Pyeongchang Winter Olympics 2018: Day 6 Winners and Losers
The weather twice pushed back her opening event, but Mikaela Shiffrin showed on Day 6 exactly why she entered the 2018 Winter Olympics as a gold-medal favorite. Shiffrin earned a place atop the podium in the giant slalom.
For the rest of Team USA, though, it was a rough day in Pyeongchang. There were nine medal events, but Shiffrin's was the only one earned by an American. And even in the round-robin portions of the hockey and curling events, Team USA had a combined record of 1-3.
Norway owned the day with a total of six medals, three of the gold variety. Germany and Canada tied for second place with three medals each.
Read on for the rest of the biggest winners and losers of Day 6.
Winner: Norway Downhill Skiing
1 of 8
Norway had never before won the men's downhill at the Olympics, but Aksel Lund Svindal ended the drought with a 1:40.25 race down the mountain. The 35-year-old became the oldest gold medalist in Alpine history at the Games.
And to celebrate, the nation added silver. Kjetil Jansrud improved on his downhill bronze from Sochi, crossing the line 0.12 seconds behind his teammate.
It was the fourth medal of both skiers' careers.
Switzerland's Beat Feuz, the reigning world champion and favorite entering the event, finished +0.18 but still secured the bronze medal.
Loser: Big Lead in Figure Skating
2 of 8
Sui Wenjing and Han Cong put together a glorious short program to enter the free skate as clear favorites for gold. It was their medal to lose.
Stunningly, it happened.
Aliona Savchenko and Bruno Massot set a world record with a score of 159.31, and the German pair rocketed into first place with 235.90 total points. The Chinese duo needed 153.52 to retake the lead, but a couple of mishaps cost them.
They scored a 153.08, missing the mark by 0.44. Savchenko, a five-time Olympian who previously earned bronze in 2010 and 2014, can finally celebrate a gold.
Winner: Mikaela Shiffrin, USA
3 of 8
"Next Olympics I go to, I'm sure as heck not getting fifth," Shiffrin said after her showing in giant slalom at the 2014 Sochi Games.
Spoiler alert: She didn't get fifth.
Shiffrin—the third-ranked GS skier in this World Cup season—stood atop the podium with a combined time of 2:20.02, besting Norway's Ragnhild Mowinckel and Italy's Federica Brignone. The victory gave Shiffrin her second career gold medal.
Next up for the 22-year-old is her best event, the slalom. The first run is scheduled for Thursday at 8 p.m. ET.
.jpg?w=256 "Colts Jaguars Football")
Loser: USA Women's Hockey
4 of 8
After winning the inaugural women's hockey tournament at the 1998 Games, Team USA has lost to Canada in four straight Olympics matchups. Additionally, Canada has secured all gold medals in all four competitions since then.
Yet the United States' struggles beating their neighbors to the north haven't extended to the IIHF World Championships. In each year from 2015-2017, the Americans earned a pair of victories over Canada. Team USA won the 2013 title, too.
Nevertheless, Canada earned a 2-1 triumph Wednesday to win Group A. Both teams have advanced to the semifinals, and it's likely they'll meet in the gold-medal match.
There wouldn't be a better time to shake a frustrating trend, but it's a feat the U.S. will be hard-pressed to accomplish.
Winner: Marit Bjoergen, Norway
5 of 8
We overlooked this earlier in the week when Norway's Marit Bjoergen won the silver in the 15km skiathlon, but she gave us another opportunity to recognize her greatness with a bronze medal in 10km freestyle cross-country skiing.
Bjoergen now has 12 Olympic medals in a Michael Phelps-like career which dates back to the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City. She took three golds in 2010 and three more in 2014. During her reign, Bjoergen has medaled at least once in each of the six cross-country disciplines and has now done so three times in both the skiathlon and the freestyle.
Sweden's Charlotte Kalla—who won the first gold of the 2018 Games in the 15km skiathlon—finished a few seconds ahead of Bjoergen to take the silver. This is now the fourth time both Scandinavians have medaled in the same event, as Kalla has three golds and four silvers in her Olympic career.
