US men’s hockey one step from quarters

The U.S. men's hockey team is looking to go unbeaten in the preliminary round at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

The U.S. improved to 2-0 after defeating Canada 4-2. It was the first time the U.S. beat their archrival at the Olympics since the 2010 Vancouver Games.

They are scheduled to play Germany on Sunday morning with first-place on the line.

(Looking for a recap of yesterday's action? We've got you covered.)

Meanwhile, speedskater Erin Jackson makes her 2022 Olympic debut along with fellow Americans Brittany Bowe and Kimi Goetz in the women's 500 meters. Jackson, the favorite to win gold, nearly missed out on competing. She slipped at the U.S. trials in this event and didn't make the team, but Bowe gave up her spot in the 500 before later receiving a third quota spot in the event.

But the action begins with the debut of the women's monobob, a new Olympic bobsled event. Team USA has two gold-medal favorites in three-time Olympic medalist Elana Meyers Taylor and Kaillie Humphries, a newly minted U.S. citizen who won three Olympic medals, including two gold, for Canada at previous Games.

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Norway’s Marte Olsbu Roeiseland wins 3rd Olympic gold in 10K pursuit

ZHANGJIAKOU, China – Marte Olsbu Roeiseland earned her third gold medal of the Beijing Olympics, and fourth medal overall, by winning the women’s biathlon 10-kilometer pursuit race Sunday.

The Norwegian started the race with a lead because of her win in the sprint race and hit 19 of her 20 targets. Despite strong winds and blowing snow, Roeiseland held her focus and shot cleanly in the last standing stop to win in 34 minutes, 46.9 seconds.

Elvira Oeberg, who was second in the sprint race and started 31 seconds behind Roeiseland, had three misses in her second and third shooting bouts, but cleaned the last standing to finish 1:36.5 behind for silver.

Tiril Eckhoff of Norway also missed three targets but came in 1:48.7 behind her teammate for the bronze medal.

Roeiseland previously won gold in the mixed relay as well as the sprint. She also won bronze in the individual race.

In her first Olympic appearance, Oeberg has won two silver medals. Eckhoff earned her first medal of the Beijing Games.

— Associated Press

U.S. men's hockey team can punch ticket to quarterfinals vs. Germany

BEIJING — The goal-differential math will likely work out for the U.S. men’s hockey team, but the Americans can punch their ticket to the Olympic quarterfinals for certain with a victory over Germany on Sunday.

Team USA enters the final game of preliminary play with the best differential (+10) in the tournament, thanks to an 8-0 victory over China on Thursday.

Drew Commesso, the Boston University sophomore, will start again for the U.S. in net. He posted a shutout against China in the opener.

Against Germany, Team USA will be without defender Jake Sanderson, though. After missing the first game of the tournament – he was traveling to Beijing, as a positive COVID-19 test delayed his arrival – Sanderson was injured in the first period in a 4-2 win against Canada. He finished the game but won’t be available Sunday.

Germany is the defending silver-medalists from Pyeongchang. The quarterfinals begin Wednesday.

Brendan Brisson (University of Michigan) has scored in both games and Sean Farrell (Harvard University) leads the team in points with six – five came against China.

— Chris Bumbaca

While you were sleeping

Team USA did not pick up any medals in Beijing on Sunday – skier River Radamus was awfully close – but there were still a few notable happenings while you were sleeping:

Qualifiers for women's freestyle skiing aerials postponed due to snowstorm

ZHANGJIAKOU, China – The women’s aerials qualification round at Genting Snow Park A&M Stadium was postponed Sunday night because of a snowstorm that has settled over the area.

Qualifying was pushed back to Monday and the final to Tuesday. The switch avoids putting the gold-medal round directly against the Super Bowl, which is also being televised by NBC.

The men’s slopestyle qualification also was switched from Monday to Tuesday, with its final now set for Wednesday.

The U.S. has four women in the field of 25 freestyle skiers:

Megan Nick, 25, of Shelburne, Vermont, who took 15th place at a recent World Cup event in Deer Valley, Utah. This is her first Olympics.

Kaila Kuhn, 18, of Boyne City, Michigan, is currently ranked 13th in the world. She grew up near Boyne USA ski resort and at the age of 14, won the Nor-Am series – the youngest to do so.

Ashley Caldwell, 28, of Ashburn, Virginia, is a four-time Olympian who took 10th in Sochi in 2014 as well as Vancouver in 2010, and 17th in Pyeongchang. She just helped Team USA take the gold in the debut of mixed aerials two days ago.

Winter Vinecki, 23, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, is ranked 14th overall in the world this season. The triathlete-turned-aerial skier began racing at the age of 5 and completed her first Olympic distance triathlons at 9. She’s the youngest person ever to complete a marathon in Antarctica, at just 14, where she finished 11th overall in the Antarctica Marathon and was the third female to finish with a time of 4 hours, 49 minutes.

