Winter Olympics 2022 day 13: USA v Canada women’s ice hockey – live! | Sport

Curling: I flipped over to USA-Denmark and heard “if they get this, they’ll get four points.” Nearly had a heart attack. But what they meant was that Denmark would have four points for the game, a threshold they have not oft crossed.

And they have not yet crossed it here, either, as Mikkel den Krause makes another mistake that would agitate a typical above-average club curler, taking out a US rock but rolling far enough from the center to give the US another steal. It’s 7-3 USA after eight ends, and John Shuster has the semifinals in sight.

The field of 12 is set, led by Eileen Gu, who finished a staggering six points ahead of Canada’s Rachael Karker. Estonia’s Kelly Sildaru took third despite passing up her second run.

Team GB will be represented by Zoe Atkin with an impressive fourth-place run. The last spot goes to Germany’s Sabrina Cakmakli.

Aside from Sildaru, Atkin and Cakmakli, the final 12 comes from three countries. Kexin Zhang busted out a 1080 to move up from 10th to fifth in her second run, joining Chinese teammates Gu and Li Fanghui in the final. Canada has Karker, Cassie Sharpe and Amy Fraser.

For the USA, it’s Brita Sigourney, Hanna Faulhaber and Carly Margulies, clumped together from eighth to 10th.

Halfpipe: Margulies improves slightly to 82.25. That’s behind Faulhaber, so her fellow American clinches a spot, but Margulies should qualify.

Now it’s up to Devin Logan, who goes big on the first trick but barely lands it. Her tail hits before the rest of her, and it’s a nice bit of athleticism to hang on.

But that’s not going to impress the judges. She’s out.

Margulies is in, and NBC informs us that she has not competed in two years due to injuries. Not a bad comeback.

Halfpipe: As expected after that second run, Brita Sigourney has qualified for the final.

Not much has changed on the bubble, which has a lot of Americans. Hanna Faulhaber is ninth and has almost clinched a spot. Carly Margulies is 10th. Devin Logan is one spot outside the top 12 and will have a pressure-packed final run.

Faulhaber has already done both runs. Margulies is up now.

Alpine skiing, downhill: That’ll do quite nicely for Mikaela Shiffrin. A coach gives a nice fist pump as she comes in second of the skiers so far, trailing only Ledecka and putting 0.44 seconds between herself and Gisin.

Ledecka competes almost exclusively in downhill and super-G when she does Alpine skiing rather than snowboarding. She shouldn’t be a factor in the slalom unless favorites like Shiffrin miss gates.

Alpine combined, downhill: With Petra Vlhova out, the biggest threat to Mikaela Shiffrin is surely Switzerland’s Michelle Gisin. She’s just the defending champion. And she took bronze in super-G earlier in these Games.

But her downhill run is a little ragged. She’s 0.99 seconds behind Ledecka and just fourth out of the eight pre-Shiffrin skiers.

Second place — the USA’s Keely Cashman.

Alpine combined, downhill: The versatile skier-snowboarder Ester Ledecka is the fastest skier of the first five by a wide margin.

Mikaela Shiffrin starts ninth. Another five minutes or so.

Halfpipe: Can Brita Sigourney, the 2018 bronze medalist, improve in her second run to feel a little safer about qualifying for the final? Her 80.50 in the first run put her in eighth place.

On her second hit, she flies 12 1/2 feet out of the pipe. She does the same tricks as in her first run except for some slight changes near the bottom.

That’s an 84.50. Should be fine.

A bit earlier, Kelly Sildaru opted out of her second run, thinking her 87.50 will be enough to qualify. Safe bet.

Halfpipe: Eileen Gu won the big air event by a hair. If she does anything like this in the final, it won’t be close. She made the halfpipe look small, easily floating more than 10 feet above it and once again landing back-to-back 900s at the start. The back-to-back flatspins at the bottom were sick as well.

95.50. Off the charts.

Before that, the USA’s Hanna Faulhaber didn’t improve her score, once again getting tremendous amplitude but having some sketchy landings.

After that, Britain’s Zoe Atkin improved slightly to 86.75. She’ll be in the final.

Coming up in about one minute: Women’s combined downhill.

This is where Mikaela Shiffrin should shine. She’s the slalom GOAT and is good enough in downhill. She took silver in this event in 2018 and won the 2021 world championship.

Halfpipe: If you’re checking in from New Zealand, I have some bad news — Chloe McMillan is 17th and Anja Barugh is 18th. As many a report card might say: Needs improvement.