But the gold medalist was a first-timer. Pyeongchang is the first Olympics for Norway's Ragnhild Haga. She placed 15th in the skiathlon before winning this freestyle event by a margin of more than 20 seconds. (Haga's time was 25:00.5; Kalla's was 25:20.8.)
Falling just shy of a medal for the third straight event was USA's Jessie Diggins. She was fifth in the skiathlon on Feb. 10, sixth in the sprint classic on Feb. 13 and now fifth in the freestyle on Feb. 15.
Loser: USA Men's Snowboard Cross
6 of 8
Early on in the men's snowboard cross tournament, things were looking great for the Americans.
Mick Dierdorff, Hagen Kearney and Nick Baumgartner each crossed the finish line fast enough to advance out of the 1/8 finals and into the quarterfinals. That's where Team USA lost Kearney, but Dierdorff and Baumgartner each made it through the quarters and semis to the medal run.
Once there, though, the course got the better of them. Though there was no collision, both Americans and Australia's Alex Pullin all wiped out on the same jump. This left France's Pierre Vaultier, Australia's Jarryd Hughes and Spain's Regino Hernandez only racing each other for gold, silver and bronze, respectively.
This marks the first time in Pyeongchang that Team USA has failed to win gold in snowboarding. (It previously won in halfpipe and slopestyle in both the men's and women's events.)
This also marks the first time that Team USA has failed to medal in men's snowboard cross at the Olympics. Seth Wescott took gold in 2006, the first year the event was added. Wescott also won in 2010. And Alex Deibold earned a bronze in 2014.
Winner: Ted-Jan Bloemen, Canada
7 of 8
In addition to Team USA failing to earn gold in a snowboarding event for the first time in the 2018 Games, Day 6 also brought the end of the Netherlands' quest to win every speedskating event in Pyeongchang.
The Dutch were previously 5-of-5 with five different skaters—Kjeld Nuis (men's 1,500m), Sven Kramer (men's 5,000m), Jorien ter Mors (ladies' 1,000m), Ireen Wust (ladies' 1,500m) and Carlijn Achtereekte (ladies' 3,000m). As if that's not enough, they also won two silver and two bronze medals in those first five races.
But Canada's Ted-Jan Bloemen took gold in the men's 10,000m skate to finally shake things up.
This is no huge surprise, though. Netherlands did sweep this event in 2014, but Bloemen set the world record at this distance in 2015 and was considered one of the favorites for gold along with Kramer.
Bloemen skated in the pair before Kramer and set one heck of a time to beat with an Olympic record 12:39.77. (The gold-medal time in 2014 was 12:44.45, and Kramer's time in Sochi was 12:49.02 for silver.) Kramer may have pushed a bit too hard in the first half of the 25-lap race and ended up dropping off drastically over the final 5,000 meters, finishing in sixth place.
Netherlands did still land on the podium with Jorrit Bergsma taking silver, but Canada finally broke its gold-medal drought in men's speedskating. The Canadiens did take gold in the team pursuit in 2010, but their last individual gold was when Gaetan Boucher won two of them in 1984.
Loser: Non-Europeans in Biathlon
8 of 8
Due to weather issues earlier in the week, there were two biathlon medal events at Day 6 in Pyeongchang: women's 15km individual and men's 20km individual.
And if you're not from Europe, your home nation did not come anywhere close to winning either one.
Each of the top 14 spots in the women's event went to Europeans. Sweden's Hanna Oeberg won gold, followed by Slovakia's Anastasiya Kuzmina and Germany's Laura Dahlmeier.
A few hours later, the top 13 finishers in the men's event were all from Europe. France's Martin Fourcade was the favorite, but after starting 18-of-18, he missed his final two targets and finished in fifth place. Norway's Johannes Thingnes Boe, Slovenia's Jakov Fak and Austria's Dominik Landertinger won gold, silver and bronze, respectively.
As far as Team USA is concerned, Susan Dunklee was the top female finisher in 19th place, 3:26.3 behind Oeberg. And on the men's side, Tim Burke fared best in 41st place, 4:01.9 shy of the gold.
.jpg?w=480 "Colts Jaguars Football")
