Sofia Goggia crashes in World Cup downhill, ends streak; American qualifies for Olympics

By OlympicTalkJan 15, 2022, 9:14 AM EST

Olympic downhill champion Sofia Goggia crashed and walked away on her own in a bid to win an eighth consecutive World Cup downhill start.

Goggia, who had the longest streak in 40 years, went down in a compression about two-thirds down the course in Zauchensee, Austria, on Saturday. The Italian spun around and slid hard into netting, her safety air bag inflating inside her suit.

Goggia immediately got up and soon walked on her own, too. She had the fastest times at the first two intermediate splits before the crash.

Swiss Lara Gut-Behrami won the race, edging German Kira Weidle by one tenth of a second. Austrian Ramona Siebenhofer was third.

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It was Gut-Behrami’s second win of the season but first since missing nearly four weeks of racing following a coronavirus infection.

“After (the October season opener in) Sölden, nothing went as planned,” Gut-Behrami said. “I was sick in America, then I crashed, then I had COVID. I have been skiing like five days in November and three days in December, which is nothing.”

Goggia won four downhills in a row last season before breaking a bone in her right knee in a Jan. 31 season-ending crash. She came back to win the first three downhills this season, passing Lindsey Vonn and Picabo Street for the longest women’s downhill win streak in the last 40 years.

Austrian legend Annemarie Moser-Pröll had streaks of eight and 11 in a row in the 1970s. For the men, Austrian legend Franz Klammer had two runs of nine wins in a row in the 1970s.

Americans Breezy Johnson, the world’s second-ranked downhiller and the only woman to finish within nine tenths of a second of Goggia this season, and Mikaela Shiffrin are sitting out this weekend’s races for different reasons.

Jacqueline Wiles finished 33rd and qualified to race in her second Olympics as the second-ranked U.S. female downhiller this season (No. 32 in the World Cup standings).

Wiles, 29, was 26th in the 2014 Olympic downhill, then missed the 2018 Olympics due to left leg injuries after crashing in a race a week before the Games. Wiles’ 2020-21 season was also cut short due to a knee injury last February.

Wiles joins the previously qualified Shiffrin, Johnson, Paula Moltzan and Nina O’Brien on the U.S. Olympic women’s Alpine team. The U.S. has nine Olympic women’s quota spots and could gain more. Keely Cashman is most likely to earn the last objective spot after Sunday’s super-G before the roster is rounded out by discretionary selections.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

MORE: U.S. athletes qualified for 2022 Winter Olympics

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U.S. women’s rugby team qualifies for 2024 Paris Olympics as medal contender

By OlympicTalkMar 31, 2023, 1:31 PM EDT

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The U.S. women’s rugby team qualified for the 2024 Paris Olympics by clinching a top-four finish in this season’s World Series.

Since rugby was re-added to the Olympics in 2016, the U.S. men’s and women’s teams finished fifth, sixth, sixth and ninth at the Games.

The U.S. women are having their best season since 2018-19, finishing second or third in all five World Series stops so far and ranking behind only New Zealand and Australia, the winners of the first two Olympic women’s rugby sevens tournaments.

The U.S. also finished fourth at last September’s World Cup.

Three months after the Tokyo Games, Emilie Bydwell was announced as the new U.S. head coach, succeeding Olympic coach Chris Brown.

Soon after, Tokyo Olympic co-captain Abby Gustaitis was cut from the team.

Jaz Gray, who led the team in scoring last season and at the World Cup, missed the last three World Series stops after an injury.

The U.S. men are ranked ninth in this season’s World Series and will likely need to win either a North American Olympic qualifier this summer or a last-chance global qualifier in June 2024 to make it to Paris.

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Oscar Pistorius denied parole, hasn’t served enough time

Associated PressMar 31, 2023, 1:05 PM EDT

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Olympic and Paralympic runner Oscar Pistorius was denied parole Friday and will have to stay in prison for at least another year and four months after it was decided that he had not served the “minimum detention period” required to be released following his murder conviction for killing girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp 10 years ago.