Halfpipe: The first run is done. Top 12 reach the final. Only the best run counts for each skier.

Eileen Gu has the top score with a 93.75, and there’s no way 12 people will top that. It’s unlikely more than two people have a shot at it. Canada’s Rachael Karker and Estonia’s Kelly Sildaru are similarly safe. Likely safe: Canada’s Cassie Sharpe and Team GB’s Zoe Atkin.

Three Americans — Hanna Faulhaber, Brita Sigourney and Carly Margulies — are clustered at seventh through ninth and might need better runs to feel safe. Devin Logan is 13th, so she definitely needs better.

Curling: Well, that changes things. John Shuster makes a solid takeout to lie three with his last rock, leaving no Danish rocks in the house.

Denmark’s Mikkel den Krause needs to draw close to the button to get a single point. If he misses by a couple of feet, he gives up a steal of one.

He missed by a lot. In archery terms, his shot missed the target entirely and went somewhere into a neighboring realm.

USA 5, Denmark 2 after four ends.

Bird photo!

Curling: I’ve been told there’s a bird in the Ice Cube, but I have no photo.

Anyway, the US men just need to beat last-place Denmark to reach the semifinals. They gave up a steal in the second end to trail 2-0. They did get two back in the third, though.

Halfpipe: From 32 to just-turned-20, it’s Estonian star Kelly Sildaru dropping into the pipe on her birthday. She and Gu are the only skiers going for the big air-slopestyle-halfpipe triple. No medal for her in big air, but she took bronze in slopestyle. She doesn’t show anything spectacular but gets an 87.50.

Halfpipe: A lot of these competitors are teens or in their early 20s. The USA’s Brita Sigourney is 32. She starts out with a huge 900 but loses some momentum late. That’s still an 80.50.

Halfpipe: Canada’s Cassie Sharpe only has rotation in three of her six hits, but the judges must have liked what they saw, because that’s an 86.25.

Next — Britain’s Zoe Atkin, one of many US-based Winter Olympians who competes for another country, has a nice array of spins for an 85.25.

The parade of high scores comes to a screeching halt with China’s Wu Meng. She crashed, so her score was obviously kind of low. This isn’t figure skating.

Halfpipe: Stanford-bound Chinese freestyle skier Eileen Gu starts with back-to-back 900s and ends up with a 93.75.

There are six judges for this event, and the highest and lowest scores are dropped. Ironically, the US judge was responsible for the “lowest” score for Gu, though it was a 93. Remarkable consensus here.

Halfpipe: The USA’s Hanna Faulhaber has kicked off qualifying with about 15 1/2 feet of amplitude and six tricks. That’s good for an 84.25.

Canada’s Rachael Karker goes for more spins than height, landing back-to-back 900s.

Here goes Gu …

Hi folks. Beau Dure here, and I’d like to start by saying 1,057 matches in curling still aren’t enough. Especially for the US women, who are out. We watched some of the USA-Canada game last night at the curling club, and we’re all a little depressed.

Speaking of USA-Canada, stay up late with me (East Coasters, that is) to keep up with one of the most anticipated events of these Games — USA-Canada women’s hockey, for the gold this time.

Around that time, Mikaela Shiffrin will be going in the combined, an event in which she would the prohibitive favorite if not for her mistakes on these slopes over this fortnight.

Before that, let’s check in with Eileen Gu again as she hops into the halfpipe.

Today’s schedule

Times are all in local Beijing time. For Sydney it is +3 hours, for London it is -8 hours, for New York it is -13 hours and San Francisco is -16 hours.

• 9.05am and 2.05pm and 8.05pm Curling – after approximately 1,057 matches it is the final bits of the round robin stage, and then in the evening it is the men’s semi-finals 🥇
• 9.30am-3.10pm Freestyle skiing – there’s action all day but the main attraction from 2pm onwards is the women’s ski cross which goes from the quarter-finals to the final 🥇
• 10.30am and 2pm Alpine skiing – it is the women’s combined – they do the downhill in the morning, the slalom in the afternoon 🥇
• 12.10pm Ice hockey – no shocks in the women’s ice hockey the gold medal game will be Canada v US 🥇
• 4pm and 7pm Nordic combined – the teams do jumping first and cross-country 🥇
• 4.30pm Speed skating – the women’s 1,000m at the National Speed Skating Oval 🥇
• 6pm Figure skating – the conclusion of the women’s single skating with the free skating 🥇