Monthly Archives: February 2022

Kamila Valieva was confronted by her coach as she stepped off the ice on Thursday.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

The president of the International Olympic Committee on Friday called the treatment of a teenage Russian figure skater by her coaches chilling a day after the skater, Kamila Valieva, tumbled out of medal contention at the Beijing Olympics with an error-strewn performance in the womens singles competition. The comments quickly drew an angry response from a top Russian government official.

Breaking his silence on the Valieva case more than a week after it was first revealed that the 15-year-old skater had tested positive for a banned drug, the president, Thomas Bach, shared at a news conference in Beijing that he had been uncomfortable watching the young Olympian melt down during her free skate Thursday night. Valieva had entered the night as the gold medal favorite but stumbled and fell repeatedly to sink to fourth place and miss out on a medal entirely.

I was very, very disturbed yesterday when I watched the competition on TV, Bach said a day after the end of the womens competition. The remarks were his first public comments on Valievas case since the news of her positive test early last week became the dominant story line of the Games.

You could feel that this is an immense, immense mental stress, Bach added, and maybe she would have preferred to leave the ice and to leave this story behind her.

Russias deputy prime minister, Dmitry Chernyshenko, quickly responded, saying Bachs comments were inappropriate and wrong.

Valieva, whose Olympics became a crucible of expectations, innuendo and pressure after it was revealed she had failed a doping test before the Games, was in tears after her performance. Her anguish only grew when she left the ice and her coach, Eteri Tutberidze, immediately began interrogating her in Russian in a scene that was captured by television cameras.

Why did you stop fighting? Tutberidze asked. Explain it to me. Why? You let it go after that axel. Valieva did not reply.

Tutberidze was the coach of all three Russian women competing in the womens singles final. After Valieva tearfully finished her free skate, her teammate Anna Shcherbakova, the gold medal winner, sat alone on a white sofa, looking solemn despite her victory. She later said she felt empty inside. Alexandra Trusova, the silver medalist, disappointed that she hadnt won, resisted coaches who tried to urge her onto the ice for the winners ceremony. Trusova later said she missed her mother and her dogs.

Bach said it was chilling to see the coldness with which Valieva was received by Tutberidze and other Russian skating officials after her performance.

All of this does not give me confidence in this entourage of Kamila, Bach said, neither with regard to what happened in the past, nor as far as it concerns the future.

In an emailed statement, Chernyshenko, Russias deputy prime minister, said he was deeply disappointed to see Bach weave his own fictional narrative on the feelings of our athletes, and then present these publicly as the voice of I.O.C.

Bach and Chernyshenko know each other well. Chernyshenko was the president of the local organizing committee for the 2014 Sochi Games, and he was on an Olympic organizing committee for the Beijing Games before he was removed after Russias state-sanctioned doping scheme at the Sochi Games was revealed.

The Russian sports minister, Oleg Matytsin, defended his nations coaches in comments reported by the Russian television network RT.

The personality of a trainer largely determines the results of the athletes. We have gold in the team competition, Matytsin said, though no medal has been awarded in team figure skating because of Valievas positive test. He said Russia had also won gold and silver in the individual competition, a silver medal in dancing, and I hope that there will be medals in the pairs as well.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport allowed Valieva to continue competing in the Olympics despite her having tested positive for a banned substance, a heart medication, several weeks before the Games.

Bachs I.O.C., along with the World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Skating Union, the sports governing body, had filed an appeal with the court seeking a suspension for Valieva.

The court dismissed their appeal in large part, it said in a report released Thursday, because of a failure by a Stockholm laboratory to process Valievas sample quickly.

She still could face penalties, but it could take months to fully resolve her case.

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What Happened Yesterday at the Olympics - The New York Times

Olympics Day 16: Final bobsled runs and pairs free skate in figure skating

Updated: 3:22 PM EST Feb 19, 2022

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there's a wide range of ages of competitors at the olympics, proving that age really is just a number. Nick baumgartner is the oldest Olympian on team USA and one gold during the mixed team snowboard cross with partner lindsey Jacobellis, he became the oldest american to medal at an olympic games, he told ESPN you're never too late to take what you want from life, But he is almost 10 years younger than the oldest Olympian, Germany's Claudia Pechstein, the 49 year old speedskater turns 50, just two days after the Olympics end. The youngest Olympian to compete is the Czech Republic ski jumper and a Zika Indra cova. She is just 15 years old. She did not medal, but it is clear from these other olympians, but that she still has plenty of years ahead to compete.

Olympics Day 16: Final bobsled runs and pairs free skate in figure skating

Updated: 3:22 PM EST Feb 19, 2022

Day 16 of the 2022 Beijing Winter Games will consist of the third and final runs of the two-woman and the third and final runs of the four-man events in Bobsled and the pairs free skate in Figure Skating.Bobsled The two-woman final runs in Bobsled will happen on Day 16. And athletes in the four-man bobsled competition complete their final runs at Yanqing National Sliding Centre.Figure SkatingTop Olympic figure skaters showcase their skills in a creative, unscored event at the Capital Indoor Stadium.

Day 16 of the 2022 Beijing Winter Games will consist of the third and final runs of the two-woman and the third and final runs of the four-man events in Bobsled and the pairs free skate in Figure Skating.

The two-woman final runs in Bobsled will happen on Day 16.

And athletes in the four-man bobsled competition complete their final runs at Yanqing National Sliding Centre.

Top Olympic figure skaters showcase their skills in a creative, unscored event at the Capital Indoor Stadium.

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Olympics Day 16: Bobsledding and figure skating

BEIJING (AP) The Latest on the Beijing Winter Olympics:

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Sui Wenjing and Han Cong of China shattered their own world record for a short program at the Beijing Games on Friday night, giving them the narrowest of leads over Russian rivals Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov heading into the free skate to decide the Olympic champion.

