The four-man biathlon relay race scheduled for 5 p.m. Tuesday has been moved to 2:30 p.m. due to exceptionally cold temperatures at the Zhangjiakou National Biathlon Stadium.
During the relay biathletes ski three laps and shoot twice, meaning they will spend about 20 to 30 minutes out in the cold on the track — in addition to the time they spend waiting for their turn. They also risk frostbite on their hands, since their trigger fingers are exposed while shooting.
At 11 a.m., the temperature at the stadium was 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit and was expected to drop to minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit by 6 p.m. That means the racers would face dangerous conditions.
Those were air temperatures and did not take into consideration the wind, which was blowing at almost 5 mph. The wind chill makes the actual temperature feel closer to minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit.
Click on the video players below to watch live action from the first two heats of the Olympic two-man bobsleigh event at the 2022 Beijing Olympic Winter Games.
Canadian pilots Justin Kripps, Chris Spring and Taylor Austin will be in competition at the Yanqing National Sliding Centre, with the first heat set to begin on Monday at 7:05 a.m. ET.
WATCH | Heat No. 1 – Olympic two-man bobsleigh:
Bobsleigh – Men’s Two-Man Heat 1
Check out Men’s Bobsleigh action on Day 10 of the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022. 0:00
The second heat is slated to start at 8:50 a.m. ET.
WATCH | Heat No. 2 – Olympic two-man bobsleigh:
Bobsleigh – Men’s Two-Man Heat 2
Check out Men’s Bobsleigh action on Day 10 of the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022. 0:00
The final two runs of competition are set for Tuesday at 7:15 a.m. ET and 8:50 a.m. ET.
The Winter Olympics come to Day 9, and all eyes will be on the National Speed Skating Oval where Team USA’s Erin Jackson will go for gold in the women’s 500 meter speed skating event.
Jackson needed an assist from teammate Brittany Bowe to even qualify for Beijing, as she fell during the Olympic Trials despite being the reigning World Cup champion in the event. It was a glitch in the qualification process US Speed Skating is likely to fix in the future, but Bowe did one of her best friends the most solid of solids, and also giving the USA their best chance at a gold in the sport.
Here are all the events where medals will be awarded on Sunday in Beijing.
Beijing Winter Olympics: Medal events for Sunday, February 13th
Alpine Skiing: 12:45 a.m. Men’s Giant Slalom Run 2
Germany’s Hannah Neise competes in heat 3 of women’s skeleton on Feb. 12, 2022.THOMAS PETER/Reuters
Hannah Neise has never won a World Cup medal. Or a medal at the world championships. Or a medal from the European championships.
She’s got an Olympic medal now.
And it’s the one that everybody wants.
Skeleton has a new champion, and she was a bit of a surprise winner. Neise, the 21-year-old who won the junior world title last year, became the first German woman to capture the gold medal in Olympic skeleton by rallying in the final two heats at the Beijing Games on Saturday.
Her four-run time was 4 minutes, 7.62 seconds. Jaclyn Narracott of Australia — the midpoint leader of the event — won the silver in 4:08.24 and World Cup overall champion Kimberley Bos of the Netherlands took the bronze in 4:08.46.
Neise’s win might have been a bit of a stunner, but at this point, nothing Germany does on this track should be that surprising. After six sliding events at the Beijing Games — four in luge, two in skeleton — the Germans have captured six gold medals.
Oh, and all they have in the four remaining bobsled races — two for men, two for women — are the reigning Olympic champion drivers in Francesco Friedrich and Mariama Jamanka.
Tina Hermann of Germany was fourth and Mirela Rahneva of Canada, the first-run leader, was fifth.
Canada’s Mirela Rahneva after her run in heat 4 of the women’s skeleton event on Feb. 12, 2022.EDGAR SU/Reuters
Neise’s win capped a year that was unpredictable in women’s skeleton from the outset. There were eight World Cup races leading up to the Olympics, with five different winners and 11 different medalists — Neise not being one of them.
