Key events
Email from Chris Page:
Gutted for Zoe, but very proud. I think the judges were unnecessarily harsh. But my mind is now turning to the upcoming Paralympics, especially the Wheelchair Curling. It requires even more skill and finesse than the non-disabled variety, as there’s no sweeping involved.
Let me know your thoughts on the action via the link at the top of the page.
Cross country is a mad sport, 49km of gruelling skiing and then a sprint uphill. Super human athletes. Right, here are the final places in the cross country:
Ebba Andersson (SWE)
Heidi Weng (NOR)
Nadja Kälin (CHE)
Here comes Diggins, but she can’t get past Fosnæs on the climb. Kälin still leads this mini-race and is pulling away. It’s bronze for Kälin!
Nadja Kälin of Switzerland has a little lead going into the last climb and Kristin Austgulen Fosnæs of Norway is just behind her. Jessie Diggins of USA is on their tale, she could go past on this incline.
Norway’s Weng comes in to take silver, who will take bronze? This will comes down to a sprint.
🥇 Sweden’s Ebba Andersson wins gold in the 50km cross country
Andersson goes into Klaebo mode on the final climb and enters the stadium all alone. She’s been the silver lady so far in this Games, but now gets her golden moment.
Taking a brief switch over the cross country, Sweden’s Ebba Andersson has a huge lead with less than 5km to go. She well away for gold and Heidi Weng has a decent gap for second, but the shake up for bronze could be interesting with five athletes all in with a shout.
🥇 Eileen Gu wins gold in the women’s halfpipe!
So after a fall on her first run, Gu shows nerves of steel to improve with each of her next two runs. Zoe Atkin led after the first runs but despite improving her score to 92.5 on her final effort she falls just short of Li Fanghui, who bagged silver.
Here are the final standings:
Eileen Gu (CH) 94.75
Li Fanghui (CH) 93
Zoe Atkin (GB) 92.50
It’s bronze for Atkin!
She put it all out there, the height was massive and she lands a switch 900 to finish but the judges only gave her 92.50, meaning she’s 0.50 short of silver. That’s Team GB’s fifth medal of the Games, adding to the three golds and one silver.
Zoe Atkin goes for gold..
Li Fanghui is guaranteed a medal, will this see her move into gold? It’s clean, technical and greater difficulty than her second run. That’s a 93, meaning Zoe Atkin needs slightly more to move up from bronze.
Indra Brown puts in her best run, she’s a long way off the medals at the moment, but will that change? She goes to 87, for fifth place.
Eileen Gu shuns the 1080 but her run is better than the one that scored 94 but it only improves her scored by 0.75. The task for Zoe Atkin and Li Fanghui is not impossible but is a little bit harder. The BBC boys are surprised that doesn’t score higher.
Zhang Kexin is yet to land a run, but she can put up big scores. Ooooo, that’s the first 1080 we’ve seen in this final and that was an impressive technical run. It wasn’t big on the height and the score of 83.25 reflects that.
What can Amy Fraser do? She’s fourth currently and that’s a big run. There was a lot of switch tricks in there but not a lot of height. It’s good enough for 88 and that won’t win a medal for the Canadian.
This is good, Svea Irving skipped the second run after a bang on the first run and I thought she was out, instead the American is going to give it a go. Unfortunately she calls it early after fighting the landing on her second trick.
Rachael Karker is next, but she falls coming off her jump. The Canadian’s 79.50 puts her in fifth for now.
There’s no improvement from Mischa Thomas, she finishes with a best of 77.75.
We’re into the third runs and Kate Gray get down her first full run. The American gets a 66.5. Liu Yishan is next and she improves her score to 71.75 but that’s not troubling the podium.
Gu leads after run two!
After getting a huge 5.4m on the first jump she takes a fall halfway down. Such a shame she was looking very good for an improved score. More to come on run three, you hope.
So after the second runs the medal positions are:
Eileen Gu (CH) 94
Li Fanghui (CH) 91.50
Zoe Atkin (GB) 90.50
Li Fanghui appears to take a bit of a slip coming off her first trick and also misses a grab but again the judges overlook those execution errors because of the technichality on show. The Chinese athlete goes second with a 91.50.
Indra Brown’s second run is better than her first, but only by ten points. Paying for a lack of airtime.
Gu makes it down this time and even though there’s a missed grab in there it’s still packed full of hits. It’s not got the height of Zeo Atkin’s run, but finishes with back-to-back alley-oops, so how will they score it? Wow 94. Gu goes into gold medal position. We have a final.
Zhang Kexin is next and is putting together something very impressive before she takes a huge fall. Eileen Gu is next.
Sadly, Svea Irving’s fall in run one has put her out of the rest of the competition.
Rachael Karker of Canada this time manages to land her run and the BBC commentary lads are suprised as she’s given a 79.50 to go ahead of Thomas into fourth.
Amy Fraser, the Canadian sitting second, puts down a similar run to the first and doesn’t improve her score.