Sui and Han, who won the short program at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games before settling for the silver medal, scored 84.41 points to their orchestral suite from the film Mission: Impossible 2. That topped the record of 82.83 points that they set during the short program of the team competition earlier this month.

Tarasova and Morozov, who are coached in part by the controversial Eteri Tutberidze, also would have broken the record with their short program. Instead, the fourth-place finishers in Pyeongchang were 16-hundredths of a point behind.

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The start of the Olympic mens curling final between Britain and Sweden has been pushed back 45 minutes to accommodate TV viewers in Europe.

The match will be played at 2:50 p.m. on Saturday, rather than 2:05 p.m. Sweden is seven hours behind Beijing, and Britain is eight hours back.

The womens bronze medal match will take place afterward at the original start time of 8:05 p.m.

Organizers also said that the mens victory ceremony will now take place at the Ice Cube curling venue, instead of the medals plaza. Canada beat the United States for the bronze on Friday.

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Russian figure skating coach Eteri Tutberidze was back rink-side for the pairs competition Friday, hours after she was criticized by International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach for her callous attitude toward Kamila Valieva after the womens free skate.

Tutberidze helps to coach the Russian pairs team of Aleksandra Boikova and Dmitrii Kozlovskii.

Valieva, the 15-year-old at the center of a doping scandal, crashed out of the womens program without a medal Thursday night. As she exited the ice, Tutberidze was caught on camera berating her in Russian.

Bach never identified Tutberidze by name, but he did refer to Valievas coaches and said during his Friday news conference that there appeared to be a tremendous coldness and that it was chilling to see this.

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Figure skater Timothy LeDuc became the first nonbinary American athlete to compete at the Winter Games, joining up with Ashley Cain-Gribble for a strong short program to open their pairs competition Friday night.

Their score of 74.13 points was a season best and put them squarely in the top 10 entering Saturdays free skate.

The 31-year-old LeDuc came out as nonbinary last year. The term is used to describe a person who does not identify as exclusively male or female, and can also encompass agender, bigender, genderqueer and gender-fluid.

Last year, Canadian womens soccer player Quinn became the first openly transgender and nonbinary Olympic medal winner when the team earned gold in Tokyo. Weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, skateboarder Alana Smith and cyclist Chelsea Wolfe also were among at least 186 openly LGBTQ participants during the Summer Games.

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Elana Meyers Taylor has been picked to be a flagbearer again. And this time, shell be able to take the job.

The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee announced Friday night that the four-time Olympian bobsledder will carry the American flag into Sunday nights closing ceremony of the Beijing Games.

The announcement was synched to Meyers Taylors first run in the womens bobsled event. As soon as she crossed the line in the first heat, the USOPC revealed that she was the flagbearer pick.

Meyers Taylor was chosen to be one of the flagbearers for the U.S. at the opening ceremony on Feb. 4 but could not participate because she was in isolation following a positive COVID-19 test. That spot went to speedskater Brittany Bowe instead, who led the U.S. delegation into the opening alongside curler John Shuster.

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The last Alpine skiing race of the Beijing Olympics has been rescheduled for an hour earlier than planned because of strong wind in the forecast.

The mixed team parallel event is now set to start at 10 a.m. on Saturday Beijing time, instead of 11 a.m.

The wind is supposed to top 20 mph (30 kph.)

The team event involves men and women from each participating country and is the last chance for American Mikaela Shiffrin to pick up a 2022 Winter Games medal.

Only one of the 10 athletes who earned individual Alpine golds in Beijing was listed on the team rosters released Friday: Austrias Johannes Strolz. He won the mens combined last week and also picked up a silver in slalom on Wednesday.

There is a 16-team bracket but only 15 nations entered, so top-ranked Austria will get a first-round bye.

The first-round matchups are United States vs. Slovakia, Switzerland vs. China, Italy vs. Russia, Norway vs. Poland, France vs. Czech Republic, Germany vs. Sweden, and Slovenia vs. Canada.

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Johannes Thingnes Boe looked like his old self again, dominating from the start and holding his composure through the four shooting stages to win the Olympic gold medal Friday in the biathlon mass start race.

The Norwegian great threw his arms in the air as he crossed the line in 38 minutes, 14.4 seconds.

Martin Ponsiluoma of Sweden only missed one target in the last shooting and left the range chasing Boe. He earned silver, 40.3 seconds behind Boe. Vetle Sjaastad Christiansen of Norway shot clean in the last shooting and took bronze, finishing 1:12.5 behind.

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Thomas Krol has won gold in the 1,000 meters, giving the Netherlands its third straight Olympic speedskating title in the event.

Krol was timed in 1 minute, 7.92 seconds.

Laurent Dubreuil of Canada took silver. Haavard Lorentzen, the 2018 silver medalist, earned bronze.

The Netherlands earned its fifth gold medal in 12 events in Beijing with one day of competition remaining.

In 2014, Stefan Groothuis won the 1,000 and Kjeld Nuis followed with a victory in 2018.

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Sixteen years after he won the Olympic curling gold medal, Brad Gushue is going back to Canada with bronze.

The Canadians capitalized on a missed final shot by American and reigning Olympic champion John Shuster in the second-to-last end that turned a one-point edge into an insurmountable 8-5 lead.

Gushue won gold in Turin in 2006. Back then, he shared a podium with Shuster, who won bronze.

This time, the Canadian skip knocked his American counterpart off of it.

The Americans took a 5-4 lead with two points in the sixth, then Canada scored two in the eighth to take the lead. With the United States holding the last-rock advantage in the ninth, Shuster tried to knock loose two Canadian rocks in the scoring area but missed.

