Pic of the day
Talking points
Doping: The first doping cases to hit the 2014 Sochi Games emerged Friday after a double gold-medal winning German female biathlete and an Italian bobsledder tested positive for banned substances.
German biathlete Evi Sachenbacher-Stehle, who has won two gold medals at previous Olympic Games, confirmed she had tested positive, describing it as the “worst nightmare you can imagine”.
Meanwhile, the Italian Olympic Committee said Italian bobsledder William Frullani had tested positive for a banned substance and had already been kicked out of the Sochi Games.
Ice hockey: Canada will face Sweden in the ice hockey final after Jamie Benn scored the games only goal. Carey Price stopped 31 shots for the defending champions.
Curling: Dominant Canada won their third successive Olympic men’s curling gold with a convincing 9-3 victory over Britain in the final. After Canada’s women’s triumph 24 hours earlier, it was the first time that one country had swept both titles at the same Games.
Short-track: Russia’s short track star Victor Ahn won the men’s 500m short track speed skating gold to add to his earlier gold in the 1,000m event. GB’s Elise Christie completed a miserable games (after two previous disqualifications) by crashing out of her 1000m short-track semi-final. South Korea’s Park Seung-Hi took the title.
Alpine skiing: American teenager Mikaela Shiffrin showed nerves of steel to add Olympic gold to her world slalom title under floodlights. Ireland’s Florence Bell, 55th after the after the first run, crashed out on the second, ending her Games.
Ski-cross: Marielle Thompson narrowly edged out Canadian compatriot Kelsey Serwa to win the women’s ski cross title.
Biathlon: Ukraine raced to a famous victory in the women’s team biathlon relay, defying the tragedy of the violence at home to take gold with an inspiring performance.
You gotta see this
The final run of the women’s slalom was held under floodlights and it looked pretty cool:
Hero of the day
Record-breaking Russian short track speed skater Victor Ahn won two more Olympic golds on Friday to take his tally to six — the highest in the sport’s history.
South Korean-born Ahn won his first medal of the night in the 500m, overcoming a slow start to skate to victory, buoyed by a partisan home crowd at the Iceberg Skating Palace.
Minutes later he was part of a four-man team that edged the United States to take gold in the 5,000m relay in an Olympic record time.
They said what?
“You have a lot of attention on a foolish sport like American football and you waste a lot of talent, athletic talent, on a sport that is meant to kill each other, to injure each other. … You’re so narrow-minded, and then you want to compete against the world [in other sports] when you waste a lot of time, good talent on a sport that sucks.”
- Dutch speedskating coach Jillert Anema explains to CNBC why the USA don’t win speed-skating medals.
Medal table
Tomorrow’s highlights
Ireland’s Conor Lyne goes in the men’s slalom tomorrow at 4.45pm with his second run at 8.15pm. Also coming up are the speed-skating pursuits, men’s and women’s parallel snowboard slalom, four man bobsliegh heats and the women’s 30km mass start cross-country race.
Additional reporting from AFP.
