Several outstanding performances today. In the second run of the women's luge, Gernam favorite Natalie Geisenberger set a track record. German Dajana Eitberger immediately followed that run with her own track record, which was then immediately eclipsed by American Summer Britcher. Three consecutive runs, three consecutive track records. Runs 3 and 4 tomorrow are going to be outstanding.
In the women's biathlon, 10KM pursuit, German Laura Dahlmeier followed up her spring gold with her second gold medal of these games, going clean in her last standing shooting position to easily outdistance the field. Slovakia's Anastasiya Kuzmina won silver and France's Anais Bescond won bronze.
In the men's biathlon 12.5KM pursuit, France's Martin Fourcade displayed his dominance after a disappointing 8th place finish in the men's sprint. Fourcade, who had made his way into second place right on sprint gold-medal winner Arnd Pfeiffer's shoulder as they began their last standing shot position. Fourcade immediately hit his first two shots on the way to going clean, and forcing Pfeiffer to miss two shots on his way to a medal-less performance.
American biathlete Tim Burke had a huge pursuit, despite finishing 17th. For those that do not understand how the pursuit works, the top 60 individual finishers from the sprint line up in order of their sprint finish. At the start, the sprint champion - in this case Arnd Pfeiffer, takes off, with the remaining athletes pursuing Pfeiffer at the time intervals equal to the difference in time during the sprint. So, for example, if one skier finished three seconds behind Pfeiffer, that skier would start the pursuit three seconds behind Pfeiffer. The winner is the first athlete to cross the finish line - even though he may have started much later than other skiers. That as the case with Tim Burke, who finished in 47th in the individual sprint, and thus started the pursuit after 46 other skiers. Burke passed 30 of those other skiers to finish 17th. A tremendous performance for Burke.
Norwegian ski jumper Maren Lundby unleashed a huge - AND I MEAN HUGE - final jump of 110 meters to take gold away from Germany's Katharina Althaus in the normal hill. Althaus had to settle for silver. Sara Takanashi of Japan won the bronze.
Ireen Wuest of the Netherlands won gold - her second medal of these games - in the 1500m speed skating event, and in so doing became the most decorated speed skater ever with her 10th overall medal. Teammate Marrit Leenstra won the bronze medal, and only Japan's Miho Takagi - who won silver, prevented another Dutch sweep in speed skating.
Shaun White electrified the crowd with a dominating qualifying performance in the men's snowboard half-pipe. He - along with the dozen qualifiers for the finals - are set up for an amazing finals in which any of the athletes could conceivably and realistically medal.
Although each of the above were great performances, nothing tops our Moment of the Day - seventeen year old American Chloe Kim's gold medal performance in the women's snowboard half-pipe. Kim, the overwhelming favorite coming into the games, absolutely dominated. Of her 5 runs, she scored 4 in the 90s. The entire remaining field had a grand total of 0 scores in the 90s. Chloe Kim is the performer of the day.
And, as I predicted at the beginning of the Olympics, another huge disappointment for the Americans. After failing to win any medals at all in speed skater in Sochi 2014, the US was supposed to redeem itself with multiple medal contenders in PyeonChang, and none more possible than in the 1500m women's event. Despite setting an early blistering pace, Brittany Bowe - the 2015 world champion and 1000m and 1500m, ended up in 5th and teammate Heather Bergsma finished 8th. Both came into the games as medal hopefuls, but alas, the United States is still without a medal in all of speedskating.
Events Watched: Women's Luge, Women's Ice Hockey, Women's Snowboard, Women's Ski Jump, Men's Alpine Skiing (Super Combined), Women's Biathlon, Men's Biathlon, Men's Snowboard, Women's Speed Skating
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