The parole board ruled that Pistorius would only be able to apply again in August 2024, South Africa’s Department of Corrections said in a short, two-paragraph statement. It was released soon after a parole hearing at the Atteridgeville Correctional Centre prison where Pistorius is being held.

The board cited a new clarification on Pistorius’ sentence that was issued by South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal just three days before the hearing, according to the statement. Still, legal experts criticized authorities’ decision to go ahead with the hearing when Pistorius was not eligible.

Reeva Steenkamp’s parents, Barry and June, are “relieved” with the decision to keep Pistorius in prison but are not celebrating it, their lawyer told The Associated Press.

“They can’t celebrate because there are no winners in this situation. They lost a daughter and South Africa lost a hero,” lawyer Tania Koen said, referring to the dramatic fall from grace of Pistorius, once a world-famous and highly-admired athlete.

The decision and reasoning to deny parole was a surprise but there has been legal wrangling over when Pistorius should be eligible for parole because of the series of appeals in his case. He was initially convicted of culpable homicide, a charge comparable to manslaughter, in 2014 but the case went through a number of appeals before Pistorius was finally sentenced to 13 years and five months in prison for murder in 2017.

Serious offenders must serve at least half their sentence to be eligible for parole in South Africa. Pistorius’ lawyers had previously gone to court to argue that he was eligible because he had served the required portion if they also counted periods served in jail from late 2014 following his culpable homicide conviction.

The lawyer handling Pistorius’ parole application did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.

June Steenkamp attended Pistorius’ hearing inside the prison complex to oppose his parole. The parents have said they still do not believe Pistorius’ account of their daughter’s killing and wanted him to stay in jail.

Pistorius, who is now 36, has always claimed he killed Steenkamp, a 29-year-old model and law student, in the pre-dawn hours of Valentine’s Day 2013 after mistaking her for a dangerous intruder in his home. He shot four times with his licensed 9 mm pistol through a closed toilet cubicle door in his bathroom, where Steenkamp was, hitting her multiple times. Pistorius claimed he didn’t realize his girlfriend had got out of bed and gone to the bathroom.

The Steenkamps say they still think he is lying and killed her intentionally after a late-night argument.

Lawyer Koen had struck a more critical tone when addressing reporters outside the prison before the hearing, saying the Steenkamps believed Pistorius could not be considered to be rehabilitated “unless he comes clean” over the killing.

“He’s the killer of their daughter. For them, it’s a life sentence,” Koen said before the hearing.

June Steenkamp had sat grim-faced in the back seat of a car nearby while Koen spoke to reporters outside the prison gates ahead of the hearing. June Steenkamp and Koen were then driven into the prison in a Department of Corrections vehicle. June Steenkamp made her submission to the parole board in a separate room to Pistorius and did not come face-to-face with her daughter’s killer, Koen said.

Barry Steenkamp did not travel for the hearing because of poor health but a family friend read out a statement to the parole board on his behalf, the parents’ lawyer said.

Pistorius was once hailed as an inspirational figure for overcoming the adversity of his disability, before his murder trial and sensational downfall captivated the world.

Pistorius’s lower legs were amputated when he was a baby because of a congenital condition and he walks with prosthetics. He went on to become a double-amputee runner and multiple Paralympic champion who made history by competing against able-bodied athletes at the 2012 London Olympics, running on specially designed carbon-fiber blades.

Pistorius’ conviction eventually led to him being sent to the Kgosi Mampuru II maximum security prison, one of South Africa’s most notorious. He was moved to the Atteridgeville prison in 2016 because that facility is better suited to disabled prisoners.

There have only been glimpses of his life in prison, with reports claiming he had at one point grown a beard, gained weight and taken up smoking and was unrecognizable from the elite athlete he once was.

He has spent much of his time working in an area of the prison grounds where vegetables are grown, sometimes driving a tractor, and has reportedly been running bible classes for other inmates.

Pistorius’ father, Henke Pistorius, told the Pretoria News newspaper before the hearing that his family hoped he would be home soon.

“Deep down, we believe he will be home soon,” Henke Pistorius said, “but until the parole board has spoken the word, I don’t want to get my hopes up.”

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