How to watch overall World Cup champ Mikaela Shiffrin ski this weekend

By Nate ClarkMar 6, 2019, 12:39 PM EST

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It would seem Mikaela Shiffrin picked the best weekend of the season to take a break after every scheduled event in Sochi, Russia last week had to be cancelled due to adverse weather conditions.

Shiffrin, while training in Italy ahead of this week’s events in the Czech Republic, was still able to make headlines, when her World Cup points total allowed her to clinch her third-consecutive overall title. She has also clinched her fourth-straight slalom crystal globe, and sixth overall, after taking an insurmountable 203-point lead in the standings.

🏆🏆🏆⁉️ 🙃🥴🙈🙉🙊🤗🤪
Thank you. Simply, thank you.#weareskiing pic.twitter.com/Fm46Iw4GPl

— Mikaela Shiffrin (@MikaelaShiffrin) March 2, 2019

The women’s World Cup will attempt to get back to racing on Friday with the first run of the giant slalom scheduled for 4:30 a.m. ET. Watch the first run live on OlympicChannel.com or with an NBC Sports Gold Snow Pass. The second run can be seen live on TV and streaming on Olympic Channel and NBC Sports Gold.

After crisscrossing the globe, the ISU Speed Skating World Cup winds up in Utah for the final event of the season. The U.S.’ Brittany Bowe and Joey Mantia, both recently crowned world champions, will close out their seasons on home ice at the site of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games.

For Bowe, she returns to the track where she set the world record in the 1000m not once, but twice in her career, and is closing out a season where she has landed on 12 World Cup podiums.

Watch speed skating from Salt Lake City beginning on Friday at 11:00 p.m. on TV on Olympic Channel.

If you’re looking to thaw out from all the winter sports action, some of the best international swimmers in the world convene in Des Moines at the second stop on the TYR Pro Swim Series. Look for the U.S.’ 2016 Olympic gold medalists Caeleb Dressel and Kathleen Baker to be in the pool in Iowa. Watch the first of three days of swimming in primetime beginning on Thursday at 8:00 p.m. ET on TV and streaming on Olympic Channel.

ALPINE SKIING WORLD CUP — Spindleruv Mlyn, Czech Republic; Kranjska Gora, Slovenia

Day	Time (ET)	Event	TV	Stream
Friday	4:30 a.m.	Women’s Giant Slalom (Run 1)		OlympicChannel.com/NBC Sports Gold
	7:30 a.m.	Women’s Giant Slalom (Run 2)	Olympic Channel	Olympic Channel/NBC Sports Gold
	12:00 p.m.	Women’s Giant Slalom (Run 2)*	NBCSN
Saturday	3:30 a.m.	Men’s Giant Slalom (Run 1)		OlympicChannel.com/NBC Sports Gold
	4:30 a.m.	Women’s Slalom (Run 1)		OlympicChannel.com/NBC Sports Gold
	6:30 a.m.	Men’s Giant Slalom (Run 2) DELAYED start at 8:30 a.m.	Olympic Channel	Olympic Channel/NBC Sports Gold
	7:30 a.m.	Women’s Slalom (Run 2)	Olympic Channel	Olympic Channel/NBC Sports Gold
	6:00 p.m.	Women’s Slalom (Run 2)*	NBCSN
Sunday	4:30 a.m.	Men’s Slalom (Run 1)		OlympicChannel.com/NBC Sports Gold
	7:30 a.m.	Men’s Slalom (Run 2)	Olympic Channel	Olympic Channel/NBC Sports Gold

*Same-day delay

BOBSLED AND SKELETON WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS — Whistler, British Columbia

Day	Time (ET)	Event	TV	Stream
Thursday	12:00 p.m.	Men’s Skeleton (Run 1)	Olympic Channel	Olympic Channel
	1:45 p.m.	Men’s Skeleton (Run 2)	Olympic Channel	Olympic Channel
	3:30 p.m.	Women’s Skeleton (Run 1)	Olympic Channel	Olympic Channel
	5:00 p.m.	Women’s Skeleton (Run 2)	Olympic Channel	Olympic Channel
	11:30 p.m.	Men’s and Women’s Skeleton Day 1*	NBCSN
Friday	12:00 p.m.	Men’s Skeleton (Run 3)	Olympic Channel	Olympic Channel
	1:45 p.m.	Men’s Skeleton (Final Run)	Olympic Channel	Olympic Channel
	3:30 p.m.	Women’s Skeleton (Run 3)	Olympic Channel	Olympic Channel
	5:00 p.m.	Women’s Skeleton (Final Run)	Olympic Channel	Olympic Channel
	8:00 p.m.	Four-Man Bobsled (Run 1)	Olympic Channel	Olympic Channel
	9:30 p.m.	Four-Man Bobsled (Run 2)	NBCSN	NBCSN
Saturday	8:00 p.m.	Four-Man Bobsled (Run 3)	Olympic Channel	Olympic Channel
	9:30 p.m.	Four-Man Bobsled (Final Run)	Olympic Channel	Olympic Channel

*Same-day delay

BIATHLON WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS — Oestersund, Sweden

