Today in a nutshell: Gold for Papadakis and Cizeron in the ice dancing and for Kaillie Humphries in the monobob, while Kamila Valieva is cleared to compete
Next up: The finals of the women’s freestyle skiing aerials and the US women’s ice hockey semi-final. Tomorrow we get the women’s downhill and Valieva takes to the ice again
Kamila Valieva of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) has been cleared to compete in the individual event tomorrow due to the “exceptional circumstances” of her case. The Court of Arbitration for Sport said that to ban Valieva while her doping case was ongoing “would cause her irreparable harm”.
The three-person Cas panel also ruled that the World Anti-Doping Code was unclear when it came to suspended “protected persons” under 16 years of age and said that a 44-day delay in reporting Valieva’s positive test for the banned angina drug trimetazidine had affected her ability to mount a defence. Sean Ingle has more here.
On the ice, there was a golden redemption for France’s Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron who won with a world record score of 226.98, putting behind them the wardrobe malfunction nightmare of 2018. The silver medal went to Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC). The retiring duo of Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue from the US took bronze at their final Olympics.
Kaillie Humphries of the US validated her reputation as one of the best pilots in the history of bobsleigh, surging to victory in the debut of women’s monobob and adding a third Olympic gold to her career haul with a strong chance for a fourth by week’s end. She finished with a four-run combined time of 4min, 19.27 sec to win by 1.54sec, the widest margin in any bobsleigh event in 42 years.
Great Britain’s men’s curling team won their match against Switzerland 6-5 with the very last stone of the very last end. At the top of the standings Sweden lead on six matches unbeaten, Team GB have won five from their six, and Canada have won four. There’s another round of women’s matches later on Monday.
Things you might have missed
Canada’s Max Parrot stayed on course for his second gold medal after topping the Big Air qualifying standings. His compatriot and defending champion Sebastien Toutant failed to advance after a nasty crash.
On Sunday, Erin Jackson ended the United States’ individual medal drought in speed skating, surging to a historic Olympic gold in the women’s 500m. The 29-year-old former inline skater is believed to be the first black woman to win gold in any individual event at the Winter Games. “Hopefully, this has an effect,” Jackson said. “Hopefully, we’ll see more minorities, especially in the USA, getting out and trying these winter sports. I just hope to be a good example.”
Norwegian biathlete Ingrid Landmakr Tandrevold will be heading home instead of competing again in Beijing. Like many athletes in the event she collapsed at the finish line, but said: “I just think I pushed my limits in the altitude and in a tough race, but since I’ve had issues with my heart earlier in my career, we need to be careful and we need to check it out further. I’m not allowed to compete more in these Olympics so I will go home to Norway.”
In the men’s team pursuit speed skating the semi-finals on Tuesday will be Norway v Netherlands and USA v ROC. Liu Shaoang of Hungary won the gold late on Sunday in the men’s 500m short track skating. Suzanne Schulting, Selma Poutsma, Xandra Velzeboer and Yara van Kerkhof gave the Netherlands gold in Sunday’s women’s 3,000m relay short track speed skating.
You might also enjoy:
Jackie Narracott’s wild ride from bad concussion to unlikely Olympic silver
From dodging sheep to the Olympic slopes: GB’s Ryding sets sights on gold
Calgary, Irving Jaffee and a time when the Winter Olympics was far from cold
The briefing’s picture of the day
China’s Eileen Gu comfortably qualified for the freestyle slopestyle final in third place behind Johanne Killi of Norway in second and Kelly Sildaru of Estonia who posted the best score of 86.15. She was the gold medalist in this discipline ahead of Gu at the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics. The British pair of Kirsty Muir and Katie Summerhayes safely progressed, but Marin Hamill, who crashed and fell after a jump, will return to the US for treatment. With rescheduling, the final runs for that will now be on Tuesday morning.
What to look out for next
Times are all in local Beijing time. For Sydney it is +3 hours, for London it is -8 hours, for New York it is -13 hours and San Francisco is -16 hours.