That gave Gushue two points, with one end to go. Canadas third-to last shot cleared all of the American rocks out of the target area, leaving no chance for the U.S. to tie the match, and Shuster immediately conceded.

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Justine Braisaz-Bouchet moved to the front with strong, patient shooting and stayed there with her cross-country skiing to win the womens biathlon mass start race at the Olympics.

A bitter wind affected the field as they lined up each time to shoot, but Braisaz-Bouchet only missed once in the last standing shooting and skied out of the range in first place. She held on and crossed the line carrying a French flag in 40 minutes, 18 seconds.

Norwegian teammates Tiril Eckhoff and Marte Olsbu Roeiseland missed two targets each in that last bout and left the range together, 48 seconds behind the Frenchwoman. Eckhoff chased hard and crossed the line for the silver, trailing Braisaz-Bouchet by 15.3 seconds.

Roeiseland took bronze her fifth medal at the Beijing Games.

Roeiseland is the second biathlete, male or female, to win a medal in all four individual events at an Olympics, matching Norwegian great Ole Einar Bjoerndalen. She also won gold in the mixed relay.

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Ryan Regez led a 1-2 finish by Switzerland in the Olympic skicross final at Genting Snow Park.

Regez grabbed the lead early and never relinquished it along a course filled with bumps, jumps and rolling terrain. He raised his arms in triumph shortly after crossing the finish line.

His teammate, 36-year-old Alex Fiva, finished with the silver medal and Russian athlete Sergey Ridzik grabbed the bronze.

As a kid, Regez always thought his future was in Alpine skiing, more specifically the downhill. When that didnt pan out, he started an apprenticeship as a structural draftsman before discovering skicross.

It paid off in gold.

In the small final, Italian skicross racer Simone Deromedis won the heat with a little bit of flair. He was coming off the last jump and did the splits before crossing the finish line.

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International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach has criticized Russian figure skater Kamila Valievas entourage for their tremendous coldness toward the 15-year-old skater after her mistake-filled free skate at the Beijing Olympics.

Bach says it was chilling to see on television. Valieva, who has been at the center of a controversy over a positive doping test, finished fourth overall despite placing first in the womens short program earlier in the week.

The IOC president did not name Valievas coach, Eteri Tutberidze, who was seen on camera telling a visibly upset Valieva Why did you let it go? Why did you stop fighting?

Bach says you could feel this chilling atmosphere, this distance.

Tutberidze and other members of Valievas entourage will be investigated over the teenagers positive test for a heart medication ahead of the Olympics.

Bach says the pressure on Valieva was beyond my imagination.

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Eileen Gu captured gold in the womens ski halfpipe final on a breezy and cold morning to become the first action-sports athlete to earn three medals at the same Winter Olympics.

Gu warmed up with a score of 93.25 on her first run, before going even higher and even bigger to post a 95.25 her second. For her third and final pass, and with the contest locked up, she took a nice leisurely stroll.

The standout American-born freestyle skier who represents China already possessed a gold from big air and a silver from slopestyle.

Defending Olympic champion Cassie Sharpe of Canada finished second and her teammate Rachael Karker earned the bronze. Teenager Hanna Faulhaber was the top American finisher in sixth place.

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Germanys Francesco Friedrich took part in the final day of four-man bobsled training at the Beijing Olympics on Friday, one day after suggesting he might skip the session.

Friedrich was the first sled down the hill on Friday for the final training session. That may have played a role in his decision to take part. Friedrich was one of the last sleds to get on the ice Thursday during four-man training and afterward the three-time Olympic champion expressed concerns about the conditions of the track.

He likely enjoyed what he saw Friday. Friedrich started the day with a run of 58.98 seconds. That was his fastest in five trips down the Yanqing Sliding Center ice in his four-man sled this week.

Hes the overwhelming favorite for gold in the four-man event that starts on Saturday.

Some top sliders did choose to skip training Friday, including Canadian teammates Justin Kripps and Chris Spring, Germanys Christoph Hafer and Latvian veteran Oskars Kibermanis. Its not unusual for veterans to opt out of a training session, in order to preserve their bodies and sleds for the looming two days of competition.

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Eileen Gu posted the highest score in her first run of the womens ski halfpipe final as she bids to become the first action-sports athlete to capture three medals at the same Winter Games.

The standout American-born freestyle skier who represents China already possesses a gold from big air and a silver from slopestyle.

On a blustery and cool day, Gu turned in a solid run and scored a 93.25 to easily lead the way. Defending Olympic champion Cassie Sharpe of Canada sits in second place after the opening run of three and her teammate Rachael Karker was in third. American teenager Hanna Faulhaber was in fourth.

The temperature hovered around 3 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 16 Celsius) with an 11 mph wind.

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The judges who let Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva compete at the Beijing Olympics despite a positive test for a banned substance blamed anti-doping officials for a failure to function effectively.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport, in a newly published 41-page document explaining their decision, cited an untenable delay at the testing laboratory in Sweden.

It meant Valievas positive test for a heart medication was only revealed during the Olympics despite her urine sample arriving in Stockholm on Dec. 29. The labs staffing was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Her lawyers suggested she was contaminated because her grandfather uses the banned heart medication she tested positive for.

The judges full verdict was published early Friday, hours after the 15-year-old Valievas mistake-filled free skate dropped her from the lead to finish fourth in the Olympic womens individual event.

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The International Testing Agency says Ukrainian bobsledder Lidiia Hunko has tested positive for an anabolic steroid at the Beijing Games.

The ITA says she failed a drug test after competing Monday. She placed 20th in womens monobob.