Snow began falling on Saturday and continued all day Sunday, with accumulation canceling or postponing several events and training sessions.

— Lori Nickel

Kaillie Humphries: 'It's very motivating and inspiring for me' to be competing for Team USA at Olympics

BEIJING — Kaillie Humphries feels like an Olympic rookie again.

These are the fourth Games for the two-time bobsled gold medalist but her first with the United States. She wasn’t even sure she’d be able to compete at the Beijing Olympics until Dec. 2, when she became a U.S. citizen.

“I know how to go through an Olympics, but obviously I haven’t done it for Team USA. Even walking in the halls and being right next door to Mikaela Shiffrin, I’m like, 'Ahh!’ ” Humphries said Sunday after taking a commanding lead midway through the monobob competition.

“It’s very motivating and inspiring for me to be on the same team as Shaun White, Mikaela Shiffrin. Chloe Kim was on my flight over,” Humphries said. “I want to be able to put my best foot forward as they do. I want to be able to represent the Stars and Stripes to the best of my ability, and give back to a country that has adopted me, that has given me a longer career and has given me a safe place to compete.”

Humphries represented Canada, where she was born, at the Vancouver, Sochi and Pyeongchang Games, winning golds in 2010 and 2014 and a bronze in 2018. But she asked for her release in 2019 after filing a complaint alleging verbal and emotional abuse by Todd Hays, the Canadian bobsled coach.

Hays has denied the allegations. The investigation into the case is ongoing.

Humphries has lived in the United States since 2016 and married her husband, former U.S. bobsledder Travis Armbruster, in 2019. Though she represented the United States internationally the previous two seasons, she had to be an American citizen to compete at the Olympics – and becoming a citizen is a laborious process.

But she’s a full-fledged American now, with the U.S. flag painted on her helmet and her long, blonde hair tied back with a red, white and blue scarf.

“I’m very honored the U.S. has backed me the way it has,” Humphries said.

— Nancy Armour

U.S. skier River Radamus just misses out on medal in men's giant slalom

BEIJING – Marco Odermatt has owned the giant slalom this season, and now he owns an Olympic gold medal in the event.

The 24-year-old Swiss skier plowed through snow and poor visibility Sunday to win the men’s giant slalom at the Beijing Games.

“I really risked everything in the second run because I wanted not just the medal, I wanted the gold medal,” Odermatt said. ”It’s difficult because you can lose everything but today it paid off.”

It was the first time snow fell during an Alpine skiing race at this year’s Olympics and the bad weather conditions caused the second run to be postponed by 1 hour, 15 minutes.

Odermatt coped with the conditions and the delay — and a first-run mistake — to post an unofficial combined time of 2 minutes, 09.35 seconds.

Zan Kranjec of Slovenia took silver, 0.19 seconds behind, and world champion Mathieu Faivre of France earned bronze, 1.34 behind.

Team USA's River Radamus just missed out on a medal as he was knocked off the podium late and finished fourth. Radamus, who turned 24 on Saturday, finished 1.6 behind Odermatt and just .26 back of Faivre.

The skiers had been racing and training on artificial snow until the real thing started to fall on Saturday at the Yanqing Alpine Skiing Center. A second women’s downhill training run was canceled because of the conditions on Sunday.

— Associated Press

Winter weather appears to have extinguished Olympic flame

BEIJING — A rare snowstorm in Beijing on Sunday brought a distinct winter vibe to the 2022 Winter Olympics. But it also might have extinguished the Olympic flame at the Bird's Nest.

Photos taken by a USA TODAY photographer early Sunday afternoon show no visible flame in the Olympic cauldron at the medals plaza outside the stadium, where it was lit during the opening ceremony on Feb. 4. The flame traditionally remains lit for the entire duration of the Olympics.

The International Olympic Committee referred questions about the flame to the Beijing 2022 organizing committee, whose spokespeople did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

The Olympic flame is one of the most recognizable symbols of the Games, beyond perhaps the Olympic rings. It is lit before every edition of the Olympics at a special ceremony in Olympia, Greece, using "the ancient method of the sun's rays in the parabolic mirror," according to an IOC document.

The flame is then transported to the host city through the ballyhooed torch relay, which can take several months and involve thousands of torch bearers.

— Tom Schad

Freeskier Maggie Voisin pushes through the pain of losing her brother

ZHANGJIAKOU, China – When American freestyle skier Maggie Voisin takes to the slopestyle course at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, she will do so with a heavy heart.

After coming back from shredded knee ligaments and a broken ankle to make it to these Games, the physical pain that she endured will not be at the forefront of her mind. Instead it will be the emotional pain.

Voisin, now a 23-year-old veteran of three Olympic Games, lives with heartbreak every day that will never go away or get any better, it will only take time and practice to cope with, the best she can.

