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China’s Wu Shaotong is up first, and she may have a slight advantage because it’s snowing, which might slow down some of the competitors after her.
She’s smooth and gets decent amplitude, but her tricks aren’t as tricky as some of the others in this field. Still an accomplishment to get to this final after being 22nd in Beijing.
67.75
Start order for run 1
1. Wu Shaotong (China)
2. Mitsuki Ono (Japan)
3. Bea Kim (USA)
4. Sena Tomita (Japan)
5. Elizabeth Hosking (Canada)
6. Queralt Castellet Ibanez (Spain)
7. Choi Goan (South Korea)
8. Cai Xuetong (China)
9. Rise Kudo (Japan)
10. Maddie Mastro (USA)
11. Sara Shimizu (Japan)
12. Chloe Kim (USA)
It would seem that bordering the Pacific Ocean is a plus in this event.
We’re off …
Meanwhile, in curling, three of the four games in progress had a blank in the first end. I sense a rules change coming up in a year or two, maybe taking hammer (last shot) away from the team that had it when a blank was posted.
The format
Each athlete gets three runs. Only the best of the three counts, giving them a margin of error that must be the envy of every figure skater and gymnast.
Judges are looking for amplitude (height), difficult tricks and smooth execution.
If you’re not sure what a double cork is, check this explainer from a few years ago.
Judged sports
Exceptions are surely out there somewhere, but it’s interesting that snowboarding and freestyle skiing events simply don’t attract the same level of controversy that figure skating and gymnastics get, isn’t?
A lot of people in the USA have questions about yesterday’s ice dance, to put it mildly. Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron won gold – at least, according to four of the nine judges, and their margins of victory were enough to outcount the five judges who preferred Madison Chock and Evan Bates.
The controversy is fueled by some off-ice issues, as Sean Ingle explains:
Gold went to the controversial French couple, Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron, with 225.82 points, after their routine earned them a top-scoring 135.64pts. Not everyone in the arena was convinced that such a high score was justified.
The pair, who teamed up last year when Fournier Beaudry changed her citizenship from Canada to France, have faced deeper scrutiny. Part of that is down to allegations made by Cizeron’s former partner, Gabriella Papadakis, and the suspension of Fournier Beaudry’s former partner, Nikolaj Sørensen.
In January, Papadakis’s memoir, So as Not to Disappear, called Cizeron “controlling” and “demanding”, allegations he has described as defamatory. When asked last week about the book, Cizeron said: “I’ve said everything that I needed to say on that subject.”
In 2024 Sørensen was suspended for six years by Canada’s Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner for sexual maltreatment. The suspension has been overturned by the Sport Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada on jurisdictional grounds.
Off the top of my head, I can think of several similar controversies in figure skating (even one that centered on a French judge, as is the case with the ice dancing here), but I can’t think of any in what we used to call “extreme” sports. What am I forgetting? Or is there some reason – lack of a fraught history, ethos of post-Gen X athletes, etc. – that accounts for the lack of nasty debates in these sports?
Coming into these Olympics, there were a handful of standout athletes we all knew we needed to watch …
Ilia Malinin hasn’t been at his best but still clinched the gold medal for the USA in team figure skating and has a substantial lead in the men’s event.
Mikaela Shiffrin had a puzzling first race here.
Jordan Stolz has the first gold in a potential hat trick.
Jessie Diggins took bronze today in a gutsy performance that left her moaning and holding her bruised ribs in agony after she crossed the finish line.
And now, it’s Chloe Kim, who isn’t showing any aftereffects from a recent torn labrum. She looked spectacular in qualifying, and who knows what she’ll have planned today.
As in all Olympic halfpipe competitions, she’s certainly not the only snowboarder to watch. This one is going to be fun. Action starts in about 52 minutes.
Preamble
Beau will be here shortly. In the meantime, here’s how Chloe Kim won her last Olympic title, in 2022:
American snowboarder Chloe Kim has become the first woman to successfully defend the Olympic halfpipe title, soaring to an untouchable lead with a gigantic opening run and cruising to a historic repeat gold.
Kim, dropping in last among the 12 competitors to qualify for Thursday morning’s final, set the bar with a huge first run which included two 1080s and three spins down the course known as the Secret Garden Olympic Halfpipe, covering her mouth and dropping to her knees in jubilation upon seeing her score of 94.00 announced.
She fell on her subsequent runs while trying to debut the 1260 – three and a half revolutions in the air – but the sheer amplitude for her opening foray was more than enough to secure the gold over Queralt Castellet of Spain, who earned the silver with a score of 90.25, and Sena Tomita of Japan, whose 88.25 was good for bronze.
Kim’s resounding win played out before an audience that included her friend Eileen Gu, the freeskier from California who captured the freestyle big air gold on Tuesday competing for China. The two embraced at the bottom of the pipe before Kim headed back up for her final attempt.
“I was so proud of myself,” an elated Kim said in the aftermath. “I had the worst practice, ever. I probably landed my run twice when I’m used to landing it eight times, normally, and so that puts you in a weird headspace. It felt so inconsistent. I didn’t want to feel all that pressure of having to land my first safety run (in competition). I overflowed with emotion when I was able to land it on the first go, and it opened up a lot of opportunity for me to go try something new (in her second and third runs).”
You can read the full report below:
