USOC disappointed with medal count
With the U. S. team facing its worst medal haul in 20 years at a Winter Games, the U. S. Olympic Committee’s sports chief says he’ll take a hard look at what occurred to try to avoid a repeat.
The United States had 23 medals heading into the final day of action Sunday, with an outside chance to win one more. It will be the poorest showing since 1998.
“We’re going to take a hard look at what occurred here,” Alan Ashley, the USOC’s chief of sport performance, said Sunday at the organization’s closing news conference.
Ashley acknowledged the numbers were disappointing. A USOC internal document, obtained by the Associated Press, set the target at 37 medals and a pegged a minimum of 25. Ashley said he took hope because 35 U. S. athletes finished fourth, fifth or sixth in Pyeongchang.
CLOSING CEREMONY Russia ban upheld, so no flag
The International Olympic Committee on Sunday upheld the ban of Russia from the Pyeongchang Winter Games because of doping, denying the 168 athletes competing here as “Olympic Athletes from Russia” the right to march in the closing ceremony under their country’s flag.
A condition for Russia’s reinstatement was no further positive drug tests at these Olympics. Two of the four athletes who tested positive in Pyeongchang were Russian, including a curler who had to return his bronze medal.
Russia was banned from the Olympics on Dec. 5 because of a massive doping scandal at the 2014 Sochi Games. The IOC left open the possibility of reinstatement ahead of the closing ceremony if the Russians met a series of criteria, and Russian athletes would be allowed to participate under the Olympic flag.
MEN’S CURLING U. S. has another ‘ Miracle on Ice’
John Shuster’s last throw in the eighth end of the curling final Saturday clacked off one Swedish stone and knocked it into another, sending them both skittering out of scoring range. Five yellow- handled American rocks were left behind.
The score, known as a five- ender, is so rare it has only been topped once before in the history of the men’s or women’s Olympic final. And it effectively clinched gold for the Americans, who rallied from the brink of pool- play elimination to claim only the second curling medal ever for the United States with a 10- 7 victory in nine ends.
But when the Americans looked at the medals draped around their necks, there was a problem: They had been given the ones for the women’s winners. The correct medals were quickly swapped out.
BOBSLED Germans sweep events
German Francesco Friedrich drove to the four- man bobsledding gold medal Sunday, finishing the team’s four runs in 3 minutes, 15.85 seconds to win by more than a half- second. A Korean sled and another German sled shared the silver.
After being shut out in Sochi in 2014, the first Games in 50 years in which Germany didn’t win a single medal in bobsledding, they swept the two- man and four- man golds.
SNOWBOARDING Ledecka wins gold in 2nd sport
On a snowboard and skis, Ester Ledecka is a history- making Olympic gold medalist. The Czech pulled double- duty on the slopes and became the first to win snowboarding’s parallel giant slalom and skiing’s Alpine super- G.
She outraced Selina Joerg of Germany to the line in the final of the snowboarding event Saturday and won by .46 seconds. That came seven days after she won the superG by .01 seconds