Hunko is the third athlete to test positive for doping at the Beijing Olympics and the second from Ukraine, after cross-country skier Valnetyna Kaminska.

All three ITA cases in Beijing have detected a steroid.

The 28-year-old Hunko placed second in the 2016 Worlds Strongest Woman contest, according to her official Beijing Olympics athlete biography.

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More AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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Olympics Live: China pair breaks figure skating world record - Associated Press

Skier Eileen Gu of Team China has been a breakout star of the Beijing Winter Olympics. She won three medals two gold and one silver and has been a voice for women's equality at the Games. Cameron Spencer/Getty Images hide caption

Skier Eileen Gu of Team China has been a breakout star of the Beijing Winter Olympics. She won three medals two gold and one silver and has been a voice for women's equality at the Games.

BEIJING When Eileen Gu, the freestyle skier from California who competes for China, stepped to the microphone after winning two gold medals and a silver, she was introduced as "the princess" of the Beijing Games.

The Chinese media has dubbed Gu the 'snow princess.' The 18-year-old is a remarkable athlete spinning and twisting through the air above the halfpipe.

She's also the breakout star of these Winter Olympics, dominating news coverage inside China and emerging as an international sports brand.

Gold medalist Eileen Gu, competing for China, poses on the podium during the venue ceremony after the freestyle skiing women's freeski halfpipe on Friday. Marco Bertorello/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Gold medalist Eileen Gu, competing for China, poses on the podium during the venue ceremony after the freestyle skiing women's freeski halfpipe on Friday.

"Huge honor to be the first free skier to podium in three events as a woman," Gu told reporters at the packed news conference. "It also makes me very hopeful about what the next generation can accomplish."

This is the kind of story Olympic officials love to highlight. Women have made enormous gains from the first Winter Games a century ago when only a handful of women competed.

IOC spokesman Mark Adams says gender balance is now nearly equal. "We have a record number 45.4% women competing [in Beijing]," he said.

That gradual evolution reflects work by international sports officials who added a new women-only event this year, the monobob sled competition, as well as more mixed events where men and women compete together.

"It sends a signal from the IOC [International Olympic Committee] to the national Olympic committees that they need to build up the capacity of their women teams and invest in their women's teams, their women's athletes," Adams said.

The IOC has also gradually shifted its approach to broadcasting the Games. All the television images from Beijing are filmed by the IOC's own in-house operation known as the Olympic Broadcasting Services. That footage is then distributed to networks that pay like NBC in the U.S.

The OBS has faced criticism in the past for sexualizing female athletes but the organization's head Yiannis Exarchos says they've gotten better at showing women in ways not tilted by gender.

"It's not about who is beautiful or attractive," Exarchos said. "It's about portraying huge athletes whether they are men or women."

But while participation and representation of women at the Olympics have improved, critics point out there's a dark side to how women are treated at the Games.

Women have fewer events, which means fewer chances to medal. They typically earn less money. There are also far fewer women coaches and top sports executives.

This lack of power was highlighted in Beijing by the case of Kamila Valieva, the 15-year-old Russian figure skater who found herself at the center of an international doping scandal.

The head of the IOC, Thomas Bach, acknowledged that Valieva appeared incapable of making decisions about her own fate.

"Maybe she would have preferred to just leave the ice and just have this story behind her," he said.

Other women figure skaters reacted to Valieva's case by calling for more protections for young women and girls in their sport.

Gu, the star skier, said this week she believes progress is needed in other sports as well.

"Extreme sports we all know are heavily dominated by men and it has not had the kind of representation and sporting equity that it should," Gu said.

"I think that as a young biracial woman, it is super important to ... push the boundaries. That's what paves the paths for the next generation of girls."

Gu said she's made the decision to focus more of her time away from skiing, writing a book and enrolling at Stanford University.

One footnote about gender balance at these Games.

While women compete in fewer events than men, the majority of U.S. gold medals at these Winter Olympics have been won by American women, in events where they competed alone or in mixed sports with male partners.

U.S. speed skater Erin Jackson of skates to victory to win the gold medal in the Women's 500-meter on Feb. 13 at the Winter Olympics. Richard Heathcote/Getty Images hide caption

U.S. speed skater Erin Jackson of skates to victory to win the gold medal in the Women's 500-meter on Feb. 13 at the Winter Olympics.

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Women are the stars (and the victims) of the Beijing Olympics - NPR

BEIJING Theyre doing it again.

Norway, with a population of just five million, is executing its quadrennial triumph over the rest of the world.

It may not surpass the historic 2018 Pyeongchang Games, when Norway won 39 medals, eight more than its closest competitor, Germany, which has 16 times as many people.

But its close.

Norway won its 15th gold medal of the Beijing Games on Friday, a record for a single country at a Winter Olympics. That total put it seven ahead of Russia (population 144 million) in the overall medals table through Friday, and five ahead of Germany (population 83 million) in the race for the most golds.

Its most recent triumph came in mens biathlon, but Norway also has medals in ski jumping, Nordic combined, speedskating and cross-country and freestyle skiing.

We have a strong team, said Kjetil Jansrud, the champion Alpine skier. We always do.

More than strong. Norway is now so successful it has become the winter sports beacon. American skiers, both Alpine and cross-country, have trained with Norwegian athletes on the same mountains and glaciers for years. Every year, the country brings 150 of the top international junior cross country skiers to a camp to learn technique and train with the sports top coaches. Norway has had a partnership with Britain to develop and share wax technology for Nordic skiing.

During the last four years though, several countries have sent their top sports leaders to study the countrys methods well, the ones its specialists will share highlighting the latest step in Norways elite winter sports hospitality.

After watching what Norway did in Pyeongchang, I just told my team we are going over there, and we are going to figure out what the hell is going on and what they are doing, said Luke Bodensteiner, then the director of sport for the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, the national governing body for skiing.

