Not hanging up her speedskates
Pechstein wants another try to become oldest woman to win gold at Winter Games.
Despite missing out on a chance to become the oldest woman to win a gold medal at the Winter Games, seventime Olympian Claudia Pechstein of Germany isn’t yet ready to hang up her speedskates.
Pechstein, who was six days short of her 46th birthday on Friday when she faded and finished a distant eighth in the women’s 5,000meter race with a time of 7:05.43, said she intends to continue competing through the 2022 Beijing Games. “Why not?” she said, laughing.
Why not, indeed. Pechstein, who has won five gold medals, two silvers and two bronzes and holds the Olympic record in the 5,000 since 2002, said she had been training well before Friday’s 12 1⁄2-lap race. In addition, she has had success on the Gangneung Oval, having won a silver medal here last year in a World Cup 5,000meter race to become the oldest women’s speedskater to win a World Cup medal.
“The lap times up to six, seven laps were OK. I don’t know why, now, it’s not possible to make much more pressure,” said Pechstein, who missed the 2010 Winter Games while serving a twoyear ban for irregularities in her blood profile, a ban she has continued to fight to get overturned.
“Normally in training I have no problems. I can go 10, 15 laps with really good lap times. I don’t know why now. But the next chance is in four years to get the medal at the Olympics.”
The winner on Friday was Esmee Visser of the Netherlands, who was 4 years old when Pechstein won her first medal at the 1992 Albertville Games.
Visser’s winning time was 6 minutes, 50.23 seconds, allowing her to end the two Olympics winning streak of Martina Sablikova of the Czech Republic. Sablikova was second in 6:51.85, with Natalia Voronina of the Olympic Athletes from Russia third in 6:53.98.
Visser, 22 years and 20 days old, is the secondyoungest winner of this event; Pechstein was the youngest, three days past her 22nd birthday, when she triumphed at Lillehammer in 1994.
The lone American entrant, Carlijn Schoutens, was 11th with a time of 7:13.28. — Helene Elliott TV Ratings
NBC had its roughest night of the Olympics so far. The 19.3 million people who watched the games on NBC, NBCSN or streaming services in prime time on Thursday was down 16% from NBC’s 22.9 million viewers in Sochi four years ago.
On NBC alone, the viewership of 16.2 million represented a 29% drop, the Nielsen company said. It hurt that the night’s two most-anticipated (and ultimately disappointing) performances — Mikaela Shiffrin’s second slalom run and Nathan Chen’s short program skate — happened around midnight on the East Coast. NBCSN, which aired the entirety of the skating program, had its biggest audience of the Olympics with 2.75 million. — associated press Canada suffers rare loss in men’s hockey
The Czech Republic rallied twice to hand the Canadian men’s hockey team its first Olympic loss in eight years Saturday, riding goaltender Pavel Francouz to a 3-2 win in a shootout.
Canada had won 11 consecutive games at the Olympics — the first 10 with NHL players — dating to a loss to the U.S. in pool play in Vancouver in 2010. Canada opened these games with a comfortable 5-1 win over the Swiss that confirmed its status as one of the favorites in the tournament.
Russia, the United States and Canada have all lost in the preliminary round.
Mason Raymond and Rene Bourque scored firstperiod goals for Canada. — associated press Hoefflin wins slopestyle ski gold
Switzerland’s Sarah Hoefflin is the Olympic champion in women’s slopestyle skiing.
The 27-year-old put together an electric final run down the demanding course at Phoenix Snow Park on Saturday, posting a score of 91.20 to edge teammate Mathilde Gremaud for gold. Gremaud scored 88.00 on the first of her three runs in the finals but couldn’t top Hoefflin. Isabel Atkin of Britain took bronze with a score of 84.60 in her final run.
Defending Olympic champion Dara Howell crashed twice during qualifying and didn’t advance. American Devin Logan, a silver medalist in Sochi, reached the finals but wasn’t a factor after crashing or having execution problems in each of her last three runs.