’s Sarah Hoefflin, the 2018 gold medalist, did not make the ultimate.

In males’s aerials qualifying, Chris Lillis returns after main the U.S. to gold within the new combined workforce occasion. Lillis, the 2021 World silver medalist, carried out the highest-scoring bounce of that competitors, a quintuple twisting triple again flip.

Bobsled

German Francesco Friedrich, who is likely one of the most dominant athlete at these Video games, leads by 0.15 over countryman Johannes Lochner after the primary two of 4 heats. Friedrich has gained each Olympic and world two-man title since Germany shockingly went medal-less in males’s bobsled on the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Friedrich truly tied for two-man gold with Canadian Justin Kripps in 2018, however Kripps is in tenth place now. Individuals Frank Del Duca and Hunter Church are, as anticipated, additionally out of medal rivalry – fifteenth and twenty eighth.

Pace Skating

The U.S. males certified second into the workforce pursuit semifinals, simply 0.04 behind Norway whereas resting their prime skater, Joey Mantia. In December, the Individuals broke the world file with Mantia skating in entrance all the time and Emery Lehman and Casey Dawson pushing him. That is an uncommon technique. Because the occasion debuted on the 2006 Olympics, skaters often take turns pulling on the entrance (and the Dutch nonetheless do it that means). Mantia will seemingly be added for the medal rounds. If the U.S. beats the Russian Olympic Committee in its semifinal, it clinches the primary U.S. males’s pace skating medal since 2010. If it loses to the ROC, it would get one other probability towards the Norway-Netherlands loser in a bronze-medal race.

The U.S. ladies earned workforce pursuit bronze in 2018 however did not qualify for the Olympics within the occasion this time. Defending champion Japan broke the Olympic file within the opening spherical. The Dutch additionally superior, which implies Ireen Wust will go for a thirteenth Winter Olympic medal, which might tie retired Norwegian biathlete Ole Einar Bjorndalen for second in historical past. Retired Norwegian cross-country skier Marit Bjorgen owns a file 15, which Wust won’t attain as she has one occasion left after the pursuit and plans to retire after this season.

Hockey

The lads’s hockey playoff spherical determines the final 4 quarterfinal groups. The U.S. went 3-0 in its group, incomes the highest total seed and a bye into the quarters. It would face the Slovakia-Germany winner on Tuesday evening. ROC performs the Denmark-Latvia winner. Finland will get the Czech Republic-Switzerland winner. Sweden performs Canada or China.

Curling

John Shuster and the U.S. males’s curling workforce (3-3) really want not less than one win, and two to be ok with their possibilities to advance from the 10-team spherical robin into the four-team playoffs. Switzerland beat the U.S. within the bronze-medal recreation ultimately 12 months’s worlds. Italy was seventh at worlds. The U.S. can take consolation in understanding its lone remaining round-robin recreation after Tuesday is towards Denmark (1-5).

A U.S. ladies’s workforce hasn’t made the playoffs since 2002, however Tabitha Peterson skipped the Individuals to a key win over 2018 Olympic silver medalist South Korea on Monday. They’re now 4-2, which means they will most likely afford to lose one in every of their final three video games towards 2021 World champion Switzerland, Canada (skipped by 2014 Olympic champion Jennifer Jones) and Japan.

Biathlon

Biathlon is on Olympic medal file watch. No person in any sport has gained six medals at a single Winter Olympics, however Frenchman Quentin Fillon Maillet and Norwegian Marte Olsbu Roiseland are every 4 for 4 with two occasions left. The women and men’s relays and mass begins happen over the subsequent 4 days, with the boys beginning issues off. So Fillon Maillet will get the primary shot to interrupt the file, ought to France get on the rostrum within the relay as anticipated. Fillon Maillet has come a great distance since not being chosen for France’s relay in 2018. No sport had six occasions on the Winter Olympic program earlier than 2002, and even now six medals is barely potential in 4 of them.

Nordic Mixed

No sport has been extra affected by COVID-19 positives on the highest degree than Nordic mixed. 4 of the highest seven athletes within the World Cup standings missed final Wednesday’s regular hill. That included Norwegian Jarl Magnus Riiber, the world No. 1 the earlier three seasons, and Eric Frenzel, the conventional hill gold medalist in 2014 and 2018. Neither was cleared to return in time for any of the big hill coaching jumps. Of their absence, German Vinzenz Geiger, the world No. 2 final season, gained the conventional hill. Germany swept the Nordic mixed golds in 2018 and will do it once more right here with the workforce occasion additionally nonetheless to come back.

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