And so, that spring, Bodensteiner and top executives went to visit their competition.

Norways willingness to offer tutorials to competitors may seem strange, but, while it wants to win, it also wants to make sure the winter sports its prizes are thriving, and that will only happen if the competition is tough.

Bodensteiner and his team left Norway after a week confident that any country could build a Norwegian-style winter sports machine. All it would take is 30 years and a complete overhaul of the systems that develop young athletes.

He also had a sneaking suspicion that Norway was keeping its most valuable information to itself.

Norway, for instance, was far ahead of competitors in developing the most aerodynamic suits for skiing. It pioneered the use of GPS sensors to help Alpine skiers find the fastest line down the mountain. Its cross-country skis are reliably the fastest, the result of endless testing and retesting.

While the rest of the world trained Alpine skiers like sprinters, focusing on building explosiveness, Norwegian coaches and trainers discovered that Alpine racing was more like a 3,000-meter run. So Alpine skiers started training more like distance runners, taking long bike rides and doing creative aerobic training circuits in the gym.

The countrys research is now starting to pay off in summer sports as well. In Tokyo, Norways men won gold medals in track in the 400-meter hurdles and the 1,500.

Feb. 19, 2022, 9:29 p.m. ET

For Norway, everything changed after the 1988 Calgary Games, where it won just five medals, none of them gold. That was an unacceptable outcome for a country where children begin to ski and walk around the same age.

Norway, which had quickly transformed from a middling economy built around fishing and farming into a petroleum-rich nation, started plowing money into Olympiatoppen, the organization that oversees elite Olympic sports.

It also doubled down on its commitments under its Childrens Right in Sports document, which guarantees and encourages every child in the country access to high-quality opportunities in athletics, with a focus on participation and socialization rather than hard-core competition.

Norways well-funded local sports clubs, which exist in nearly every neighborhood and village, do not hold championships until the children reach age 13.

Its largest national skiing event, the Holmenkollen Ski Festival, which began in 1892, includes a race for elite adult skiers but not youngsters. Children join the course when they want and there is no official time keeping for them. The coaches, both the professionals and parent volunteers, have to undergo formal training.

There just seems to be a lot more emphasis on including everybody, said Atle McGrath, a 21-year-old Norwegian Alpine skier whose father, Felix, competed in Alpine for the United States at the 1988 Olympics. Whether or not you are really good or not, its pretty much the same experience for everyone.

Jim Stray-Gundersen, a former surgeon and physiologist who is the sports science adviser to the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, lived in Norway, where his father grew up, for five years while working as a scientist with Norways Olympic athletes. He said a priority of the country is to build a culture of health and regular exercise, and its competitive prowess flows from that.

Its how you produce psychological satisfaction, healthy life habits, and stellar athletes over time, and its very much in contrast to how we do it and dont do it in the U.S., he said.

Youngsters who do not exhibit special talent stay involved, and some of them bloom as teenagers, long after children in more competition-driven countries might have moved on to the cello. McGrath, for example, did not excel until he was 17.

Norwegians also tend to relish outdoor life and activity, during both the summer months when the sun shines for nearly 22 hours, and during the long, cold, dark winters.

Felix McGrath, who grew up in Vermont, said his son first showed an affinity for skiing when he was 8 or 9 years old and would spend hours going off homemade ski jumps in the front yard, though he continued to play soccer and baseball and cross-country skied.

At 14, he got serious about Alpine skiing but people barely paid attention to his results at races until he was at least 16 and attending a special, public school for aspiring Alpine skiers.

Atle was always pretty good but he was never winning consistently, McGrath said. He was sort of that guy that was always hovering a teeny bit behind the best kids and always showing up and working hard and getting better.

Atle McGrath did not win a medal in these Games, but he did display some Norwegian spirit. On Wednesday he skidded past a gate in his second slalom run and came to a dead stop. But instead of skiing off the course, he took two steps up the hill, went back around the gate and continued down the slope. He crossed the finish line 12 seconds behind the leader but still raised his arms in triumph.

That is, after all, what Norwegians do at the Olympics.

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Norway Out in Front in Medal Count at Winter Olympics - The New York Times

Follow our live coverage of the 2022 Winter Olympics.

YANQING, China Alexandra Burghardt adjusted her new Winter Olympics outfit in a hotel a few miles away from the bobsledding track. It was two weeks before her debut at the Beijing Games.

Sometimes I feel like a double agent, she said. Two lives to handle.

In August, Burghardt was running the 100 meters in the blazing heat of Tokyos Summer Olympics. Now, six months later, she found herself in subzero temperatures in China, suiting up for the bobsled in the Winter Games.

And on Saturday night in Yanqing, she found herself with a silver medal around her neck, standing on a podium with her teammate and bobsled pilot, Mariama Jamanka.

She joins a long line of sprinters turned bobsledders, runners whose explosive speed and strength on the track can translate to the ice. But this summer-to-winter Olympic whiplash was extreme. The Tokyo Olympics were postponed a year because of the coronavirus pandemic and held in July and August 2021, six months before the start of the Beijing Games. Burghardt is one of the few athletes who competed in both two Olympics in less than a year.

For Burghardt, the turnaround was even more disorienting, given that she hadnt even thought about competing in a Winter Games until September.

The German bobsled federation had long courted Burghardt, 27, one of Germanys fastest sprinters, hoping she could be the latest track star to push a bobsledding team to a gold medal. We all knew her, said Rene Spies, the head coach of the German bobsled team.

She politely declined for years. Oh yeah, the German bobsled federation has wished for it for a long time, Burghardt said. Im pretty tall and fast and thats exactly what they need for a good brakewoman, but I wanted to get on with my actual sport first and try to reach my full potential before starting on a new adventure.

