Sochi Olympic Daily Recap & Medal Count: Day 5

By Chris EstradaFeb 12, 2014, 6:00 PM EST

A gold medal performance from American snowboarder Kaitlyn Farrington tops today’s whip-around through the Sochi Olympics.

Farrington (pictured) eclipsed a field that featured the previous three Olympic women’s halfpipe champions to win Team USA’s third gold of these Games (all of which have come from snowboarding) by a narrow margin over the most recent title-holder, Torah Bright of Australia.

The U.S. also nabbed the bronze, as 2002 champ Kelly Clark hit the podium on the final run of the event. Unfortunately, another American snowboarder, Arielle Gold, was unable to compete today due to an injury sustained just before qualifying…

For the first time ever, two gold medals were handed out in the same Alpine skiing event. Dominique Gisin and Tina Maze posted identical times of 1:14.57 in the women’s downhill to create the Olympic first. As for Julia Mancuso of the U.S., she failed to medal in the event after winning bronze in the super combined – but more opportunities in Sochi are coming her way…

Complete recap of Team USA from Day 5

A surprise took place in the men’s 1000m speedskating event today as Shani Davis, the two-time defending Olympic champion, finished eighth and off the podium. The race went to Stefan Groothuis of the Netherlands, with Canada’s Denny Morrison taking the silver. You’ll see more about the latter two later tonight on OlympicTalk…

In figure skating, the Russian romp continued. Tatyana Volosozhar and Maksim Trankov won the gold in pairs competition, while their compatriots, Ksenia Stolbova and Fedor Klimov, earned the silver. The top American pair was Marissa Castelli and Simon Shnapir in ninth…

Rounding out the medal events, Germany earned two golds today from Eric Frenzel in the Nordic combined individual normal hill/10km and “The Tobis” – Tobias Wendl and Tobias Arlt – in doubles luge…

Men’s hockey officially got underway with a pair of games and you can go here and here for those recaps. The Canadian and American men both get started tomorrow, and have made decisions regarding goaltenders for their opening games…

Meanwhile, in women’s hockey, arch-rivals Canada and the U.S. collided in round-robin play and the Canadians held on for a 3-2 win that came with some controversy. NBCOlympics.com’s Jason Brough has a special report from that tilt…

Out of competition, we did some looking back on the dramatic finale of yesterday’s men’s halfpipe final, which saw Iouri “I-Pod” Podladtchikov topple Shaun White…

Erin Hamlin’s hometown celebrated her bronze in women’s luge, the first U.S. Olympic luge medal in singles competition…

The four-year anniversary of the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was observed…

The Olympics’ ice hockey venue is a show in itself…

And the “Wolfpack” was at it again.

MEDAL COUNT – Feb. 12
(Country – Gold/Silver/Bronze – Total Medals)
1. Germany – 6/1/1 – 8
2. Canada – 4/4/2 – 10
3. Norway – 4/3/5 – 12
4. Netherlands – 4/2/4 – 10
5. United States – 3/1/5 – 9
6. Switzerland – 3/0/1 – 4
7. Russia – 2/4/3 – 9
8. Austria – 1/4/0 – 5
9. Slovenia – 1/1/2 – 4
10. France – 1/0/2 – 3
T-11. Belarus – 1/0/0 – 1
T-11. Korea – 1/0/0 – 1
T-11. Poland – 1/0/0 – 1
T-11. Slovakia – 1/0/0 – 1
15. Sweden – 0/3/1 – 4
T-16. Czech Republic – 0/2/1 – 3
T-16. Japan – 0/2/1 – 3
18. Italy – 0/1/1 – 2
T-19. Australia – 0/1/0 – 1
T-19. China – 0/1/0 – 1
T-19. Finland – 0/1/0 – 1
T-22. Great Britain – 0/0/1 – 1
T-22. Latvia – 0/0/1 – 1
T-22. Ukraine – 0/0/1 – 1

Follow @estradawriting

Jessica Pegula upset in French Open third round

By OlympicTalkJun 2, 2023, 7:22 AM EDT

Getty

Jessica Pegula, the highest-ranked American man or woman, was upset in the third round of the French Open.

Elise Mertens, the 28th seed from Belgium, bounced the third seed Pegula 6-1, 6-3 to reach the round of 16. Pegula, a 29-year-old at a career-high ranking, had lost in the quarterfinals of four of the previous five majors.

Down 4-3 in the second set, Pegula squandered three break points in a 14-minute game. Mertens then broke Pegula to close it out.

Pegula’s exit leaves No. 6 seed Coco Gauff, last year’s runner-up, as the last seeded hope to become the first U.S. woman to win a major title since Sofia Kenin at the 2020 Australian Open. The 11-major span without an American champ is the longest for U.S. women since Monica Seles won the 1996 Australian Open.

FRENCH OPEN DRAWS: Women | Men | Broadcast Schedule

Mertens, who lost in the third or fourth round of the last six French Opens, plays a Russian Anastasia in the fourth round: Pavlyuchenkova or Potapova.

Earlier, ninth-seeded Russian Daria Kasatkina became the first player to reach the fourth round. She won 6-0, 6-1 over 69th-ranked American Peyton Stearns, the 2022 NCAA champion from Texas.

Sloane Stephens, the 2017 U.S. Open champion, is the lone American woman left in the bottom half of the draw. She plays Kazakh Yulia Putintseva later Friday. Gauff, Bernarda Pera and Kayla Day remain in the top half.