“A little over a year ago I lost my brother to suicide,” said Voisin during her first week in China. “He was in the Army, so I wear his dog tag. I don’t usually wear it every day.

“But I wear it when I compete and it hangs at my heart.”

This tragedy doesn’t – and shouldn’t – define 5-foot-3, 115-pound Voisin, who grew up in Whitefish, Montana, not far from Glacier National Park, an opportunistic place for all kinds of winter sports with a big family that participated in all of them.

She got so good so fast at freeski slopestyle and big air that she qualified for the 2014 Olympics and was one place away from a podium finish in slopestyle at the 2018 Games.

But in the last year, after her older brother Michael’s death on Jan. 23, 2021, Voisin tried to push through, preparing and showing up for competitions, and being unable to snap the bindings in place in this dangerous sport that requires complete concentration.

"Obviously that was just the most devastating thing that's ever happened to my family," Voisin told MTN Sports. "Never in my life obviously have I experienced anything like that, or death that close to me, especially in that way and it rocked my world more than I think I ever let people know.

"I just I felt it in my performance, and I ended up only competing once last year, just because, I'll be honest, I tried to go to multiple events and just had a breakdown."

This, right here in China, right now, is the comeback of her life so far in a career full of them.

The question is, will she be rewarded with her first Olympic medal?

— Lori Nickel

Humphries helped create then won first world championship trophy

CARLSBAD, Calif. – When Kaillie Humphries won her first world championship in bobsled, there was no trophy. There were for the winners of the two men’s events, however. Large, gleaming silver cups engraved with the names of previous champions, a celebration of both the sport’s present and its rich past.

This was in 2012, mind you, a dozen years after the women’s two-man race had made its debut at the world championships.

“I grew up in a household where you could do whatever you wanted, and gender didn't play a factor at all. So when I came into bobsled, I thought, `Well, this isn't right,” Humphries said.

Again, it wasn’t about the trophy. Humphries already had her signature piece of hardware, having won the first of her two (so far) Olympic gold medals in the event two years earlier while representing Canada. But it symbolized the dismissiveness the sport has for women, seeing them as afterthoughts or interlopers rather than full and equal participants.

With an assist from her parents, Cheryl and Ray Simundson, Humphries offered to purchase a trophy that could be given to future women’s world champions. Chastened, the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation took care of it, and Humphries was its first recipient the following year.

The trophy still lacked the Stanley Cup-like recognition of previous champions, however. Humphries and her parents took it upon themselves to modify it, adding the names of past winners and giving it a new base so there was room for future champions.

“I hit a different part in my career where it wasn't so much about me anymore, it was about making a difference. It was about changing the game,” Humphries told USA TODAY Sports. “I'm able to stand on the shoulders of all the women that were before me. I have the opportunity to even be at an Olympics because of the women in the ‘80s and the ‘90s and the early 2000s that competed when the Olympics weren't even an option.

“And I want to make sure that the women after me also have greater opportunity.”

Humphries has a huge lead after the first two heats of the monobob, which is making its debut in Beijing. The final two heats are Monday.

— Nancy Armour

Swiss skier leads after first run as poor visibility mars men's giant slalom

Switzerland's Marco Odermatt skied through poor visibility amid falling snow and took the lead after the first run of the men's giant slalom on Sunday at the Beijing Olympics.

Odermatt, 24, has won four of the five giant slalom races this season on the World Cup circuit and he leads the discipline standings as well as the overall standings.

After finishing his run, the Swiss skier waved his hand in front of his face to indicate difficulty in seeing the course clearly.

It's the first time snow has fallen during an Alpine skiing race at this year's Olympics.

Stefan Brennsteiner of Austria was 0.04 seconds behind in second and world champion Mathieu Faivre of France was 0.08 behind in third.

The second run is scheduled for later Sunday.

Snow has been falling since Saturday at the Yanqing Alpine Skiing Center, where athletes had been racing and training on artificial snow until then. A second women’s downhill training run scheduled for Sunday was canceled.

More than a third of the field failed to finish on the course known as The Ice River. After one fall, the race was slightly delayed while course workers searched for a loose ski that had become buried in the snow.

— Associated Press

Kaillie Humphries races to huge lead after two runs of women's monobob

BEIJING — Kaillie Humphries is halfway to a third Olympic gold medal.

Humphries, who won gold as a driver in two-man in 2014 and 2010, has a full second lead after the first two heats of monobob Sunday. U.S. teammate Elana Meyers Taylor is in fourth, 1.32 seconds back, going into the last two heats on Monday.

Humphries set the pace with her first run, establishing a track record as monobob made its Olympic debut. She was a touch slower on the second, but is still clearly the person to beat, finishing the two runs in a combined 2:09.10.