Tina Maze nears history; Lindsey Vonn emotional after DNF (video)

Tina Maze
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Maze, 31, prevailed by .22 of a second combining downhill and slalom runs Monday. Austrians were second, third and fourth. Nicole Hosp, also 31, earned silver, just as she did in Sochi. Michaela Kirchgasser held off super-G champion Anna Fenninger for bronze. (full results here)

Maze skied the fastest morning downhill run and the fifth fastest afternoon slalom run. She added this title to her downhill gold and super-G silver from last week and celebrated with a cartwheel in the finish area.

“It was really a lot of pressure on me today,” Maze, who skis with the Slovenian national anthem’s words on her suit, said in a press conference. “I felt that I have to do this. It’s not easy to race like that. I was really nervous before the slalom.”

Maze, the World Cup overall leader who may retire after this season, is hoping to become the first woman to win five individual medals at a single World Championships. Only one man has done it — Norway’s Lasse Kjus in 1999.

“I’m more than halfway, so three is done, missing two more,” Maze told NBC Sports’ Carolyn Manno. “I hope I can do it, for sure. It’s not easy.”

What are Maze’s chances in the two remaining individual events? She’s slated for the giant slalom Thursday and the slalom Saturday.

In the giant slalom, Maze is ranked fifth in this season’s World Cup standings. But she dug out of a hole after placing 22nd in the season-opening giant slalom on Oct. 25 with finishes of fourth, first and seventh in the three most recent giant slaloms. She’s also the Sochi Olympic giant slalom champion.

In the slalom, Maze is ranked third in the World Cup standings with podium finishes in three of the six competitions this season. Slalom is the only discipline in which Maze has never won a World Championships medal.

The World Championships continue with the mixed-gender team event Tuesday. That will be Olympic slalom champion Mikaela Shiffrin‘s debut at these Worlds.

World Championships broadcast schedule

French Open: Iga Swiatek rolls toward possible Coco Gauff rematch

Iga Swiatek
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Iga Swiatek reached the French Open third round without dropping a set, eyeing a third Roland Garros title in four years. Not that she needed the help, but Swiatek’s immediate draw is wide open after the rest of the seeds in her section lost.

Swiatek dispatched 102nd-ranked American Claire Liu 6-4, 6-0 on Thursday, the same score as her first-round win. She gets 80th-ranked Wang Xinyu of China in the round of 32.

The other three seeds in Swiatek’s section all lost in the first round, so the earliest that the world No. 1 could play another seed is the quarterfinals. And that would be No. 6 Coco Gauff, who was runner-up to Swiatek last year.

Gauff plays her second-round match later Thursday against 61st-ranked Austrian Julia Grabher. Gauff also doesn’t have any seeds in her way before a possible Swiatek showdown.

FRENCH OPEN DRAWS: Women | Men | Broadcast Schedule

Swiatek, who turned 22 on Wednesday, came into this year’s French Open without the invincibility of a year ago, when she was 16-0 in the spring clay season during an overall 37-match win streak.

She retired from her last pre-French Open match with a right thigh injury, but said it wasn’t serious. That diagnosis appears to have been spot-on through two matches this week, though her serve was broken twice in the first set of each match.

While the men’s draw has been upended by 14-time champion Rafael Nadal‘s pre-event withdrawal and No. 2 seed Daniil Medvedev‘s loss in the first round, the top women have taken care of business.

Nos. 2, 3 and 4 seeds Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus, American Jessica Pegula and Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan also reached the third round without dropping a set.

Though all of them have beaten Swiatek in 2023, the Pole remains the favorite to lift the trophy a week from Saturday. She can join Serena Williams and Justine Henin as the lone women to win three or more French Opens since 2000.

She can also become the youngest woman to win three French Opens since Monica Seles in 1992 and the youngest woman to win four Slams overall since Williams in 2002.

Swiatek doesn’t dwell on it.

“I never even played Serena or Monica Seles,” she said. “I’m kind of living my own life and having my own journey.”

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Penny Oleksiak to miss world swimming championships

Penny Oleksiak
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Seven-time Olympic medalist Penny Oleksiak of Canada will miss July’s world swimming championships because she does not expect to be recovered enough from knee and shoulder injuries.

“The bar that we set was, can she be as good as she’s ever been at these world championships?” coach Ryan Mallette said in a press release. “We just don’t feel like we’re going to be ready to be 100 percent yet this summer. Our focus is to get her back to 100 percent as soon as possible to get ready for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.”

Oleksiak, who owns the Canadian record of seven Olympic medals (across all sports), missed Canada’s trials meet for worlds two months ago due to the injuries. She was still named to the team at the time in hope that she would be ready in time for worlds.

The 22-year-old returned to competition last month at a Mare Nostrum meet in Barcelona, after which she chose to focus on continued rehab rather than compete at worlds in Fukuoka, Japan.

“Swimming at Mare Nostrum was a checkpoint for worlds, and I gave it my best shot,” Oleksiak said in the release. “We reviewed my swims there, and it showed me the level I want to get back to. Now I need to focus on my rehab to get back to where I want to be and put myself in position to be at my best next season.”

Oleksiak had knee surgery last year to repair a meniscus. After that, she developed a left shoulder injury.

In 2016, Oleksiak tied for Olympic 100m freestyle gold with American Simone Manuel. She also earned 100m butterfly silver in Rio and 200m free bronze in Tokyo, along with four relay medals between those two Games.

At last year’s worlds, she earned four relay medals and placed fourth in the 100m free.

She anchored the Canadian 4x100m free relay to silver behind Australia at the most recent Olympics and worlds.

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