Later today – Monday 14 February
8pm Freestyle skiing – the second and final run of the women’s aerials 🥇
8.05pm Curling – the final session of the day includes Great Britain’s women v Canada 🥌
8.05pm and 9.40pm Bobsleigh – heats one and two in the 2-man competition
8.06pm Ski jumping – the final jump for the men’s team competition 🥇
9.10pm Ice hockey – Canada over-powered Switzerland 10-3 in the first women’s semi-final earlier today. Now the US will play Finland to see who joins them in the final 🏒
Tomorrow – Tuesday 15 February
9.05am and 2.05pm and 8.05pm Curling – more 12-round robin contests 🥌
9.30am-10.24am and 12.30pm-1.33pm and 7pm Freestyle skiing – the rescheduled three runs of the women’s slopestyle are first, then at lunchtime it is the rescheduled men’s slopestyle qualification and then in the evening it is qualification for the men’s aerials. Although frankly this programme seems to change from hour to hour so your guess is as good as mine 🥇
9.30am-10.24am and 1pm-1.45pm Snowboard – women do the big air final in the morning, the men do the big air final in the afternoon. That’s a lot of big air 🥇
11am Alpine skiing – it is the women’s downhill 🥇
2.30pm-4.47pm Speed skating – a brilliant day ahead at the National Speed Skating Oval as the men’s and women’s pursuit competitions both reach their finals 🥇
12.10pm and 4.40pm and 9.10pm Ice hockey – it is the play-off round for the men with four matches 🏒
4pm and 7pm Nordic combined – it is the individual Gundersen large hill/10km cross-country which deserves a gold medal for longest event title surely? They jump at 4pm, and then at 7pm the best ski jumpers desperately try to hold on to the slim time advantage they gained with their extra metres 🥇
5pm Biathlon – the men do their 4x7.5km relay 🥇
6pm Figures skating – the women’s single skating short program will be the next instalment of the Kamila Valieva story ⛸
8.15pm and 9.50pm Bobsleigh – the final two heats for the men’s two-man teams 🥇
Full Winter Olympics schedule | Results, sport by sport | Medal table
How things stand
Here’s what the emoji table looked like at 6pm Beijing time …
1 🇳🇴 Norway 🥇 9 🥈 5 🥉 7 total: 21
2 🇩🇪 Germany 🥇 8 🥈 5 🥉 1 total: 14
3 🇺🇸 United States 🥇 7 🥈 6 🥉 2 total: 15
4 🇳🇱 Netherlands 🥇 6 🥈 4 🥉 2 total: 12
5 🇸🇪 Sweden 🥇 5 🥈 3 🥉 3 total: 11
6 ◻️ Not Russia 🥇 4* 🥈 6 🥉 8 total: 18
7 🇦🇹 Austria 🥇 4 🥈 6 🥉 4 total: 14
8 🇨🇳 China 🥇 4 🥈 3 🥉 2 total: 9
9 🇫🇷 France 🥇 3 🥈 6 🥉 2 total: 11
10 🇨🇭 Switzerland 🥇 3 🥈 0 🥉 5 total: 8
Selected others
14 🇨🇦 Canada 🥇 1 🥈 4 🥉 10 total: 15
16 🇦🇺 Australia 🥇 1 🥈 2 🥉 1 total: 4
20= 🇳🇿 New Zealand 🥇 1 🥈 0 🥉 0 total: 1
[*this total includes the team figure skating gold. IOC spokesperson Mark Adams said “That will probably not be sorted out during this Games and that is something regrettable, but we have to follow the process.”]
The last word
Only time will tell if she [Valieva] should be competing in these Games and whether or not all of her results will be disqualified. Unfortunately, either way, for the sixth consecutive Olympic Games, Russia has hijacked the competition and stolen the moment from clean athletes and the public. In addition to athletes and the public, this young athlete has been terribly let down by the Russians and the global anti-doping system that unfairly cast her into this chaos. – US anti-doping agency CEO Travis Tygart
