Here is latest Olympics news from Beijing and around the world on Day 8. Web links to longer stories if available:
2:40 a.m.: When the Beijing Olympics close on Feb. 20, IOC President Thomas Bach, by tradition, will call on the “youth of the world to assemble four years from now.” He may consider expanding that invitation to the 2026 Winter Games at Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo in Italy to another group: the oldies but goodies.
Start with Frenchman Johan Clarey. He turned 41 last month and in Beijing became the oldest man to win an Olympic medal in Alpine skiing. He took silver in downhill, his first medal in his fourth Olympics.
Clarey barely outdid Nick Baumgartner. In Beijing, the 40-year-old American won his first Olympic medal — a gold — with fellow American Lindsey Jacobellis in mixed team snowboard cross.
12:30 a.m.: After an unexpected off-game from Brad Gushue led to a rare losing streak for the Canadian men’s curling team, it was time to forget about the pebbled ice for a while.
Looking refreshed and energized, Gushue’s side was back in form for their return to the Ice Cube on Sunday morning. Canada took an early lead and never looked back in a confident 10-5 win over American John Shuster.
12 a.m.: Across two pandemic Olympics set in Asian countries, Asian American women fronting the Games have encountered a whiplashing duality — prized on the global stage for their medal-winning talent, buffeted by the escalating crisis of racist abuse at home.
The world’s most elite and international sporting event, which pits athletes and countries against each other, underscores along the way the crude reality that many Asian women face: of only being seen when they have something to offer.
“It’s like Asian American women can’t win,” says Jeff Yang, an author and cultural critic. “Asian American female athletes, like most Asian American women in many other spaces, are seen as worthy when they can deliver … and then disposed of otherwise.”
The issue is playing out at the Beijing Winter Games, the third straight Olympics set in Asia and the second held during the unrelenting global coronavirus crisis — and playing out, too, during a rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans.
11:45 p.m.: Freestyle skier Eileen Gu’s quest for a second gold medal at the Beijing Games ran into a slight detour when gusty wind and snow postponed the qualifying round for women’s slopestyle on Sunday.
Qualifying will now take place Monday and the final the following day. The switch avoids putting the gold-medal round directly against the Super Bowl, which is being televised on the Olympic network, NBC.
In addition, the men’s slopestyle qualification has switched from Monday to Tuesday. That final will now be Wednesday.
11 p.m.: Kaillie Humphries had agitated for years for the expansion of women’s bobsled, and while four-man remains elusive she finally has what in a way would might best be described as her Platonic race: the monobob. No pusher, no cargo, no drama other than the fight to be the number one driver on your own team. In a team sport that has so often been defined by selfishness, it is a solo act.
The nation, of course, is the other thing that changed. Humphries was named the winner of the 2014 Lou Marsh Award as Canada’s top athlete, and eight years later she is competing for the United States. The split was almost impossibly acrimonious, but the move happened just in time for her to be an American here. Humphries won the world titles in both two-woman and monobob this season, and this is her time to shine. The monobob is her first chance to stuff Canada in a box.
Humphries was the leader after two heats Sunday, with Canada’s Christine de Bruin next, 1.04 seconds back, 1.32 seconds off the lead. Canada’s Cynthia Appiah, after a disappointing first run, recovered to sit 10th.
Read more from the Star’s Bruce Arthur in Beijing.
9:20 p.m.: Team Canada is racing for the podium in the A final of the women’s 3,000 metre short track speed skating relay.
They’ll face the Netherlands, China and South Korea in the event at 6:45 a.m. ET Sunday.
1:57 p.m. Under the cooling towers, someone threw their gloves into the crowd. Maybe it was the Norwegian, or the Swede, celebrating an Olympic medal in big air skiing under the dead monuments of a decommissioned steel mill. The mill, apparently, was a major polluter, so it was good it was dead. Unlike the 2008 Games here, the skies over Beijing have been clear and blue, all the way.
But there are storms. Under the towers, shortly after the gloves landed, security staff closed in and disinfection began. The fans here are not part of the Games-encasing closed loop: they’re in the venues but kept apart. So the gloves were considered radioactive, and Games staff set to work disinfecting chairs, hands, even purses. They spray Olympic hotel parking lots with disinfectant here. In China, perhaps you can’t be too careful.
These Olympics have truly traveled to a strange place, and we are now halfway through the enclosed pandemic Games. At an Olympics every day feels like a lifetime, and this one more than most. There is little time outside: maybe at some venues, or waiting for a bus, or in the dirt-and-leafless tree park across from the Main Media Centre, or the bus transfer parking lot halfway up the mountains where people get stranded in the cold.
The Star’s Bruce Arthur from Beijing: The pandemic Olympics have reached their halfway point — and the real world is breaking into the loop
1:25 p.m. One point up, two places down.
That’s not what Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier were hoping for in the rhythm dance section of the figure skating ice dance competition at the Olympics.
A week earlier, in the team event — which might still find a medal winding its way to the Canadian squad, depending how the legal wrangling from a Russian positive drug test shakes out — the reigning world bronze duo racked up a score of 82.72 in the first phase of the competition, what used to be known as the original dance.
They claimed to be pleased, although it’s hard to tell with this particular tandem who spent so many years skating in the long shadow cast by ice dance virtuosos Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, merely gold-silver-gold at the Winter Games.
From the Star’s Rosie DiManno: Twizzle bobble has Canadians Gilles, Poirier outside Olympic podium bubble in ice dance
11:51 a.m. SLOWED TO A CRAWL
With gold and silver out of the equation and a bronze medal up for grabs, it all came down to who could crawl the fastest. After Italy’s Caterina Carpano knocked down Canada’s Meryeta O’Dine in the big final of the mixed snowboard cross, both athletes needed to crawl up the first jump — with their feet still strapped in their boards — just to get their races going again. O’Dine was the first one up and beat Carpano to the finish to claim bronze with partner Eliot Grondin. “Honestly, it felt ridiculous for a little bit, but you can’t really feel ridiculous when you’re trying to get to the finish line for a medal,” said O’Dine. It was Canada’s fifth snowboarding medal and 13th overall. Lindsey Jacobellis and Nick Baumgartner won gold for the United States.
10:27 a.m. Mark vs. Max.
This is not a good look, dudes. I’d call it a bonk — Mark McMorris smacking Max Parrot upside the head with his snowboard.
Canadian on Canadian at the Olympics. Bronze medallist shredding gold medallist, the country’s only gold medallist to this point.
Out of 84 nations competing at the 2022 Winter Games, stereotypically polite hosers from north of the 49th parallel would probably be the last mooks you’d expect to get into a medal squabble.
Full column from the Star’s Rosie DiManno: Mark McMorris’s Olympic medal beef with Max Parrot has been put to pasture. Now, bring on big air
Previously: Canadian snowboarders Eliot Grondin and Meryeta O’Dine took the bronze medal in dramatic fashion in mixed snowboard cross; speedskater Laurent Dubreuil missed the podium by three-hundredths of a second in men’s 500-metre long-track speedskating; Canada’s men’s hockey team fell to the U.S. 4-2 in the round robin.
For a full write-up of what you missed yesterday at the Beijing Olympics, click here.
For full coverage of the Beijing Olympics, click here.
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