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Key events
Men’s 50km mass start: as the Norweigians head into the wilderness, GB’s Andrew Musgrave is sixth at the bell.
Men’s 50km mass start: the three Norweigians start the final loop, nearly two minutes ahead of the rest. Klaebo is currently in third, but only by half a ski’s length.
An email drops, hello there John Donoghue.
“Looks like Christopher Lillis isn’t a Loser!”
Wasn’t that aerial perfection just the perfect riposte!
Bobsleigh: after that horrible crash, the fourth Austrian athlete has been stretchered away. Wishing him the very best in his recovery.
The action has restarted, with the Romanian quartet very pleased with their time. I can’t get my head around how difficult mentally it must be to go hard when you’ve seen a crash happen before your eyes. But these athletes are cut from granite.
Men’s 50km mass start: back to the muscle-melting endurance test, where it’s still a Norweigian one-two-three and Klaebo is is on the cusp of his sixth gold. There’s about half an hour to go.
GB’s Andrew Musgrave is busy in seventh, Joe Davies in 13th.
A bad wax job
Sweden’s biathletes have struggled to deliver medals at the Winter Games and on Friday they finally ran out of patience with their waxing team, blaming a bad job on their skis for an embarrassingly poor performance in the men’s mass start.
Usually counted among favourites in any biathlon event, the Swedes had a dismal day in the final men’s race of the Games, with Sebastian Samuelsson finishing 18th, Martin Ponsiluoma 21st and Jesper Nelin 26th in the 30-man field.
“The skis were the worst I ever had. They were crap,” a frustrated Samuelsson told Swedish TV after the race. “Today the glide from the skis was very bad … I’m here to fight for medals, but today I go without.“
Ski waxing is one of the most important elements of race preparation for biathletes and cross-country skiers, and getting the blend right for the combination of snow, temperature and altitude helps the athletes fly around the course, while getting it wrong makes it akin to skiing through treacle.
Reuters
Bobsleigh: worrying news from the sliding centre, where there has been a crash. The unfortunate Austrian team, piloted by Jakob Mandlbauer, hit a corner, toppled over and slid a fair section of the track on the side of the sleigh. We’re told that three members of the team got out but one is still being attended to.
🥇The USA take team gold in the aerials
Mixed team aerials: Christopher Lillis, who won Donald Trump’s ire after saying he was heartbroken over events in the US, nails the jump, punches the air, gets 117.19 and the gold goes to the USA! Switzerland take a surprise silver, and China must be content with bronze.
Mixed team aerials: another rag and bone landing by the Chinese, as Li Tianma loses his skies and tumbles down the slope like a tennis ball. He sits at the bottom with his head in his hands. Big favourites China will not win gold and go into silver behind Switzerland with one jump to come.
Mixed team aerials: Australia’s Reilly Flanagan is next, and he nails it too, with excellent rotation and a balletic landing. Australia go second behind the Swiss, but China and USA to come.
Mixed team aerials: A flying leap and multiple twists with a neat landing – the moustached Noe Roth of Switzerland gets the biggest score of the day!
Mixed team aerials: Connor Curran does enough to put the USA first with a fat 24-point lead with one round to go. As they stand:
USA – 208.16, China – 184.31, Switzerland – 167.37, Australia – 160.16.
Mixed team aerials: We’re in jump two of three. “Stretch, stretch, stretch!” comes the coach’s shout, but China’s individual gold-medal winner Wing Xindi lands awkwardly and tumbles dramatically nose between tail. Hmmm. He stretched, apparently, too much. His 87.72 puts China first, but the Americans are to come.
Medal event timings
All times in GMT.
Now: men’s 50k mass start🥇
Now: mixed team aerials 🥇
1.10pm: men’s ski cross 🥇
1.30pm: mixed relay ski mountaineering 🥇
2.05pm: women’s curling bronze-medal match USA v Canada🥉
2.15pm: women’s biathlon 12.5km mass start🥇
4.40pm: men’s speed skating mass start 🥇
5.15pm: women’s speed skating mass start 🥇
6.40pm: men’s ice hockey bronze-medal match Finland v Slovakia 🥇
7.05pm: men’s curling final GB v Canada🥇
9.05pm: two-woman bobsleigh🥇
Men’s 50km mass start: the front-skiers are off and away – Norway 1,2,3: Nyenget, Iversen, Klaebo, the Frenchman Loverra and neutral athlete Korostelev. GB’s Musgrave is in a desperate race to lead the peloton back into contention.
Men’s 50km mass start: after two laps the pace is telling. As three Norwegians break away up an incline, two of the big names drop out: Harald Andundsen and Iivo Niskanen.
Mixed team aerials: our finalists are sorted: the USA, China, Australia, and Switzerland will fly through the air for the medals – going again in about five minutes
Men’s four-man bobsleigh: with everyone down the course, Brad Hall’s GB quartet remain third, with Germany taking the top two spots. Run two starts around 11am GMT.
1. Germany (pilot Johannes Lochner) 53.91 seconds
2. Germany (Francisco Friedrich) 54.30
3. Great Britain (Brad Hall) 54.39
4. Switzerland (Cedric Follador) 54.49
5. Germany (Adam Ammour) 54.51
Men’s ski cross: the seeding is done and dusted in preparation for the knockout rounds at 11am GMT. GB’s Ollie Davies finished in 28th place.
Canada’s Reece Howden was the quickest, followed by Satoshi Furuno of Japan and Beijing champion Ryan Regez.