But there was a big hint that she could contend at the Olympics. There was a preseason race at the Yanqing Sliding Center after three weeks of international training this fall, and Neise was second in that event.
Clearly, she figured some things out about the new track faster than most everyone else did.
Katie Uhlaender, racing in her fifth Olympics, was the top American and finished sixth in 4:09.23. Uhlaender strained a muscle in her side before competing Saturday and still moved up two spots from where she was after Friday’s first two runs of the competition.
Kelly Curtis, the other U.S. slider in the field, was 21st.
This was the first time in six Olympic women’s skeleton competitions that a woman from Britain didn’t find her way to the podium. Alex Coomber won bronze in 2002, Shelley Rudman won silver in 2006, Amy Williams took gold in 2010, Lizzy Yarnold won gold in both 2014 and 2018 and Laura Deas captured bronze four years ago as well.
Deas was the top British slider in this race, placing 20th.
Narracott’s medal, though, had a very British feel — and that has nothing to do with Queen Elizabeth II remaining the head of state in 15 Commonwealth countries, including Australia. Narracott spends the season traveling and training with the British team, and her husband is retired British skeleton athlete and 2018 Olympic bronze medalist Dom Parsons.
Narracott was great.
Neise was just better. And the world’s most accomplished nation in sliding just continues to dominate the Beijing Games.
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Click on the video player above to watch live coverage of the inaugural Olympic mixed team snowboard cross event at the Beijing Games, featuring two Canadian teams.
Live action from Genting Snow Park begins on Friday with the quarter-finals at 9 p.m. ET, followed by the semifinals at 9:30 p.m. ET. The medal final will get underway after the conclusion of the small final (9:50 p.m. ET).
Fifteen mixed teams of two will compete for a spot on the podium. Beijing medallists Meryeta O’Dine and Éliot Grondin are riding as one of the Canadian teams, while returning Olympian Tess Critchlow and Olympic rookie Liam Moffatt will form the other.
O’Dine and Grondin are aiming to return to the podium after each won medals in their respective individual snowboard cross events earlier this week. Grondin won silver in a photo finish, while O’Dine claimed bronze after overcoming major adversity on her Olympic journey.
WATCH | O’Dine’s path to Olympic bronze far from easy:
‘With a lot of vengeance’: Meryeta O’Dine’s path to Olympic bronze far from easy
Meryeta O’Dine has been tested mentally, emotionally and physically—but her perseverance took her all the way to the Olympic podium, winning snowboard cross bronze. 1:28
Critchlow finished ninth in snowboard cross as the top Canadian woman four years ago in Pyeongchang, while Moffatt is competing at his first Olympics after finishing seventh at the world championships.
Critchlow finished sixth in the women’s snowboard cross event in Beijing (second in the small final), while Moffatt failed to qualify for the quarter-finals in the men’s event.
WATCH | Grondin captures Olympic silver in photo finish:
Quebec’s Éliot Grondin settles for silver in Olympic snowboard cross photo finish
Éliot Grondin of Sainte-Marie, Que., finished in second place, just behind Austria’s Alessandro Haemmerle in the Beijing 2022 Olympic men’s snowboard cross big final. 4:56
We’re a little over halfway through the 2022 Winter Olympics and Saturday, February 12 will bring six more gold medal events. The day gets started late Friday in the US with the Mixed Team Snowboard Cross Big Final, and wraps at 7 a.m. with the Men’s Large Hill Individual Final Round in ski jumping.
Team USA will be competing in all six events handing out medals, but has their work cut out in a few. The most notable USA appearance is in the mixed team snowboard event. Nick Baumgartner and Lindsey Jacobellis will compete as one team and Jake Vedder and Faye Gulini will compete as another team starting in the quarterfinals.
