U.S. Winter Olympic teams selected
Two-time Olympic champion Mikaela Shiffrin leads the 17-member list for the U.S. Alpine skiing team nominated late Friday for the Beijing Winter Games.
There are nine firsttime Olympians on the roster, which still awaits confirmation from the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee.
Shiffrin heads to her third Olympics. She already owns three medals, including a gold in slalom in 2014 and in giant slalom in 2018.
Other Americans who previously made Olympic teams and are back are
Breezy Johnson, Tricia Mangan, Jackie Wiles, Bryce Bennett, Ryan Cochran-Siegle, Tommy Ford and Travis Ganong.
The first-timers are
Keely Cashman, Katie Hensien, AJ Hurt, Mo Lebel, Paula Moltzan, Nina O’Brien, Bella Wright, River Radamus and Luke Winters.
In other teams nominated, Shaun White is one of four defending gold medalists named to the U.S. snowboarding team, along with Chloe Kim, Jamie Anderson
and Red Gerard.
White finished third last week at a World Cup halfpipe contest in Switzerland to eliminate any doubt about his spot, and the U.S. Ski and Snowboard team made it official when they announced the 26-person team. Kim won the gold in women’s halfpipe in 2018, while Anderson and Gerard won in slopestyle.
American moguls skier Kai Owens has made her first Olympic team, giving the 17-year-old a chance to return to the country where she was born to compete for a gold medal.
Owens was abandoned at a town square in a province of China as an infant. Taken to an orphanage, she was adopted at around 16 months old by a couple from Colorado. She blossomed into a moguls standout.
ETC.
Skiing: Dave Ryding kneeled in the finish area and kissed the snow. A few meters away, his coach and ski technician cried in happiness. British ski racing had been waiting
Afor this moment for more than five decades. Ryding had just become the first British winner in the 55-year history of the Alpine skiing World Cup, triumphing in one of the classic slaloms of the men’s circuit at Kitzbuhel, Austria. ... A week after crashing at high speed in Austria, Sofia Goggia
captured her fourth win in five World Cup downhills this season at Cortina D’Ampezzo, Italy, despite a mishap-filled run in which the Italian was all over the shortened Olympia delle Tofane course.
Figure skating: Mai Mihara won her second career Four Continents figure skating title at Tallinn, Estonia, in a strong recovery from missing out on the Japanese team for the Winter Olympics, and Audrey Lu and Misha Mitrofanov took pairs gold for the United States. Lu and Mitrofanov became the first U.S. pair to win Four Continents gold since 2018 after recovering from Lu’s early fall on a triple toeloop to post 120.75 in the free skate for a total of 189.10.
Luge: Toni Eggert
and Sascha Benecken
AAare luge World Cup overall champions for the sixth time, getting that title back just in time for the Olympics. Eggert and Benecken won the season’s World Cup doubles finale at St. Moritz, Switzerland, a win that was good enough to vault them into the top spot in the season-ending standings. ... Wolfgang Kindl of Austria rallied in the second heat to win the final race of the men’s World Cup season, finishing in 2:10.246.
Soccer: American forward Daryl Dike was hurt on his full debut for West Bromwich Albion and is set to be out for at least two weeks. Dike came off with a hamstring injury early in the second half of West Brom’s 3-0 win over Peterborough in the second-tier Championship in England. ... New recruit Cedric Bakambu scored on his debut just two minutes after coming on as Marseille won 2-0 at Lens to move to second in the French league. ... Edin Dzeko netted a last-gasp winner to help Inter Milan beat virus-hit Venezia 2-1 and move five points clear at the top of Serie A.
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