Olympics Edition — Day 12: Up and at ’em
From The GIST (hi@thegistsports.com)
Morning!
Grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and get your stream on — a whole bunch of medals are on the line from Milano Cortina this morning. Podium cellies with a side of breakfast? No mid-week slump here.
🥇 | 🥈 | 🥉 | Total | |
| 🇳🇴 Norway | 15 | 8 | 9 | 32 |
| 🇮🇹 Italy | 9 | 4 | 12 | 25 |
| 🇺🇲 USA | 6 | 11 | 6 | 23 |
⛸️ American figure skater Alysa Liu looked calm, cool, and collected in her women’s single short program yesterday, earning a season-best score that landed her in third place ahead of tomorrow’s final. It’s not a comeback; it’s an evolution.
- Two more Americans also qualified for the free skate: Isabeau Levito sits eighth, while medal favorite Amber Glenn is 13th after completing a double loop instead of a triple, a heartbreaking mistake that could cost her a spot on the podium.
🏒 Team USA men’s hockey will play Sweden in today’s 3:10 p.m. ET quarter-final. It’s a tough matchup for the No. 2 seed considering Sweden beat the red, white, and blue 2–1 in last year’s 4 Nations Face-Off. Good thing revenge is a dish best served on ice.
🥈⛷️ American freestyle skier Mac Forehand earned silver in perhaps the best big air final ever yesterday. Forehand landed a jaw-dropping trick that had never been seen before in his final run and posted a record-breaking score — a record that was broken one jump later by the gold medalist, Norway’s Tormod Frostad. Truly soaring, flying.
🥈💨⛸️ The U.S. men took silver in the speed skating team pursuit yesterday. The reigning world record holders had their eyes on gold, but second is a solid consolation prize for the trio of Casey Dawson, Emery Lehman, and Ethan Cepuran in their final Games as a team.
🇳🇴🎿 History had its eyes on Norwegian cross-country skier Johannes Høsflot Klæbo this morning, and the 29-year-old did not disappoint: Klæbo tied the record for most golds won in a single Winter Olympics (five) with Norway’s men’s team sprint win earlier today.
- Speaking of Norway’s Olympic dominance, Jens Luraas Oftebro won his second gold of the Games in Nordic combined yesterday, bringing the country’s medal total to a whopping 32. Sparking joy, indeed.
🥌 It was a mixed bag for Team USA curling yesterday: The women split their last two matches, beating Denmark 10–3 yesterday before falling 8–7 to Great Britain while you were sleeping. But don’t panic: They’re still in the mix for a semifinal spot.
- As for the men, they fell 8–5 to both China and Italy yesterday, complicating their quest for a semifinal berth with just today’s 8:05 a.m. ET tilt against Great Britain remaining.
🇩🇪 Turns out the Germans are very good at bobsleigh: Germany swept the podium in two-man bobsled for the second straight Games yesterday with perennial bridesmaid Johannes Lochner and his brakeman, Georg Fleischhauer, usurping the crown from the reigning Olympic champ, their countryman and silver medalist Francesco Friedrich.
- 🇺🇸 The American duo of Frankie del Duca and Joshua Williamson finished just off the podium in fourth.
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Alpine skiing
🏅⛷️ One more chance
The GIST: American skiing star Mikaela Shiffrin, the winningest Alpine skier of all time, hasn’t won an Olympic medal since 2018 — and her final chance to reach the podium at these Games is in today’s 7:30 a.m. ET slalom. Drop right in on today’s story as her Olympic journey continues.
⛷️ Slalom is Shiffrin’s best event: Slalom is the shortest of the five Olympic Alpine skiing events, featuring competitors navigating through gates and racing to the finish line. And it’s where Shiffrin really shines: Of her record-setting 108 career World Cup victories, 71 are in slalom and seven came this year alone.
👀 But Shiffrin hasn’t met high expectations on the Olympic stage: Competing in her fourth Games, Shiffrin (who’s won two Olympic golds and one silver) has not medaled since 2018. She missed the podium in all six of her races in Beijing 2022 in the wake of her father’s unexpected death, a tragedy that, if you ask her mom/coach, almost ended her career.
- As for these Games, Shiffrin had an unexpectedly slow slalom in the team combined last week and finished 11th in an extremely competitive giant slalom.
🏅 Zooming out: Milano Cortina has seen many stars fall short of the moment and succumb to the pressure (see: figure skaters Ilia Malinin and the aforementioned Amber Glenn, or Norwegian skier Atle Lie McGrath). A household name, the spotlight is squarely on Shiffrin in the slalom. All we can do is watch and wait.
Event | ⏰ (ET) | 👀 |
| 🏅🏂 Women’s snowboard slopestyle final | Today at 8:30 a.m. | 🇺🇸 Lily Dhawornvej, Jessica Perlmutter; 🇳🇿 Zoi Sadowski-Synnott |
| 💨⛸️ Men’s 500m short track speed skating quarter-finals | Today at 2:15 p.m. | 🇺🇸 Andrew Heo |
| 🏒 Men’s hockey quarter-finals | Today at 3:10 p.m. | 🇺🇸 USA vs. 🇸🇪 Sweden |
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✨ Look good, play good
Athletes and fans alike continue to absolutely serve at the Games, with Olympic style taking center stage in one of the world’s fashion capitals. Here are a few of the looks making a splash in our group chat:
- 🇨🇦 The fabulous, bedazzled Mounties treating Tim Hortons as an accessory.
- 🇳🇴 Team Norway curling’s legendary Fancy Pants.
- ⛸️ The guy who’s coaching 16 different figure skaters from 13 different countries…with different jackets for each of them.
- ♥️ The 27 ’fits of the Uniform Support Programme.
- 👻 A different kind of look: Team USA men’s hockey’s Quinn Hughes knows he’s haunted.
Today’s email was brought to you by Alessandra Puccio, Lisa Minutillo, Lauren Tuiskula, and Katie Kehoe Foster. Editing by Katie Kehoe Foster. Fact-checking and ops by Elisha Gunaratnam. Ads by Alessandra Puccio and Lisa Minutillo. Managing edits by Lauren Tuiskula. Head of content Ellen Hyslop.