GAMES’ FIRST GOLD GOES TO SWEDEN
PYEONGCHANG» Sweden’s Charlotte Kalla won the first gold medal of the Pyeongchang Games, and Norwegian cross country skier Marit Bjoergen took silver in the women’s 15-kilometer skiathlon to become the most decorated female Winter Olympian ever.
Bjoergen, who announced this will be her last Olympics, captured her 11th career medal Saturday, breaking a three-way tie with Russian Raisa Smetanina and Italian Stefania Belmondo.
Kalla won the race by more than seven seconds, breaking away from the pack in the final 2 kilometers to avenge her loss to Bjoergen in the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
Jessica Diggins finished fifth, failing to become the first American woman to earn a medal in cross country skiing.
Krista Parmakoski of Finland finished third.
Dahlmeier perfect in 7.5K sprint. Germany’s Laura Dahlmeier wasn’t just good. She was perfect.
The 24-year-old budding biathlon star hit all 10 targets to win her first gold medal in the women’s 7.5-kilometer sprint.
Dahlmeier had won five of six possible medals at last year’s World Championships. Coincidentally, the one event she didn’t win was this one.
Only three women out of 86 competitors hit all 10 targets on a cold and blustery night. However, the other two failed to crack the top 15 because they took too long to shoot those targets.
Norway’s Marte Olsbu captured the silver medal and Veronika Vitkova from the Czech Republic took home the bronze.
Dutch dominate speedskating. The Dutch resumed where they left off four years ago, dominating the Olympic speedskating Oval and getting a clean sweep of medals in the women’s 3,000 meters, with outsider Carlijn Achtereekte leading the way.
Achtereekte raced in the first half of the program with the also-rans, but her time of 3 minutes, 59.21 seconds was good as gold as double 3,000-meter Olympic champion Ireen Wust finished .08 seconds behind.
Bronze went to Antoinette de Jong for the amazing Dutch sweep.
German wins men’s ski jumping. Andreas Wellinger withstood frigid temperatures and windy conditions to claim the gold medal in normal hill ski jumping.
High winds at the Alpensia Ski Jumping center during the first round resulted in a 30-minute delay of the final. The temperature was 12 degrees Fahrenheit, but it felt a lot colder with the wind chill.
The wind continued in the final round and there were numerous delays before the 22year-old German nailed a jump of 113.5 meters to secure the gold with 259.3 points.
Johann Andre Forfang took the silver ahead of fellow Norwegian Robert Johansson.
Defending Olympic champion Kamil Stoch of Poland was fourth.
Men’s downhill postponed. Strong wind forced the men’s downhill to be postponed.
The first race of the 11-event Alpine program was originally scheduled for 7 p.m MST on Saturday. But three hours before it was supposed to start, race organizers said the downhill would be moved to a different day.
They did not immediately announce a new date.
Race organizers say the gondola lift carrying teams and officials up the mountain could not be operated.
Opening ceremony ratings. NBC’S coverage of the Pyeongchang Olympics’ opening ceremony reached 27.8 million viewers on the TV network, a number that inched up to 28.3 million when digital followers are added. While down from Sochi viewership four years ago, it beat the opening night of the Summer Olympics two years ago and was the most watched Friday night television program in four years.