After suffering from setbacks and injuries through much of her career, she did reach a new level in the past year. She made the German Olympic team and clocked her fastest 100-meter time in the month before the Tokyo Games: 11.01 seconds.

In Tokyo, she ran in the womens 4x100-meter final, in which the Germans placed fifth. She also advanced to the semifinals of the 100 meters with a time of 11.07 seconds.

Tokyo was already a childhood dream come true, Burghardt said. Then there was this opportunity with Beijing, and I wanted to give it a try, and now were here.

Feb. 19, 2022, 9:29 p.m. ET

Burghardts progression from giving it a try to making an Olympic team was particularly swift. Kaysha Love, another sprinter turned bobsledder who took the fast track to these Games, had at least touched a bobsled before last year.

In 2018, a sliding coach reached out to Loves track coach at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas expressing interest. Her first time in a bobsled was in November 2020. The experience was terrifying, she said, but it cemented a goal: She would make the Olympic team. She finished her track season and turned her full attention to bobsledding in July 2021.

The end goal was always going to be the Olympics, Love said. I knew I was decent, at best. I knew I had a lot of work to do, but I wasnt scared to put in the extra effort.

Now shes very much in. She was selected as a brakewoman for the U.S. Olympic team and finished in seventh place with Kaillie Humphries, the monobob gold medalist. Love already has ambitions to learn to pilot a sled after the Games.

Burghardt was more skeptical at the start, agreeing to train for bobsled only if she could continue to work with her sprinting coach and get back to the track full time as soon as she left China.

But she liked bobsledding from her first run a promising sign for Spies, the German coach, who said many athletes get sick on their first run from the combination of speed and pressure. Burghardts technique wasnt great, he said, but she managed to improve on her next run. She was added to the World Cup lineup two days later.

I didnt really have the time to come down, Burghardt said of the quick transition. Im just riding on this cloud.

Her development was so impressive that she was paired with Jamanka, the 2018 defending gold medalist.

The partnership worked out quite well. They were outrun only by Laura Nolte and Deborah Levi, also of Germany, who won the gold medal in two-woman bobsled. Elena Meyers Taylor of the United States added a fifth Olympic medal to her collection, finishing with a bronze with her teammate, Syliva Hoffman.

Burghardt is already debating whether to race in a German indoor track meet a week after these Olympics. She is also looking forward to getting back on track with her coach in Switzerland in March, and then training camp in April. Then, she said excitedly, the season starts in May.

Its a very big year for track also, with the World Championships and the European Championship, she said.

Then, she said laughing, Im going to need a big break.

Read more:

How Alexandra Burghardt Made it to Two Olympics in Six Months - The New York Times

A medical helper takes a photo of the Zhangjiakou National Ski Jumping Center during the Winter Olympics on Feb. 14. Christof Stache/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A medical helper takes a photo of the Zhangjiakou National Ski Jumping Center during the Winter Olympics on Feb. 14.

BEIJING Outside of the window of a passing train from Beijing to Yanqing are rows and rows and rows of trees.

This succession of perfectly arranged seedlings and saplings stretches for acres. Some look hardly more than three twigs tied together on the ground and at serious risk of falling victim to a gust of wind. But at the base of each tree is a system of ropes and wood keeping them standing.

Much of this obviously recent tree planting is tied to the 2022 Winter Olympics. Authorities in Beijing and Zhangjiakou (locations for the Games' venues) said before the Games that they had planted more than 80,000 hectares (about 198,000 acres) of forest and green areas combined.

China is also in the midst of a years-long "greening" effort. Trees are being planted in and around Beijing to cut down on choking sandstorms from the Gobi Desert.

Put together, the Chinese government and Olympic officials paint the tree planting as a win for the environment and one that offsets climate change and carbon emissions from these Games.

The reality is much different, researchers and environmental experts say.

For one, China is notably reliant on coal powered energy, which has clear ties to a rise in greenhouse gas emissions. This month, the central government pledged to run coal power plants at full capacity. Officials even called on coal producers to ensure a steady supply of coal or face "further investigation and accountability measures."

The Winter Olympics are using almost entirely artificial snow which requires large amounts of water and the use of chemicals the health and environmental impact of which is still largely unknown.

The International Olympic Committee says it is prioritizing sustainability with its Summer and Winter Games. In practice, that hasn't been the case, according to researchers.

Sustainability in the Olympics has "significantly declined over time," according to one analysis of 16 editions of the Summer and Winter Games.

"Salt Lake City 2002 was the most sustainable Olympic Games in this period, whereas Sochi 2014 and Rio de Janeiro 2016 were the least sustainable," according to the report. It was issued before the 2022 Winter Olympics.

Olympic host cities are required to show that they are carbon neutral. Beijing organizers pointed to tree planting and other efforts to reach that goal.

But to construct the National Alpine Ski Center in Yanqing, the Chinese government tore through the former central piece of the Songshan National Nature Reserve, a park founded to protect its dense forests, according to CNN.

This construction required the removal of nearly 20,000 trees over the course of a few years.

A general view of the Olympic rings during the Winter Games at the Yanqing National Alpine Skiing Center. If not planned well, transplanting trees from a nature reserve to make way for the Olympics could hurt biodiversity, a conservation expert says. Jeff Pachoud/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A general view of the Olympic rings during the Winter Games at the Yanqing National Alpine Skiing Center. If not planned well, transplanting trees from a nature reserve to make way for the Olympics could hurt biodiversity, a conservation expert says.

The Beijing Organizing Committee pledged to transplant those trees and topsoil to the north of the city. It claimed more than 90% of those trees survived the move.

