Olympics news, live updates: ‘Blade Angels’ begin their quest for gold in women’s figure skating

The U.S. improves to 5-2 and sits in second place after seven video games. They will tackle Great Britain in a while Wednesday earlier than wrapping up round-robin motion on Thursday in opposition to Switzerland.

The three factors earned in the fifth and sixth ends started the separation for the U.S. ladies in opposition to Denmark on Tuesday. With the Danes needing large scores, they did not catch the Americans, who completed their opponents with a 4 in the eighth finish.

That ended the match proper there because the Danes conceded.

The males’s hockey quarterfinals are almost set because the qualification playoffs happen on Tuesday.

In early motion, Germany downed France 5-1, whereas Switzerland knocked out Italy 3-0.

Thursday, Feb. 18
6:10 a.m. ET: Slovakia vs. Germany
10:40 a.m. ET: Canada vs. Czechia/Denmark
12:10 p.m. ET: Finland vs. Switzerland
3:10 p.m. ET: U.S. vs. Latvia/Sweden

Teams are re-seeded after the quarterfinals.

The boards for ice hockey video games at Milano Santagiulia Arena could have a special look for the rest of the 2026 Winter Olympics.

The International Ice Hockey Federation will change the colour of the boards alongside the rink to a lighter colour after getting suggestions on the matter from varied groups and nationwide federations, ESPN’s Emily Kaplan reported.

Though the IIHF normally does work on the boards to scrub up dents, scuffs and different put on and tear on the halfway level of a match, the change is being made in response to issues that the darker turquoise colour is completely different from what is usually seen in skilled arenas all through Europe and the NHL.

In specific, the problem is that the darker colour has made it troublesome to trace the puck when it travels alongside, and even above, the boards. The boards in NHL and European skilled hockey arenas are sometimes white, even when lined with banner advertisements.

Read more here.

The unique idea of the Winter Olympics was easy. In the early Nineteen Twenties, a motion was born throughout the International Olympic Committee to designate every week for celebrating sports activities on snow and ice. By 1964, it had grown to greater than 1,000 athletes in 34 occasions.

Three many years later, the Winter Games moved to a brand new schedule in order that they now not befell in the identical yr because the Summer Olympics. More just lately, they’ve advanced so as to add extra trendy, youth-focused sports activities like snowboarding and freestyle snowboarding.

All the adjustments, nonetheless, have failed to resolve one of many main points inherent to winter sports activities: Except for a small handful of athletes who’re principally from mountainous European international locations, the Winter Games lack variety and star energy. Even in the U.S., it’s the uncommon athlete like a Lindsey Vonn or Shaun White that may break by means of into the mainstream dialog.

That’s why the Winter Olympics must tweak its standards and embrace the preferred winter sport in the world.

It’s time to take basketball out of the Summer Games and put it the place it belongs.

Read more here.

U.S. bobsledder Elana Meyers Taylor, eventually, has her first Olympic gold medal following a dramatic come-from-behind victory in Monday’s monobob closing on the Milan Cortina Games.

The 41-year-old mom of two is now tied with speedskater Bonnie Blair for probably the most Winter Olympic medals by a U.S. lady with six. And she’s the oldest Winter Olympian to ever win a gold medal in a person occasion, breaking a file set by Austrian snowboarder Benjamin Karl simply days earlier.

Read more here.

Olympic skier Lindsey Vonn is working her approach again after present process a number of surgical procedures on her leg. Vonn posted a video from her hospital mattress Monday displaying clips of her restoration post-op.

In the video, Vonn might be seen consuming, getting her hair washed and getting her muscle tissue stretched.

Men’s aerials have been canceled Tuesday on account of snowfall, and that proved to be a harbinger of what was to come back. The ladies’s aerials — which have been speculated to happen later — have been additionally canceled Tuesday on account of snowfall.

Team USA wanted an enormous comeback to tie China in males’s curling, however threw all of it away in the ultimate finish. After netting three factors to tie issues up in the ninth finish, Team USA misplaced on the final stone of the match.

The tenth finish was suffering from errors from the Americans, and China took benefit with the hammer. While the Americans have been in line to take two factors earlier than the hammer, China’s Xiaoming Xu managed to knock each U.S. stones out of the home along with his closing stone, giving China the 8-5 win.