Among the events handing out gold without any earlier playoff stages, the US is fairly longshots in most of them at DraftKings Sportsbook. The best American odds are in the women’s cross-country 4x5km relay, in which the US has the sixth best odds to win gold at +2000.
Elsewhere, Katie Uhlaender is +6500 to win gold in the women’s Skeleton, Austin Kleba is +10000 to win gold in the men’s 500m Speed Skating event, and Jake Brown and Sean Doherty are each +30000 to win gold in the men’s Biathlon 10km Sprint.
All times listed are Eastern Time.
Beijing Winter Olympics: Medal events for Saturday, February 12
The German luge relay team celebrates after winning gold at the Beijing Olympics, on Feb. 10.THOMAS PETER/Reuters
The giants of German luge combined their immense talents to take gold in the team relay on Thursday night, in a performance that underlined their mastery of the sport and means they will take home all the luge gold this Olympics had to offer.
It was a closely fought battle as the Germans made the last run of the night. Austria put in an outstanding collective effort, and Germany’s lugers fell a thousandth of a second behind their pace, only to catch up again, at least four times.
Natalie Geisenberger and Johannes Ludwig riding solo, followed by doubles duo Tobias Wendl and Tobias Arlt, rocketed down one after the other with the flair of athletes with nothing left to prove, finishing with a track record time of 3:03.406.
In the end the Austrian team of Madeleine Egle, Wolfgang Kindl and the pairing of Thomas Steu and Lorenz Koller were 0.08 seconds slower than their neighbours, taking silver.
The Latvians, a constant force in the luge event, finally secured their country’s first Olympic medal in the sport, taking bronze with a time 0.948 seconds behind the leaders.
Germany’s Tobias Wendl and Tobias Arlt celebrate after their run in the team relay event.THOMAS PETER/Reuters
It was the third Olympic team relay since its introduction in Sochi eight years ago. Germany has won all of them.
The relay features one woman, one man and one doubles team from each nation sliding in back-to-back-to-back runs. At the finish each athlete makes contact with a touch pad, which automatically opens the start gate for the next team member.
With lugers having just one run each to get it right, and with major actors from previous luge dramas making their return, the relay has a gala-feel for some of the teams, and a last chance-saloon for others.
Curve 13, a tricky twisting section at the conclusion of the Snow Dragon’s 1,615-metre track, wreaked almost as much havoc on the teams as it had with the women’s singles event on Tuesday.
After a promising first two runs, Slovakia were unable to finish after Tomas Vavercak and Matej Zmij skidded and crashed in that section.
South Korea’s Lim Namkyu flipped face down and skidded across the finishing line. Ukraine’s Yulianna Tunytska also had to right herself after a tip.
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We have six medal events on tap for Wednesday at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Golds will be handed out in women’s slalom, men’s freeski big air, doubles luge, cross-country individual normal hill 10km, men’s 1,500m short track speed skating and women’s snowboard cross.
The biggest question of the day is: How will Mikaela Shiffrin rebound in the women’s slalom after wiping out of the giant slalom earlier this week? She was the defending Olympic champion of that event, but she will have to recover and turn her attention to an event in which she won gold in 2014 and then was left with a heartbreaking fourth-place finish four years later.
Another well-known American female winter sports athlete will also be going for gold Wednesday: snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis. She’s a five-time Olympian who has won five world championships and 10 X Games golds in snowboard cross. However, she has just one Olympic medal — a silver in 2006 — to show for her efforts. Does she have some magic left at age 36?