Mischa Thomas seems like a character. The New Zealander doesn’t clock it’s her turn to go until the camera switches on to her, before she drops her phone halfway down the run. A camera man grabs it for her as the judges decide she didn’t improve on her first round 77.75.
Kate Gray falls on second run and doesn’t improve her score, then Liu Yishan puts down another clean run, but not one that is massively better than her first.
Zoe Atkin leads after the first run!
That is what the doctor ordered! Huge first trick from Atkin gets 4.5m of air and her average of 2.7m is higher than the peaks achieved by anyone else in the final! Do the judges love it? They do! It’s 90.5, easily the best score so far.
So after the first runs the medal positions are:
Zoe Atkin (GB) 90.50
Amy Frasher (CAN) 85
Li Fanggui (CH) 81.25
We lost Canada’s Cassie Sharpe to concussion before the final so we move next to Li Fanghui of China. It’s a good one, a lot of switch, which apparently the judges love. That’s an 81.25 and good enough for second. Only Amy Fraser has put down anything of top quality so far, but what can Zoe Atkin do?
Australia’s Indra Brown starts well but loses momentum, it’s a clean run but not the biggest. It’s only a 55.4, but that’s good enough for fourth with the amount of falls we’ve seen so far.
Wow! Eileen Gu goes off next and she pulls up after first trick. Pressure on for the Chinese athlete as she has to score with her second and third runs.
Zhang Kexin rides more of the pipe backwards than forwards before falling.
That’s better from Amy Fraser. The Canadian is clean and technically really strong, she misses a couple of grabs but that’s the best so far, 85.
We have more falls as Canada’s Rachael Karker and then Team USA’s Svea Irving both hit the deck. This final was postponed from last night due to heavy snow so these conditions are not easy.
Liu Yishan, the first of the four Chinese athletes, is clean but not the highest scoring at 70. Mischa Thomas is next for New Zealand, the BBC commentary boys like it (when do they not?), and it’s good enough for a 77.75.
It’s not her best, with a stumble on the last trick for a 44.55. She has two more runs to improve that score.
First to put down a run is America’s Kate Gray…
We’re heading over to Livigno shortly for the women’s halfpipe. Team GB’s Zoe Atkin qualified first but there is plenty of competition, not least from China’s Eileen Gu.
Some big news coming out of the 50km women’s cross-country skiing, with Frida Karlsson pulling out. The Swede was the gold meal favourite having won the skiathlon and the 10km intervals, as well as a silver in 4×7.5km relay.
The Americans have a disaster run there. They’ve lost more than a second, largely as a result of a huge tap and fishtail coming out of the start ramp. They’ll be tumbling down the rankings. I’ll have those standings in full later ahead of the fourth and final runs.
Brad Hall’s Team GB are next. They get off quick with 4.78 start but with perfection required this is a little short. There are a couple of errors in turns one and two, with speed not picking up further down the course.
The time of 54.66secs is much better than their second run (55.04) but Lochner’s team is further off in the distance, 1.23secs ahead. Team GB are only 0.31 seconds behind third-placed Ammour’s third-place German crew but that’s a lot to ask in one run.
The Swiss are less clean with their run, but they post their second-quickest time (54.69) which sees them lose ground on the team above them.
The Swiss are down in 54.55, quicker than Ammour’s sled in the third run but not quick enough to move up into the medal positions. Neither can the Italians, who get down in a tidy fashion but a lack of speed out of the gate sees them post a 54.57 and remain a couple of hundredths off bronze.
Next up… more Germans. Adam Ammour is the pilot for this one and that is (relatively) less impressive than his rivals. That run opens the door for the bronze medal spot, they’re 0.96 behind Lochner’s crew.
Lochner’s team start 0.6secs faster than Lochner’s team but he’s losing time further down the track and the 54.30secs finishing time means the time advantage for the leaders grows to 0.48secs.
We’re straight into it with the four-man bobsleigh. The leaders, the Johannes Lochner’s German crew are down in 54.25, not his best but not far off. Now what can Francesco Friedrich do with Germany’s second-place team?
Preamble
This is the end, sadly. Day 16 is here and with it, the closing ceremony. But that’s later and for now we still have a final few events to tick off, with medals to be handed out.
One of those medals may even go the way of Team GB’s Zoe Atkin, in the delayed women’s ski halfpipe final. Before that we have the final runs in the men’s four-man bobsleigh, where – unsurprisingly – Germany lead and also sit in silver medal position. Brad Hall’s British crew are seventh.
Later on we have what the second installment of what is argualy the most gruelling event in the whole Games, the 50km cross-country ski mass start. After Johannes Høsflot Klæbo won his sixth gold of the Games in the men’s event yesterday, today it is the turn of the women to push themselves uphill on skis for more than two hours (sounds fun).
Another high-profile event concludes today with a showstopper of a final in the men’s ice-hockey as the USA take on Canada in a re-run of the feisty Four Nations finale from last year.
Canada beat the USA for bronze in the women’s curling yesterday and the gold medal match starts just after midday, with Switzlerland facing Sweden.
I think that’s everything covered off, shall we get into it?
