Hello from Milan and Cortina, the place Team USA’s “Blade Angels” started the ladies’s determine skating competitors. Alysa Liu skated as if floating on air and completed the day in third place, Isabeau Levito had a strong efficiency and now sits eighth, and Amber Glenn missed a triple loop, which left her in thirteenth.
All three will get an opportunity to enhance throughout Thursday’s free skate section. Our correspondents have all of it coated under and at NBC News. Catch all of it streaming on Peacock.
Live from Milan Cortina
After Amber Glenn completed her routine in the quick program at present, she clutched her chest and breathed closely at the heart of the ice. She already knew she’d made a mistake.
She had nailed her triple axel, the hardest soar of the program. But later she had landed a double loop when it ought to have been a triple loop. That was marked as an invalid factor that earned her zero factors.
As she skated off, she burst into tears. She hugged her coach and lamented the missed alternative.
“I had it,” she stated.
Earlier, Isabeau Levito, whose grandmother lives in Milan, made her Olympic debut with a routine that delighted the crowd with stunning spins and extensions.
But the top American was Alysa Liu, whose routine regarded easy and included a tough triple lutz, triple loop mixture, giving her a rating of 76.59.
“I’m really confident in myself,” she stated afterward, explaining her calm demeanor. “Even if I mess up and fall, that’s totally OK too. I don’t know, I’m fine with any outcome so long as I’m out there — and I am, so there’s nothing to lose.”
The solely skaters who carried out higher had been Ami Nakai (78.71) and Kaori Sakamoto (77.23) of Japan. Liu is perhaps Team USA’s finest shot at gold. An American lady hasn’t received gold in ladies’s singles determine skating in additional than 20 years.
Elsewhere, in the speedskating workforce pursuit closing, the Italians upset Team USA, leaving the Americans with silver. The American ladies additionally misplaced the bronze medal workforce pursuit race to Japan.
Germany dominated the two-man bobsled competitors and swept the podium — incomes gold, silver and bronze medals — for the second straight Olympics.
Athlete Spotlight
In an exhilarating males’s freeski large air closing, Team USA’s Mac Forehand wanted a giant rating on his third and closing run if he wished a gold medal. He had been the prime qualifier however was now trailing Norway’s Tormod Frostad.
Forehand got here up clutch, touchdown a 2160-degree nose-butter triple cork, incomes a rating of 98.25 that vaulted him previous Frostad.
But moments later, on the closing run of the night time, Frostad responded with a rating of 98.50, stealing the lead right back from Forehand.
After Frostad’s rating got here in, the crowd went wild, and Forehand gave him a hug. Frostad had received gold, Forehand silver. As NBC cameras took in the scene, microphones picked up somebody on the floor, presumably one in every of the skiers, saying: “Oh my God. … That was nuts!”
Forehand instructed reporters that he contemplated selecting a safer trick for his third run, realizing he was already assured a medal, “because these tricks are so dangerous and so gnarly.”
But he determined he needed to go large.
“I couldn’t do that. I had to fight for the gold,” Forehand stated. “I was in that moment. It’s hard to be in that position ever again. Like, second place, last run, you have to go, you have to bump the first-place person out.”
Ilia Speaks
Ilia Malinin admitted at present he was “not ready” for the highlight on him at the Olympics.
In an interview on “TODAY,” Malinin stated the immense expectations on him heading into the Olympics performed a job in his mistake-filled free skate efficiency, which dropped him from first to eighth in the males’s particular person occasion.
“Honestly, it’s not a pleasant feeling is the most honest way to say it,” Malinin stated of the excessive expectations. “So many eyes, so much attention. It really can get to you if you’re not ready to fully embrace it. That may be one of the mistakes I made. I was not ready to handle that to the fullest extent.”
Can Malinin rebound from his subpar efficiency? NBC News spoke with sports psychologists, together with one who labored with Simone Biles, who imagine he can get well mentally.
“His reality is that he experienced something embarrassing and humbling,” stated Michael Heck, a sports activities therapist. “But through the mindset of excellence, you take this as a really difficult part of your process. You can really learn from being humbled.”
Photo of the Day
When to Watch
Highlights tomorrow embody Mikaela Shiffrin’s final, finest probability at a medal when she competes in ladies’s slalom, and the U.S. males’s hockey workforce will play its quarterfinal sport.
All instances are in Eastern, and an asterisk signifies a medal occasion:
Wednesday, Feb. 18
- 3:05 a.m.: Curling, ladies’s spherical robin (China vs. Denmark, USA vs. Great Britain, Sweden vs. Korea)
- 3:45 a.m.: Cross-country snowboarding, ladies’s workforce dash qualification
- 4 a.m.: Alpine snowboarding, ladies’s slalom run 1
- 4:15 a.m.: Cross-country snowboarding, males’s workforce dash qualification
- 5:30 a.m.: Freestyle snowboarding, ladies’s aerials finals*
- 5:45 a.m.: Cross-country snowboarding, ladies’s workforce dash finals*
- 6:10 a.m.: Men’s hockey, quarterfinals, Slovakia vs Germany
- 6:15 a.m.: Cross-country snowboarding, males’s workforce dash finals*
- 6:30 a.m.: Snowboard, males’s slopestyle*
- 7:30 a.m.: Alpine snowboarding, ladies’s slalom run 2*
- 8:05 a.m.: Curling, males’s spherical robin (Italy vs. Canada, China vs. Czechia, Norway vs. Switzerland, USA vs. Great Britain)
- 8:45 a.m.: Biathlon, ladies’s 4X6km relay*
- 10:40 a.m.: Men’s hockey, quarterfinals, Canada vs. Czechia
- 12:10 p.m.: Men’s hockey, quarterfinals, Finland vs. Switzerland
- 1:05 p.m.: Curling, ladies’s spherical robin (Great Britain vs. Japan, Switzerland vs. Denmark, Canada vs. Italy, China vs. Sweden)
- 2:15 p.m.: Short monitor speedskating, males’s 500-meter quarterfinals
- 2:44 p.m.: Short monitor speedskating, males’s 500-meter semifinals
- 3 p.m.: Short monitor speedskating, ladies’s 3,000-meters relay*
- 3:10 p.m.: Men’s hockey, quarterfinals, USA vs. Sweden
- 3:32 p.m.: Short monitor speedskating, males’s 500-meter finals*
That’s it for now! We’ll be again tomorrow.