Beijing Winter Olympics: Medal events for Wednesday, February 9th
Alpine Skiing
9:15 p.m. ET (Tuesday) Women’s Slalom Run 1 12:45 a.m. ET (Wednesday) Women’s Slalom Run 2
Freestyle Skiing
10:00 p.m. ET (Tuesday) Men’s Freeski Big Air Final Run 1 10:22 p.m. ET (Tuesday) Men’s Freeski Big Air Final Run 2 10:45 p.m. ET (Tuesday) Men’s Freeski Big Air Final Run 3
Luge
7:20 a.m. ET (Wednesday) Doubles Run 1 8:35 a.m. ET (Wednesday) Doubles Run 2
Nordic Combined
6:00 a.m. ET (Wednesday) Individual Gundersen Normal Hill/10km, Cross-Country
Short Track Speed Skating
6:00 a.m. ET (Wednesday) Men’s 1500m – Quarterfinals 7:29 a.m. ET (Wednesday) Men’s 1500m – Semifinals 8:13 a.m. ET (Wednesday) Men’s 1500m – Final B 8:20 a.m. ET (Wednesday) Men’s 1500m – Final A
Snowboard
2:07 a.m. ET (Wednesday) Women’s Snowboard Cross Quarterfinals 2:28 a.m. ET (Wednesday) Women’s Snowboard Cross Semifinals 2:45 a.m. ET (Wednesday) Women’s Snowboard Cross Small Final After Small Final (Wednesday) Women’s Snowboard Cross Big Final
The International Ski Federation (FIS) has come under fire after a slew of disqualifications marred Monday’s first Olympic mixed team event, with one athlete saying the governing body had “destroyed” women’s ski jumping.
Germany, Austria, Norway and Japan all suffered disqualification for suit infringements, prompting anger and tears on what should have been a great night for the sport, but which ended up in fiasco.
Each team was made up of two women and two men, and all five of those disqualified were female.
“We were looking forward to the second competition at the Olympics. FIS destroyed that with this action — they destroyed women’s ski jumping,” Germany’s Katharina Althaus, who was one of those disqualified, told reporters.
“Our names are now [out] there and we just pulled the crap card. That is how you destroy nations, development and the entire sport.”
The Canadian team was able to take advantage, earning bronze amid the narrowed field.
WATCH | Canada earns historic ski jumping medal:
Canada wins historic bronze in mixed team ski jumping
Mackenzie Boyd-Clowes secured a bronze for Canada with his final jump of 101.5m at Beijing 2022. 1:20
Horst Huttel, Germany’s head of Nordic events, said the situation was “outrageous.”
“This is a parody, but I am not laughing … It is outrageous that this happens with the four biggest ski-jump nations,” he added.
Norwegian ski jumping chief of sports Clas Brede Braathen said the experience was “very painful” for the athletes and that the issue should have been ironed out before the Olympics.
“The sport of ski jumping has experienced one of its darker days …,” he told reporters.
“I’m lost for words, really. I’m in pain on behalf of our sport.”
‘It’s completely crazy’
With lightning-fast take-off runs and soaring leaps, wind resistance plays a huge part in ski jumping, and skis and suits are regularly checked by officials to ensure that competitors have not done anything to gain an unfair advantage.
Slovenia took the gold medal, with athletes representing the Russian Olympic Committee picking up the silver and Canada taking the shock bronze medal, but the focus quickly shifted from their achievement to how the rules were interpreted.
“I hope nobody ever experiences that again, it’s completely crazy,” Norwegian jumper Robert Johansson, who had been sitting on the bar preparing to jump when he found out about the disqualifications, told Reuters.
Takanashi reacts after her jump. (Matthias Schrader/The Associated Press)
His teammates Silje Opseth and Anna Odine Stroem were both penalized, along with Germany’s Althaus, Japan’s Sara Takanashi and Daniela Iraschko-Stolz of Austria.
A distraught Takanashi quickly left the arena, and Opseth was also in tears as she told reporters how her suit was the same one that she had worn in Saturday’s competition without any problem from the judges.
“I think they checked it in a new way today compared to what they had done previously, I think it’s very strange that they would suddenly change how they do it in the middle of a tournament,” Opseth said before breaking down in tears again.
“I don’t know what to say. I’m really just shaken. I’m sorry that I was disqualified today,” she said.
The judges at the competition declined to comment when asked to do so by Norwegian journalists.