By re-planting trees, the biodiversity unique to the Beijing area could suffer, according to Terry Townshend, an adviser to the Paulson Institute's conservation work.

"If not planned well, for example if non-native or single species are used of the same age and planted in straight lines, it is likely to be bad for biodiversity," he told NPR.

That's especially the case if the trees are planted in grassland, scrub or wetlands.

The leopard cat and the great bustard bird two animals unique to the Beijing area could lose their habitat by the indiscriminate planting of trees, according to Townshend.

"Beijing is an important stopover and wintering site for many migratory birds," he said. "Bustards are the equivalent of Boeing 747s they are heavy, slow and need a large runway."

If their sought-after open areas are planted with trees the great bustard may need to find another place to land.

"Beijing could lose these remarkable species," Townshend said.

NPR's Emily Feng contributed to this report.

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Beijing touts a green Olympics, but Games have wide environmental impact - NPR

WASHINGTON Companies usually shell out for Olympic sponsorship because it helps their business and reflects well on their brands. But this year, with the Olympics in Beijing, Procter & Gamble paid even more to try to prevent any negative fallout from being associated with Chinas repressive and authoritarian government.

The company, one of 13 worldwide Olympic partners that make the global sports competition possible, hired Washington lobbyists last year to successfully defeat legislation that would have barred sponsors of the Beijing Games from selling their products to the U.S. government. The provision would have blocked Pampers, Tide, Pringles and other Procter & Gamble products from military commissaries, to protest companies involvement in an event seen as legitimizing the Chinese government.

This amendment would punish P.&G. and the Olympic movement, including U.S. athletes, Sean Mulvaney, the senior director for global government relations at Procter & Gamble, wrote in an email to congressional offices in August.

Some of the worlds biggest companies are caught in an uncomfortable situation as they attempt to straddle a widening political gulf between the United States and China: What is good for business in one country is increasingly a liability in the other.

China is the worlds biggest consumer market, and for decades, Chinese and American business interests have described their economic cooperation as a win-win relationship. But gradually, as Chinas economic and military might have grown, Washington has taken the view that a win for China is a loss for the United States.

The decision to locate the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing has turned sponsorship, typically one of the marketing industrys most prestigious opportunities, into a minefield.

Companies that have sponsored the Olympics have attracted censure from politicians and human rights groups, who say such contracts imply tacit support of atrocities by the Chinese Communist Party, including human rights violations in Xinjiang, censorship of the media and mass surveillance of dissidents.

One thing our businesses, universities and sports leagues dont seem to fully understand is that, to eat at the C.C.P.s trough, you will have to turn into a pig, Yaxue Cao, editor of ChinaChange.org, a website that covers civil society and human rights, told Congress this month.

The tension is playing out in other areas as well, including with regards to Xinjiang, where millions of ethnic minorities have been detained, persecuted or forced into working in fields and factories. In June, the United States will enact a sweeping law that will expand restrictions on Xinjiang, giving the United States power to block imports made with any materials sourced from that region.

Multinational firms that are trying to comply with these new import restrictions have found themselves facing costly backlashes in China, which denies any accusations of genocide. H&M, Nike and Intel have all blundered into public relations disasters for trying to remove Xinjiang from their supply chains.

Harsher penalties could be in store. Companies that try to sever ties with Xinjiang may run afoul of Chinas anti-sanctions law, which allows the authorities to crack down on firms that comply with foreign regulations they see as discriminating against China.

Beijing has also threatened to put companies that cut off supplies to China on an unreliable entity list that could result in penalties, though to date the list doesnt appear to have any members.

Companies are between a rock and a hard place when it comes to complying with U.S. and Chinese law, said Jake Colvin, the president of the National Foreign Trade Council, which represents companies that do business internationally.

President Biden, while less antagonistic than his predecessor, has maintained many of the tough policies put in place by President Donald J. Trump, including hefty tariffs on Chinese goods and restrictions on exports of sensitive technology to Chinese firms.

The Biden administration has shown little interest in forging trade deals to help companies do more business abroad. Instead, it is recruiting allies to ramp up pressure on China, including by boycotting the Olympics, and promoting huge investments in manufacturing and scientific research to compete with Beijing.

Feb. 19, 2022, 9:29 p.m. ET

The pressures are not only coming from the United States. Companies are increasingly facing a complicated global patchwork of export restrictions and data storage laws, including in the European Union. Chinese leaders have begun pursuing wolf warrior diplomacy, in which they are trying to teach other countries to think twice before crossing China, said Jim McGregor, chairman of APCO Worldwides greater China region.

He said his company was telling clients to try to comply with everybody, but dont make a lot of noise about it because if youre noisy about complying in one country, the other country will come after you.

Some companies are responding by moving sensitive activities like research that could trigger Chinas anti-sanctions law, or audits of Xinjiang operations out of China, said Isaac Stone Fish, the chief executive of Strategy Risks, a consultancy.

Others, like Cisco, have scaled back their operations. Some have left China entirely, though usually not on terms they would choose. For example, Micron Technology, a chip-maker that has been a victim of intellectual property theft in China, is closing down a chip design team in Shanghai after competitors poached its employees.

Some companies are taking a step back and realizing that this is perhaps more trouble than its worth, Mr. Stone Fish said.

But many companies insist that they cant be forced to choose between two of the worlds largest markets. Tesla, which counts China as one of its largest markets, opened a showroom in Xinjiang last month.

We cant leave China, because China represents in some industries up to 50 percent of global demand and we have intense, deep supply and sales relationships, said Craig Allen, the president of the U.S.-China Business Council.

Companies see China as a foothold to serve Asia, Mr. Allen said, and Chinas $17 trillion economy still presents some of the best growth prospects anywhere.

