Pyeongchang Winter Olympics 2018: Day 13 Winners and Losers
The United States ended a 20-year gold-medal drought in women's hockey, one of five medals Team USA took home during Day 13 of the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Team USA's 3-2 shootout win over Canada in the championship was one of two victories by the Americans over their northern neighbors in team sports on Day 13. Later on, the U.S. men's curling team knocked off Canada 5-3 in the semifinals to reach its first-ever Olympic gold-medal match.
Americans took gold and silver in men's freestyle skiing, with David Wise defending his gold medal from Sochi thanks to some late dramatics. Jamie Anderson won her second women's snowboarding medal of the 2018 Games, and Mikaela Shiffrin did the same in women's Alpine skiing.
Lindsey Vonn wasn't as fortunate, though, as what was most likely her final Olympics competition ended with a missed gate.
Keep reading for a full breakdown of Day 13's action.
Winner: David Wise, USA
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After winning men's freeski halfpipe gold at the 2014 Sochi Games, David Wise must've decided to make Pyeongchang more interesting.
In qualifying, the decorated American fell on his opening run. Without a top-12 score, he wouldn't reach the final. However, Wise calmly laid down a safe 79.60 and finished eighth.
And the drama continued during the final, as the 27-year-old crashed on his first two runs before finding the clutch gene yet again. He scored a 97.20 and soared to gold-medal position.
Three Americans had a chance to leap their teammate, but a Torin Yater-Wallace fall, a 96.40 from Alex Ferreira and an 84.80 by Aaron Blunck locked up Wise's victory.
Ferreira took silver, and New Zealand's Nico Porteous grabbed bronze.
Loser: Lindsey Vonn's Last Olympic Moment
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Lindsey Vonn deserved better, but not every story can have a Hollywood ending. And this was basically the opposite.
After excelling in the downhill portion of the women's Alpine combined, Vonn entered the slalom phase with a 0.74-second advantage. Though protecting that lead was always going to be a challenge because she rarely even trains for the event, the American legend hooked a tip and couldn't complete the race.
As Victor Mather and Bill Pennington of the New York Times wrote, "Vonn's Olympic journey would end with a 'Did Not Finish.'"
Vonn will continue racing on the World Cup circuit, and her three career Alpine medals at the Olympics are tied with teammate Mikaela Shiffrin—who won silver in the combined—for the second-most in U.S. history.
But we're not alone in wishing she could've at least finished.
Winner: Jamie Anderson, USA
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Jamie Anderson is really, really good at snowboarding. She might be even better at giving post-competition interviews.
The women's slopestyle champion in both 2014 and 2018, Anderson added a silver during the inaugural Olympic big air event and provided a memorable serious of quotes afterward.
"Honestly, I'm trippin'. Getting a gold and silver medal is cool—a little yin-yang—but a double gold would've been pretty gangster," she said on NBC. "But you gotta do your best and bless the rest."
Austria's Anna Gasser stood atop the podium, but the Anderson Experience solidified its place as one of the most outstanding USA-related parts of the 2018 Olympics.
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Loser: Favorites in Men's Slalom
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Marcel Hirscher had already celebrated gold medals in both the men's Alpine combined and giant slalom at these Olympics. The slalom was supposed to be the Austrian's crowning moment.
The 28-year-old missed a gate on his first run and failed to finish. Not only did Hirscher take silver in slalom at the Sochi Games, he's a four-time World Cup champion in the discipline and is headed toward a fifth season title this year.
If Hirscher couldn't win, surely it would be Norway's Henrik Kristoffersen, right?
But the world's No. 2 in slalom also skied out, so neither of the leading competitors even managed a medal.
Instead, Sweden's Andre Myhrer secured an improbable gold. Switzerland's Ramon Zenhaeusern and Austria's Michael Matt ended with silver and bronze, respectively.
Winner: USA Women's Hockey
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Did you watch the entire game? You're a winner.
The 80-minute thriller went to a shootout—which, for the record, is a horrible way to decide a championship—and U.S. forward Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson put a filthy, nasty move on Canadian goalie Shannon Szabados to take a 3-2 advantage.
Maddie Rooney then stoned Meghan Agosta to clinch Team USA's first Olympic gold since the inaugural tournament in 1998. The victory ended a two-cycle streak of the U.S. falling to Canada in the gold-medal game, which also occurred in 2002.
Without the Lamoureux family, the Americans would've fallen short. Monique scored the clutch game-tying goal late in the third period to force overtime and set up Jocelyn's shootout heroics.
But the twins saved the day, and the U.S. women's hockey team is the Olympic champion once again.
Loser: South Korean Short-Track Speedskaters
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Olympic host South Korea picked up two medals in Thursday's final trio of short-track speedskating, upping its total in the sport to six, making up more than half the country's total haul of 11 medals. But it could have done even better with four individuals and a relay team reaching the finals.
Standouts Choi Min-jeong and Shim Suk-hee took each other out in the final of the women's 1,000-meter race, clearing the way for Suzanne Schulting of the Netherlands to win gold for her country's first-ever win on the short track to go with 41 earned in speed skating's more traditional long track discipline.
Choi and Shim were part of Korea's gold medal-winning 3,000-meter relay on Tuesday and Choi also won gold in the 1,500 on Saturday but she was also penalized in the 500-meter finals on Feb. 10 after twice breaking the Olympic record in earlier heats.
The men's 500-meter race, won by China's Wu Dajing with a world-record time of 39.584 seconds, saw Koreans Hwang Dae-heon take silver and Lim Hyo-jun get bronze and later Lim was part of Korea's 5,000-meter relay team that qualified first in the semifinals only to finish fourth.
Winner: Germany's Nordic Combined Team
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Among the strangest Winter Olympic events are the ones that mix two different sports into one. There's the biathlon, which requires competitors to be adept at both cross-country skiing and shooting, but even more odd is Nordic combined.
Nordic merges ski jumping with cross-country skiing, with the final event a team one in which the same four people do jumps off the large hill and then compete in a 4x5-km cross-country relay.
As complicated as that many sound, Germany has it down pat. Its team of Eric Frenzel, Vinzenz Geiger, Fabian Riessle and Johannes Rydzek easily beat Norway to sweep gold in all three Nordic events.
Frenzel had already won gold in the individual normal hill/10km to go with a bronze in the individual large hill/10km event. In that, Rydzek took gold and Riessle silver.
Loser: Canada Team Sports
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Hockey and curling are the only completely team-oriented sports in the Winter Olympics, and Canada tends to excel in both. But not in Pyeongchang, and particularly not on Day 13.
The women's hockey team fell to the United States in the gold-medal match, ending a run of four consecutive Olympic championships. Then the Canadians' three-time defending gold medalist men's curling team lost 5-3 to Team USA in the semifinals.
Earlier in the Olympics, Canada's women's curling team finished sixth in pool play, marking the first time it won't medal in the event.
All that's left is the men's hockey team, which is set to face Germany in the semifinals.
Winner: United States Men's Curling
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Sitting at 2-4 after six matches, Team USA was a long shot to make the playoffs in men's curling. Then it got on a run, winning its final three round-robin contests, starting with a 9-7 defeat of three-time defending gold medalist Canada.
That earned it the No. 3 seed and another matchup with Canada in the semifinals. A win would guarantee Team USA a medal and for the first time a gold or silver.
No pressure, right?
Tied 2-2 through seven ends, Team USA stole two points in the eighth and then held on for a 5-3 victory. Now Team USA will face Sweden, a 9-3 winner over Switzerland, for the gold medal Saturday.
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