Day	Time (ET)	Event	TV	Stream
Thursday	10:15 a.m.	Mixed Relay	Olympic Channel	Olympic Channel/NBC Sports Gold
	4:00 p.m.	Mixed Relay*	NBCSN
Friday	10:15 a.m.	Women’s 7.5km Sprint	Olympic Channel	Olympic Channel/NBC Sports Gold
	1:00 p.m.	Women’s 7.5km Sprint*	NBCSN
Saturday	10:30 a.m.	Men’s 10km Sprint	Olympic Channel	Olympic Channel/NBC Sports Gold
Sunday	8:45 a.m.	Women’s 10km Pursuit	Olympic Channel	Olympic Channel/NBC Sports Gold
	11:30 a.m.	Men’s 12.5km Pursuit	Olympic Channel	Olympic Channel/NBC Sports Gold

*Same-day delay

CROSS-COUNTRY WORLD CUP — Oslo, Norway

Day	Time (ET)	Event	TV	Stream
Saturday	4:00 a.m.	Men’s 50km Mass Start	Olympic Channel	Olympic Channel/NBC Sports Gold
Sunday	6:45 a.m.	Women’s 30km Mass Start		OlympicChannel.com/NBC Sports Gold
	1:00 p.m.	Women’s 30km Mass Start*	Olympic Channel

*Same-day delay

FENCING GRAND PRIX — Cairo, Egypt; Budapest, Hungary

Day	Time (ET)	Event	TV	Stream
Friday	9:00 a.m.	From Cairo, Egypt*	Olympic Channel
Sunday	4:00 p.m.	From Budapest, Hungary		OlympicChannel.com

*Pre-recorded

FREESKI AND SNOWBOARDING TOYOTA U.S. GRAND PRIX — Mammoth Lakes, California

Day	Time (ET)	Event	TV	Stream
Friday	12:30 p.m.	Snowboarding: Slopestyle		NBCSports.com/NBC Sports Gold
	4:00 p.m.	Freeski: Halfpipe		NBCSports.com/NBC Sports Gold
Sunday	12:30 a.m.	Freeski: Halfpipe*	NBCSN
	12:30 p.m.	Freeski: Slopestyle		NBCSports.com/NBC Sports Gold
	4:00 p.m.	Snowboarding: Halfpipe		NBCSports.com/NBC Sports Gold
	11:30 p.m.	Snowboarding: Slopestyle*	NBCSN

*Encore presentation

NORDIC COMBINED WORLD CUP — Oslo, Norway

Day	Time (ET)	Event	TV	Stream
Saturday	3:00 a.m.	Men’s HS134		OlympicChannel.com/NBC Sports Gold
	7:30 a.m.	Men’s 10km		OlympicChannel.com/NBC Sports Gold

SKI JUMPING WORLD CUP RAW AIR TOURNAMENT — Oslo, Norway

Day	Time (ET)	Event	TV	Stream
Friday	1:30 p.m.	Men’s Qualifying		OlympicChannel.com/NBC Sports Gold
Saturday	8:30 a.m.	Men’s Team		OlympicChannel.com/NBC Sports Gold
	3:00 p.m.	Men’s Team*	Olympic Channel
Sunday	5:00 a.m.	Women’s Individual		OlympicChannel.com/NBC Sports Gold
	9:30 a.m.	Men’s Individual		OlympicChannel.com/NBC Sports Gold
	3:00 p.m.	Women’s Individual*	Olympic Channel
	4:30 p.m.	Men’s Individual*	Olympic Channel

*Same-day delay

SNOWBOARDING WORLD CUP — Scuol, Switzerland

Day	Time (ET)	Event	TV	Stream
Saturday	7:30 a.m.	Parallel Giant Slalom		OlympicChannel.com/NBC Sports Gold

SPEED SKATING WORLD CUP — Salt Lake City, Utah

Day	Time (ET)	Event	TV	Stream
Saturday	2:20 p.m.	World Cup Final Day 1		NBC Sports Gold
	11:00 p.m.	World Cup Final Day 1*	Olympic Channel
Sunday	3:15 p.m.	World Cup Final Day 2		NBC Sports Gold
	11:00 p.m.	World Cup Final Day 2*	Olympic Channel

*Same-day delay

SHORT TRACK WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS — Sofia, Bulgaria

Day	Time (ET)	Event	TV	Stream
Saturday	8:00 a.m.	Day 2		NBC Sports Gold
	6:00 p.m.	Day 2*	Olympic Channel
Sunday	8:00 a.m.	Day 3		NBC Sports Gold
	6:00 p.m.	Day 3*	Olympic Channel

*Same-day delay

TYR PRO SWIM SERIES — Des Moines, Iowa

Day	Time (ET)	Event	TV	Stream
Thursday	8:00 p.m.	Day 1	Olympic Channel	Olympic Channel
Friday	1:00 a.m.	Day 1*	NBCSN
	8:00 p.m.	Day 2	NBCSN	NBCSports.com
Saturday	8:00 p.m.	Day 3		NBCSports.com

*Next-day delay

Jessica Pegula upset in French Open third round

By OlympicTalkJun 2, 2023, 7:22 AM EDT

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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.

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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.”

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