Very few companies are leaving China, but all are feeling that its risk up and that they need to be very careful so as to meet their legal obligations in both markets, he said.

American politicians of both parties are increasingly bent on forcing companies to pick a side.

To me, its completely appropriate to make these companies choose, said Representative Michael Waltz, a Florida Republican who proposed the bill that would have prevented Olympic sponsors from doing business with the U.S. government.

Mr. Waltz said participation in the Beijing Olympics sent a signal that the West was willing to turn a blind eye to Chinese atrocities for short-term profits.

The amendment was ultimately cut out of a defense-spending bill last year after active and aggressive lobbying by Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, Intel, NBC, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others, Mr. Waltz said.

Procter & Gambles lobbying disclosures show that, between April and December, it spent more than $2.4 million on in-house and outside lobbyists to try to sway Congress on a range of tax and trade issues, including the Beijing Winter Olympics Sponsor Accountability Act.

Lobbying disclosures for Coca-Cola, Airbnb and Comcast, the parent company of NBC, also indicate the companies lobbied on issues related to the Olympics or sports programming last year.

Procter & Gamble and Intel declined to comment. Coca-Cola said it had explained to lawmakers that the legislation would hurt American military families and businesses. NBC and the Chamber of Commerce did not respond to requests for comment.

Many companies have argued they are sponsoring this years Games to show support for the athletes, not Chinas system of government.

In a July congressional hearing, where executives from Coca-Cola, Intel, Visa and Airbnb were also grilled about their sponsorship, Mr. Mulvaney said Procter & Gamble was using its partnership to encourage the International Olympic Committee to incorporate human rights principles into its oversight of the Games.

Corporate sponsors are being a bit unfairly maligned here, Anna Ashton, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said in an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

Companies had signed contracts to support multiple iterations of the Games, and had no say over the host location, she said. And the funding they provide goes to support the Olympics and the athletes, not the Chinese government.

Sponsorship has hardly been an opportunity for companies this time around, she said.

Read more here:

Why Companies Struggled to Navigate Olympics Sponsorships - The New York Times

Feel the rhythm and feel the rhymeafter a 24-year absence, Cool Runnings is back at the Olympics.

On Saturday in Beijing, Jamaica competed in the four-man bobsled for the first time since the 1998 Nagano Games, and to plenty of fanfare.

The team's performance drew comparisons on social media to Jamaica's Cool Runnings team from the 1988 Calgary Games, which was immortalized by the Disney film of the same name.

Click here to watch both of Jamaica's heats in the four-man bobsled.

Piloted byShanwayne Stephens, who also competed in the two-man event last week, Jamaica ranked last after the first two heats, finishing more than five seconds behind first-place Germany with times of1:00:80 and 1:01.39.

Stephens's teammates include a rugby player for the Jamaican national team, a one-time HBCU track star and a former member of the Great Britain bobsled program.

However, Stephens said earlier this week that the nation's return to the even meant a lot more than just the final result.

I think it's everybody's dream to represent their country and we're here doing it, living it and breathing it, Stephens told ESPN after the two-man event. "We just hope that we've done everybody proud.

I mean, there's a lot of people supporting us. There's Jamaican, non-Jamaican, everybody that loves Cool Runnings is supporting us. Just represent Jamaica and enjoy it while we're here. Not everybody gets this opportunity, so we just want to enjoy it.

More Winter Olympics Coverage:

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Watch: Jamaican Four-Man Bobsled Team Returns to Winter Olympics After 24 Years - Sports Illustrated

The Winter Olympics are nearly over, but athletes competing up on the mountains outside of Beijing were dealt with perhaps the worst weather theyve seen so far throughout the Games on Saturday.

Heres everything you missed overnight from the Olympics.

Freestyle skiing survived gusty, frigid conditions in Zhangjikaou on Saturday, and a pair of Americans left the mountain with medals in hand.

David Wise and Alex Ferriera won the silver and bronze medal, respectively, in the freestyle skiing competition on Saturday. Wise finished with a score of 90.75, and Ferreira was just behind him at 86.75.

New Zealands Nico Porteous won the gold medal, and celebrated accordingly with his team on the mountain after.

Temperatures on the mountain felt like minus-12 degrees Fahrenheit while wind increased throughout the competition.

The conditions were so bad, plenty of athletes including American-turned-Great Britain competitor Gus Kenworthy wiped out. Ten of the 12 riders fell at least once during their runs.

Though plenty called for freestyle skiing to be canceled, it went on as scheduled.

The Alpine skiing mixed team event, however, did not.

The weather caused organizers to postpone Saturdays event until Sunday the final day of the Games. There is a chance the event could be canceled.

The event was set to be the last for American star Mikaela Shiffrin at the Games.

Kai Verbij sacrificed his shot for a medal on Friday in the mens 1,000-meter speed skating event, all out of sportsmanship.

The Netherlands skater was matched up with Canadas Laurent Dubreuil in the final run of the competition, and both were trying to beat Verbijs teammate Tim Krol who was leading with a time of 1:07.92.

Yet during their race, Verbij realized that he was well behind Dubreuil. Even though Verbij was in contention for a medal, Dubreuil was 0.73 seconds ahead of the leaders pace.

Story continues

So, instead of staying in the race and potentially crashing, Verbij pulled up and let his Canadian counterpart try for gold.

Dubreuil eventually finished in second, but the act of sportsmanship was still incredible.

Check out the race in its entirety here.

"When I exited the inner lane I saw his higher top speed and knew: I have to get up, otherwise I would ruin his race and Im not that kind of a*****e, Verbij said.

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What you missed at the Olympics: Americans medal in skiing despite brutal conditions - Yahoo Sports