Feast your eyes on these gorgeous photographs. I particularly like Tom Jenkins’ eyes right portrait of Connor Hellebuyck.
Men’s 50km mass start: GB’s Andrew Musgrave, who has had a great games, is currently in 11th. Finland’s beast Iivo Niskanen takes the lead from Nyegenget and Klaebo, though there’s much pondering over how bad his cold is.
This race takes two hours, so let’s nose about the rest of the schedule.
Men’s 50km mass start: Martin Nyenget has taken a early lead – the commentators reckon he’s trying to break Klæbo, who has taken on the chase at the start of the chasing pack, and in fact has almost reeled him in already.
Men’s 50km mass start: I’m slightly disappointed that this isn’t one of those cross-country carnage running starts with everyone strung out one straight line. But it’s pretty fun, they’re queuing up, in seeding order, in four lines. You know who is pole position, in his now familiar white hat. In fact, Norway take the top four spots.
Off they go, sliding through the tracks.
Each skier is allowed to change skis once during the race – at the start of any of the seven laps of 7.2 k. The assistants carefully lay them out.
Time to have a quick look at what else is going on – the brutal 50km men’s mass start is off soon, at 10am GMT; while the US are currently winning the team aerials midway through jump one at the Livigno Aerials & Moguls Park. But the Chinese, including husband and wife gold medal stars Xu Mengtao and Wang Xindi, are yet to jump.
Men’s four-man bobsleigh: Yorkshireman Axel Brown is the pilot for Trinidad and Tobago, they’re a bit slow into the tin, and finish in last place.
Men’s four-man bobsleigh: Ok, so Israel, Trinidad and Tobago (soon to come) and Jamaica are hamstrung by not having seen the track until a few weeks ago. Thank you commentators. Israel go 20th, Jamica 18th.
Men’s four-man bobsleigh: saved by iplayer. Everyone’s favourite Olympians, the iconic Jamiacan bobsleigh team. Great kit, and a cracking coloured sleigh, as you’d expect, but it’s a bit of a wobble and they can only finish 18th.
One of the team is former GB sprinter Joel Fearon, who won bronze with John Jackson’s team in 2014.
“For their time and experience on the track,” says JAckson, “its’a good run.”
Men’s four-man bobsleigh the last three riders in the sleigh are basically power for two seconds and ballast for the rest. No! The BBC have pulled away shortly before the Jamaicans go… let me see if it is on iplayer.
Men’s four-man bobsleigh In the workshop, a man carefully waxes down a sleigh. Another Canadian team next, under Dearborn, but they can’t improve on their countrymen.
Men’s four-man bobsleigh: The French have a cracking silver sled, but it all goes wrong at the start when one of the riders gets his foot stuck.
The USA rumble down nicely, and finish eighth, especially when you consider that this happened only last month to driver Kris Horn.
Men’s four-man bobsleigh: Taylor Austin snaps his visor into place, taps the bob, and that’s the sign for the sprint start, Canada fold into place smoothly, and it’s a decent run but not enough to trouble the leaders.
Men’s four-man bobsleigh: With their chunky build and primary colours, the sleighs remind me of those 10p-and-ride-me aeroplanes that you used to find at the supermarket.
Two Swiss teams, the South Koreans and Italians have rattled down, but none have troubled the top three places: with Germany one and two, and GB in third.
Men’s four-man bobsleigh: The Austrians hit the wall almost as soon as they’ve folded into position, bouncing off another for good measure, and finish, in bob-time, a huge +0.89 behind the leaders.
Men’s four-man bobsleigh: Team GB, in a royal blue bob are next. Brad Hall drives/steers? well and they’re very happy to slip into bronze. These are not slips of men, they’re big units and it is incredible how they fold into little balls.
Hang about, how many German teams are there? Germany two and Germany three are next in their bobs, but neither are as quick as Lochner’s quad.
We’re off, immediately, to the Cortina Sliding Centre. The first German team, under pilot Johannes Lochner, are ready: four of them sprinting, pushing the bobsleigh, and then hopping in like sardines into a tin – they rattle and roll along smash the track record immediately.
Aha! Hazel Irvine is on hand to remind me me that men’s four-man bob competition also gets underway today, and very soon.
Preamble
Good morning! Golds galore on this, the penultimate day of the Games. So let’s fold – we are in Italy – up our sleeves and get stuck in.
Gold, gold, gold on the slopes, in the skiing mixed team, men’s ski cross and women’s half pipe – where GB’s Zoe Atkin, the world champion, qualified in first place.
Gold number six dangles for Johannes Høsflot Klæbo in the legendary men’s 50km mass start, with other prizes for everyone else.
After lunch, more glistening gongs in the mixed relay of the ski mountaineering – really looking forward to this one – and gold in the women’ s 12.5k mass start biathlon – Norweigian red v French blue.
Away from the slopes, Bruce Mouat’s men get the medal match they’ve been waiting for, after a circumlocutious route, the battle for curling gold against Canada. That starts at 7.05pm GMT; while the women’s bronze match between the USA and Canada curls off this afternoon.
Thrills and spills in the speed skating, with the men’s and women’s mass starts from 4.40pm GMT. And on a different rink, the losing semi-finalists, Finland and Slovakia, fight for bronze in the men’s ice hockey.
One final gold of the day in the two-woman bobsleigh, just after nine. Germany’s Laura Nolte and Deborah Levi lead after the heats and are favourites for gold
There’s room on the sofa, jump on.
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