Ladies and Gentlemen: Making it's Olympic debut - SKI MOUNTAINEERING!!! What an interesting sport to watch! Never saw it before, and likely won't see it again until Utah in 4 years! But it was interesting, and we have two gold medalists who will forever be remembered as the first gold medalists in Ski Mountaineering history.
The women went first in the sprint, and Marianne Fatton of Switzerland wins gold! She was joined on the podium by Emily Harrop of France and Ana Alonso Rodriguez of Spain!!! On the Men's side, Oriol Cardona Coll of Spain took gold, with Nikita Filippo of the "Athletes from Independent Nations" earned the silver and Thibault Anselmet of France won bronze!
The Men's Nordic Combined Team Sprint was held, and Norward wins gold AGAIN!!! Finland earned silver and Austria won bronze. As a member of the Norwegian team, Jens Luraas Oftebro won his third gold medal of these games, to go with a gold and silver in Beijing!
In curling, the US women secured a spot in the semi-finals be defeating Switzerland 7-6. In this match, Switzerland tied the US by scoring 3 in the 10th. Despite being a bit deflated after not being able to hold a 3-point lead in the last end, the US used its hammer position to pick up the winning point as skip Tabitha Peterson threw a gorgeous draw into the house to just narrowly beat 3 Swiss stones that were previously laying shot rock!
On the men's side, the Semi-Finals kicked off with Great Britain defeating the Swiss team 8-5, and Canada beating Norway 5-4. Those two winners will challenge for the gold.
In Speed Skating, the men's 1500-meter race did not disappoint as 4 skaters all beat the previous Olympic Record. But when the dust all settled, it was Zhongyan Ning of China that won gold, with Jordan Stolz of the US taking the silver and Kjeld Nuis of the Netherlands winning bronze. This race marked Jordan Stolz's first loss at this distance all season, having won all of the previous 8 races.
On another type of rink, the women's Free Skate was held to conclude the figure skating portion of these games. As reported previously, Japan was sitting in first, second, and fourth places after the short program, with only Alysa Liu of the US nestled among them in third. And Liu executed a magnificent performance, technically and artistically, to become the first American since Sarah Hughes in 2002 to win the Women's Figure Skating gold!!! Kaori Sakamato and Ami Nakai of Japan took home silver and bronze respectively.
Now, ordinarily, Women's Figure Skating would be the culmination of my blog post - being the best and highest-profile competition of any given day - EXCEPT THIS DAY! This day belonged to Women's Hockey.
In the appetizer, Switzerland won the bronze medal by defeating Sweden in overtime 2-1. Swiss Captain Alina Mueller scored the game and medal-winner in Overtime to win Switzerland's first women's hockey medal since Sochi in 2014, a match in which an overtime winner was scored by the then-youngest member of the Swiss team - ALINA MUELLER!!!
But, that was only a precursor as the match EVERYBODY wanted to see took place for the gold medal, featuring the two giants of women's hockey - Canada and the United States. And this game lived up to the hype. Canada took a 1-0 lead in the second period, and both teams kept fighting but couldn't slip one past either of the magnificent goalies. Until ... with about 2 1/2 minutes remaining, the US pulled the goalie for an extra attacker, and less than 30 seconds later - at 2:04 in the third - Captain America Hillary Knight scored her 15th Olympic goal - most of all-time for the US. But of those 15, none were bigger than this one as it sent the game into overtime. In overtime, Megan Keller - one of the team's alternate captains - scored the game winner just over 4 minutes into the three-on-three overtime!!! The Americans win gold, and I may or may not have woken my dog from her nap with my yelling!!!
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