Friday’s featured men’s matches: Top seed Carlos Alcaraz versus 26th seed Denis Shapovalov of Canada, and No. 3 Novak Djokovic against No. 29 Alejandro Davidovich Fokina of Spain.

OlympicTalk is on Apple News. Favorite us!

Follow @nbcolympictalk

Olympians, Paralympians get early look at Paris on ‘Top Chef’ World All-Stars

By Nick ZaccardiJun 2, 2023, 6:36 AM EDT

A year from now, they hope to vie for medals in the City of Light. But on this day, four U.S. hopefuls for the 2024 Paris Olympics and Paralympics competed on “Top Chef” World All-Stars at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, the first cross-promotional moment across NBC Universal’s One Platform for the Games.

As Parisians and tourists traversed the Champ de Mars, Olympic champions gymnast Suni Lee and sprinter Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Paralympic champion swimmer Mallory Weggemann and medalist sprinter Hunter Woodhall bundled and huddled and did everything possible to stay warm between rain showers.

Then came the 30-minute frenzy. Each athlete was paired with a cheftestant for what the Bravo series calls a wall challenge: the chef and the athlete each attempted to make the same dish while separated by a divider, unable to see what the other was doing. The duo whose dishes have the closest appearance and taste win.

It’s little surprise that Weggemann prevailed. At 33 on the day of filming, she’s a decade older than the rest of the athletes.

When she was 18, Weggemann lost movement from the waist down while receiving epidural injections to treat shingles. Four years later, she swam at her first Paralympics and won her first gold medal.

“I understand that when I go onto a [filming] set like today, and I’m rolling rather than stepping, that looks different,” she said. “Not everyone who’s going to watch ‘Top Chef’ is a sports fanatic, and so they maybe don’t watch the Olympics and Paralympics, but in that moment, we got to bring them into the movement in a way that we maybe otherwise wouldn’t. I’m not oblivious to the fact that as a woman with a disability in that moment, I also have the power to change perceptions because not everyone in our society has exposure to disability.”

Each of the athletes, flown in by Delta, the official airline of Team USA through the 2028 Los Angeles Games, came at a different point in their journeys.

Weggemann has already been to three Paralympics and earned five medals. She did the “Top Chef” competition while three months pregnant. Baby Charlotte arrived March 16. Her goal is to be on the podium in Paris and be able to see her husband and daughter in the stands.

Woodhall, who won three medals in Tokyo in his Paralympic debut, visited the French capital with his then-fiancée Tara Davis, who placed sixth in the Tokyo Olympic long jump. Their Texas wedding was a month after the “Top Chef” filming.

“In Tokyo, we weren’t able to be there for each other,” said Woodhall, referring to COVID-19 travel restrictions for those Games not allowing spectators. “Paris is so exciting because we’ll both be able to really be in the moment and support each other through both the Olympic and Paralympic Games.”

McLaughlin-Levrone had husband Andre Levrone Jr., a former NFL practice squad wide receiver, by her side in Paris. Before “Top Chef,” she had a whirlwind spring and summer, getting married in May and then twice breaking her world record in the 400m hurdles. At the top of her sport, McLaughlin-Levrone had a decision to make in the fall and winter offseason: continue in the hurdles, where she has accomplished everything, or venture into another event, the 400m without hurdles, to test herself.

“That world record has stood for so long, and no one’s come even close to it,” she said of the flat 400m, and its 37-year-old world record, while in Paris. “So we definitely want to be able to try that and see what we can do there as well.”

Now, McLaughlin-Levrone is set to return to Paris next week for her first outdoor race since August. It will be a flat 400m. She also plans to race the 400m at the USA Track and Field Outdoor Championships in July, and possibly at August’s world championships in lieu of the hurdles.

Top Chef World All-Stars — *Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and cheftestant Sara Bradley meet after preparing their dishes during the “Top Chef” wall challenge. (Fred Jagueneau/Bravo)*

The gymnast Lee became one of the unexpected golden stories of the Tokyo Games. After Simone Biles withdrew from the meet, the Hmong American from Minnesota seized the all-around title, the biggest prize in her sport.

She hasn’t performed in international gymnastics since. Lee matriculated at Auburn and competed for the Tigers. But NCAA gymnastics involves different routines, competitions and scoring than Olympic gymnastics. It’s such a contrast that, traditionally, joining a college team has often meant retirement from the Olympic level.

The afternoon before the “Top Chef” filming, Lee walked inside the Accor Arena in the Bercy neighborhood, the site of the 2024 Olympic gymnastics events. A competition was taking place that included the Brazilian who took silver behind Lee in Tokyo.

“I am a little nervous to get back out on the bigger stage,” Lee said then. “Going to that meet actually was really important to me because I think I needed the help of re-motivating myself and seeing what I’m getting back into, watching the competition, just getting used to that atmosphere again.”

Two months after that experience, Lee announced she would leave Auburn after her sophomore year to return to elite training for a 2024 Paris Olympic bid.

The “Top Chef” integration helps launch summer Paris Games-related fanfare, including national and world championships in many Olympic and Paralympic sports and events to mark the one-year-out dates from the Opening Ceremonies (July 26 for the Olympics, Aug. 28 for the Paralympics).

“Top Chef,” in its 20th season, previously featured Olympians before the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games and then again before Tokyo. Host Padma Lakshmi noticed a common trait.

“Their attention to detail is extraordinary,” she said. “Having that Olympic training, and really listening to what your coaches want, and what the parameters of the contest is, is something that they’re skilled at doing day in and day out.”

OlympicTalk is on Apple News. Favorite us!

Follow @nzaccardi

More: Olympics

More: Olympics