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Alex Azzi

Olympics Researcher at NBC.
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Relive Mikaela Shiffrin’s record-breaking 2018-19 season on Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA

By Alex AzziApr 5, 2019, 2:36 PM EDT
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Following alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin’s historic 2018-19 season, Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA will commemorate her record-breaking campaign by re-airing 20 races: Shiffrin’s 17 World Cup wins, plus her three medal-winning performances at the 2019 World Championships in Are, Sweden. Olympic Channel’s 25 hours of primetime programming begins on Monday, April 8 at 7:30pm (ET), and continues through Friday, April 12.

Over the course of the 2018-19 season, Shiffrin accomplished the following feats:

  • Won 17 World Cup races (the most ever in a single season)
  • Claimed her fourth straight slalom world title, making her the first alpine skier to win four consecutive world championship titles in the same discipline
  • Became the first skier to win World Cup titles in the overall, giant slalom, super-G and slalom disciplines in the same year
  • Became the 12th skier (and 7th woman) to win a World Cup race in all five major disciplines (giant slalom, slalom, super-G, downhill and super combined)
  • Became the youngest skier to reach 50 World Cup wins
  • Broke the women’s World Cup slalom wins record
  • Ended the season with 60 career World Cup wins, which is 5th-most all time and 3rd-most by a woman

All coverage on Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA will be streamed on NBCSports.com, the NBC Sports app, OlympicChannel.com and the Olympic Channel app.

Date Start Time (ET) Event
Monday 04/08/2019 07:30 PM FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup – Women’s Slalom – Levi, Finland
Monday 04/08/2019 09:00 PM FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup – Women’s Slalom – Killington, Vermont
Monday 04/08/2019 11:00 PM FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup – Women’s Super-G – Lake Louise, Alberta
Tuesday 04/09/2019 07:30 PM FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup – Women’s Super-G – St. Moritz, Switzerland
Tuesday 04/09/2019 09:00 PM FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup – Women’s Parallel Slalom – St. Moritz, Switzerland
Tuesday 04/09/2019 10:00 PM FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup – Women’s Giant Slalom – Courchevel, France
Tuesday 04/09/2019 11:00 PM FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup – Women’s Slalom – Courchevel, France
Tuesday 04/09/2019 12:00 AM FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup – Women’s Slalom – Semmering, Austria
Wednesday 04/10/2019 07:30 PM FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup – Women’s Slalom – Zagreb, Croatia
Wednesday 04/10/2019 08:30 PM FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup – