2018 Winter Olympics: Odds, Schedule, Medal Favorites and Predictions for Friday
A unique trio of events headline Friday night's medal competition at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Two of the three events, which will take place on Saturday morning in South Korea, could see Americans make the medal podium.
Most of the American focus will be centered on Lindsey Vonn, who is competing at the Olympics for the first time in eight years.
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With Nathan Chen out of medal contention in men's figure skating, Vonn and and the freestyle skiers in women's slopestyle are the top candidates to boost the American medal count that took a hit on Thursday after the disappointing showings by Chen and Mikaela Shiffrin.
Friday Medal Schedule
Figure Skating: Men's Free Skate (8 p.m. ET)
Freestyle Skiing: Women's Slopestyle (8 p.m. ET; final begins at 11:56 p.m. ET)
Alpine Skiing: Women's Super-G (9 p.m. ET)
Medal Predictions
Odds (via OddsShark.com)
Women's Super-G
Tina Weirather (Liechtenstein; +350)
Lara Gut (Switzerland; +400)
Lindsey Vonn (United States; +600)
Anna Veith (Austria; +700)
Viktoria Rebensburg (Germany; +800)
Michelle Gisin (Switzerland; +1,100)
Federica Brignone (Italy; +1,200)
Sofia Goggia (Italy; +1,200)
Nicole Schmidhofer (Austria; +1,600)
Cornelia Hutter (Austria; +2,000)
Jasmine Flury (Switzerland; +2,000)
Tessa Worley (France; +2,000)
Vonn is the American medal hopeful on the slopes on Friday night after Shiffrin opted to skip the super-G, per Tim Layden of Sports Illustrated:
The 33-year-old Vonn took bronze in the super-G eight years ago in Vancouver, Canada, and she has two World Cup victories on her resume this season in the event.
She will face stiff competition from the European contingent, including Switzerland's Lara Gut and Liechtenstein's Tina Weirather, who sit at the top of the World Cup standings in the Super-G.
The leaderboard is expected to be full of Austrians and Italians as well, since five skiers from the two nations reside in the top eight places of the World Cup standings.
Vonn is aiming to become the first American winner of the competition since Picabo Street in 1998. If she medals, she would be the third woman from the United States to make the podium in the super-G.
Prediction: 1. Gut (Switzerland), 2. Vonn (United States), 3. Veith (Austria)
Men's Figure Skating
The king of men's figure skating put together one of the most memorable short programs in Olympic history on Thursday night, and Japan's Yuzuru Hanyu is ready to do the same in Friday's free skate.
The 23-year-old defending Olympic champion scored 111.68 on Thursday to give him a four-point advantage over Spain's Javier Fernandez.
Japan's Shoma Uno and China's Jin Boyang also garnered a score over 100 from the short program, which sets up quite the showdown inside the Gangneung Ice Arena.
Hanyu, Umo and Jin were the medalists at the 2017 World Championships, with Fernandez stuck on the outside in fourth place.
Fernandez won the 2016 World Championships, with Hanyu and Jin coming second and third, respectively.
Three years ago, it was Fernandez and Hanyu at the top of the World Championships leaderboard, with the Spaniard coming out victorious.
All four of the medal contenders know what it takes in the free skate to leave the ice with gold on Friday, but Hanyu holds a distinct advantage because of how magnificent his short program was.
Internet phenom Adam Rippon is the highest-placed American skater in seventh, and even if he delivers a flawless routine, he'll come up short of the medal positions because the technical quality of his free skate doesn't compare to those of the leaders.
Prediction: 1. Hanyu (Japan), 2. Fernandez (Spain), 3. Jin (China)
Women's Ski Slopestyle
The last time we saw the slopestyle course, female snowboarders were getting tossed to the ground by high winds in an event that should have been postponed due to poor conditions.
On Friday, the American contingent led by Maggie Voisin will go for gold in the women's ski slopestyle competition.
Voisin, 19, qualified for Sochi four years ago but suffered a broken ankle and couldn't compete.
With 15-year-old Estonian Kelly Sildaru at home nursing a knee injury, per Reuters' Jack Tarrant, the field is wide open for Voisin and other competitors to claim the top spot on the podium.
Another 15-year-old, Sweden's Jennie-Lee Burmansson, is the slopestyle leader in the World Cup standings, while the Norwegian pair of Tiril Sjaastad Christansen and Johanne Killi are second and third, respectively.
In addition to Voisin, Caroline Claire—fifth in the World Cup standings—present the United States with the best chances to medal.
Prediction: 1. Killi (Norway), 2. Burmansson (Sweden), 3. Voisin (United States)
Follow Joe on Twitter, @JTansey90.
Statistics obtained from Olympic.org and FIS-Ski.com.
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