Prior to that, the U.S. got here again from a 5-2 deficit in the ninth finish, scoring three to tie issues up heading into the tenth. It was a disappointing end contemplating that preliminary comeback.

Snow on slopes is nice, however not nice competitions the place athletes are flying by means of the air. In Livigno, the place qualifying for freestyle snowboarding aerials is scheduled for as we speak, snow has been falling steadily, and thus making it troublesome to see. Already the boys’s qualifying has been canceled, whereas the ladies’s has been delayed. The scenario is fluid, so we’ll preserve you posted.

Women’s slopestyle is scheduled for 7 a.m. ET. According to our Dan Wolken on the mountain, there will likely be a “decision on that later.”

Poulin owns the all-time Olympic file for most objectives in ladies’s hockey historical past — however will she add a gold medal in opposition to the United States?

Figure skating has been an Olympic occasion for longer than there have been Winter Olympics. It’s true: males’s, ladies’s and pairs skating occasions have been held on the 1908 Summer Olympics; the Winter Games didn’t make their debut till 1924 in Chamonix, France. Even ice dancing now has a 50-year pedigree, starting in 1976 in Innsbruck.

Team skating, against this, is just about model new, courting solely again to Sochi in 2014. National groups, solely in the fourth iteration of group competitors, are nonetheless determining precisely the right way to arrange their rosters to maximise the potential for each group and particular person success.

Because right here’s the not-so-secret fact of the group skate: It can have a big impact on an athlete’s particular person efficiency. Because the group occasion begins the Olympics, and since the Olympics happen in such a decent time-frame, the bodily and emotional value of the group occasion can ripple proper on by means of into particular person ones, affecting and probably upending particular person goals.

Read more on the conundrum here.

Read extra about Eileen Gu and her win here.

There are two distinct sorts of comfortable Olympians in the moments after an occasion: those that are comfortable they medaled, and people who are comfortable to be there. The medalists go house with {hardware} and fame; the others take satisfaction in the very fact they’ve completed their goals. Even in the event that they take, say, an additional 25 years to realize.

At the pairs figure skating occasion on Monday evening, Japan’s Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kiahara claimed gold, Georgia’s Anastasiia Metelkina and Luka Berulava gained silver and Germany’s Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin earned bronze. Americans Emily Chan and Spencer Howe completed sixth whereas Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea completed eighth. They have been all comfortable in their personal methods, however none of them have been fairly comfortable in the way in which that Canada’s Deanna Stellato-Dudek was, as a result of none of them have a narrative that may fairly match hers.

At age 42, Stellato-Dudek embodies persistence, stubbornness, hard-headedness … no matter you’d name the desire to stay together with your Olympic goals even after a protracted retirement. A junior skater with substantial promise, together with a silver medal in the 2000 World Junior Championships, she initially focused the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics as her aim. But persistent accidents compelled her into retirement in 2001, and for 16 years, that appeared like the tip of her figure skating story.

Something nagged at her, although, some unfinished enterprise deep inside. At a team-building train in her mid-30s, she stunned herself by answering the query, “What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?” with “I would win an Olympic gold medal.” She then determined she wished to take yet another run on the Olympics, she needed to overcome doubts from just about each nook. There aren’t many Olympians who begin skating once more in their mid-30s, in spite of everything.

Read the full story here.

Canada superior to Thursday’s gold medal ladies’s ice hockey closing after defeating Switzerland 2-1 on Monday.

After a scoreless first interval, Team Canada took a 2-0 lead in the second with Marie-Philip Poulin. But Switzerland minimize its deficit in half on a aim by Rahel Enzler early in the third.

Team USA has gained gold in ladies’s monobob with Elana Meyers Taylor ending first. The U.S. could have two bobsledders on the rostrum with Kaillie Humphries incomes bronze.

Canada’s Megan Oldham gained the gold medal in ladies’s freestyle large air on Monday, relegating 2022 gold medalist Eileen Gu of China to the silver medal.

Oldham had a mixed rating of 180.75 after her first two of three runs and didn’t want to enhance together with her closing run to win. Gu’s closing run gave her a complete rating of 179.00, and Oldham’s gold medal was already secured when she took the hill for her closing run.

Italy’s Flora Tabanelli gained bronze with a rating of 178.25.