Bobsledder Meyers Taylor makes more Olympic history
Laura Nolte and Mariama Jamanka added to Germany’s record haul of Olympic medals.
Elana Meyers Taylor extended her medal record, too.
The German sliding domination of the Beijing Games continued Saturday, with Nolte driving to gold and Jamanka winning the silver in the women’s bobsled competition — and Meyers Taylor, in possibly her last race, grabbed the bronze for the fifth medal of her Olympic career.
That’s more than any Black athlete in Winter Olympic history, the most by any women’s bobsledder at the Olympics and two more than any other Olympic bobsledder, male or female, has won for the United States.
“That is overwhelming,” Meyers Taylor said. “It’s so crazy to hear that stat and know that I’m part of a legacy that’s bigger than me.”
Nolte and Deborah Levi won with ease, finishing four runs in 4 minutes, 3.96 seconds. Jamanka, the 2018 Olympic champion, and Alexandra Burghardt were second in 4:04.73. Meyers Taylor and Olympic rookie Sylvia Hoffman were third in 4:05.48.
Meyers Taylor smacked the top of her sled in celebration as she crossed the line knowing that the medal was clinched, hopped out and gave Hoffman a hug before throwing her fists into the air.
The U.S. team of monobob gold medalist Kaillie Humphries — battling a right leg injury that adversely impacted her start times — and Olympic rookie Kaysha Love finished seventh in 4:07.04.
Germany now has eight golds — in nine events — and 14 medals overall in the three sliding sports at the Beijing Olympics. The Germans will likely add to that on the final day in Beijing, since they have the top two sleds at the midpoint of the four-man competition that will end today. They already have more golds, and more medals, in sliding events than any nation ever has at any Olympics.
Meyers Taylor is now one of only four bobsledders
ever to compete in at least five Olympic races and medal in all of them. She became the fifth American bobsledder to win two medals in a single Olympics — pilot Stan Benham and pusher Pat Martin did it in 1952, pilot Steven Holcomb and pusher Steve Langton did it in 2014. And, thanks to women having two events at the Olympics for the first time this year, she’s going to forever be the first female bobsledder to win two medals at the same Games.
Meyers Taylor’s totals, including her Olympic debut as a push athlete: three silvers, two bronzes. The Beijing medals were a silver behind Humphries in monobob, and now this bronze.
Alpine skiing
Mikaela Shiffrin and the American mixed ski team missed out on a medal by 0.42 seconds today, losing in the bronze matchup in the final Alpine ski event of the Beijing Olympics.
The top-ranked Austrians won gold in the Winter Games’ second iteration of the mixed team parallel event, holding off Germany in the final.
The U.S. primarily used Shiffrin on the slower of the parallel courses, and she lost three of her four heats, including in the bronze matchup against Norway. Teammate River Radamus delivered the win the U.S. needed in the last heat to force a 2-2 tie, but
he wasn’t fast enough to tilt the tiebreaker — combined times of the fastest man and woman — to the Americans’ favor.
Austria also tied in the final against the Germans, but Stefan Brennsteiner and Katharina Liensberger took their heats in a faster combined time than Lena Duerr and Alexander Schmid.
Shiffrin, a two-time gold medalist, went 0 for 5 in her bid for an individual medal in Beijing. She only reached the finish line at two individual events, coming in ninth in the super-G and 18th in the downhill.
Figure skating
Four years after a crushing disappointment in the pairs figure skating at the Pyeongchang Games, when they lost the gold medal by the thinnest of margins, China’s Sui Wenjing and Han Cong flipped the script: They were the ones walking away as champions by a razor-thin margin.
Sui and Han scored a world-record 239.88 points with a flawless free skate set to a rendition of “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” beating Russian rivals Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov by just 63 hundredths of a point.
Sui and Han missed out on gold by 43 hundredths of a point in Pyeongchang.
Tarasova and Morozov finished with 239.25 points to claim the silver medal while teammates Anastasia Mishina and Aleksandr
Galliamov, the reigning world champions, scored 237.71 to earn the bronze medal.
Men’s hockey
Slovakia won its first Olympic hockey medal in the nation’s history, defeating Sweden 4-0 to win the bronze in men’s hockey.
Juraj Slafovsky scored two goals for Slovakia. Slafkovsky at 17 is the youngest player in the tournament and leads all scorers with seven goals.
Men’s curling
Five-time world champion. Olympic bronze medalist. Olympic silver medalist.
And now, finally, Niklas Edin of Sweden has claimed the only major title missing from a career in which he’s established himself as the most decorated skip in curling history.
Four years after losing in the final at the Pyeongchang Games to American upstart John Shuster, Edin led Sweden to the gold medal, beating Britain 5-4 in the first extra-end men’s final in Olympic history.
With the medal podium already set up, and Canada standing by to collect the bronze it won Friday by ending the Americans’ repeat hopes, Edin took advantage of the lastrock advantage in the first tiebreaker end and put his penultimate stone into the center of the target area. When British skip Bruce Mouat failed to knock it out on a ricochet, the Swedes had clinched it.
Speedskating
Irene Schouten of the Netherlands captured her third gold medal of the Beijing Olympics, chasing down Canada’s Ivanie Blondin to win the women’s mass start on Saturday.
In the final speedskating event of the Winter Games, Schouten established herself as the biggest star at the Ice Ribbon with a furious push to line to overtake Blondin.
Blondin grabbed the lead on the backstraight, but Schouten roared back with an all-out sprint to the finish line to win by 0.06 seconds.
Schouten also won gold in the 3,000 and 5,000 meters.
The Netherlands again topped the speedskating medal table, finishing with six golds and 12 medals overall. The United States finished with three medals, its best showing since 2010.
Blondin settled for the silver, adding to the gold she won as part of team pursuit. The bronze went to Italy’s Francesca Lollobrigida, her second medal of the Olympics after claiming a silver in the 3,000.
• Bart Swings of Belgium won the men’s mass start on a frustrating final day at the oval for the Americans.
Joey Mantia was edged out by the tip of a blade for the bronze. The 36-year-old Floridian complained that he was grabbed by another skater, costing him his second medal of the Beijing Games.
Swings improved on the silver he won at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games in the frenetic event — the only individual speedskating race with head-to-head competition instead of racing against the clock.
South Korea grabbed the other men’s medals. Chung Jae Won took the silver and defending Olympic champion Lee Seung Hoon settled for bronze.
Mantia, a three-time world champion, initially posted the same time as Lee. But the replay showed the tip of the South Korean’s skate crossed the line just ahead of Mantia’s blade, giving him the bronze by 0.001 seconds.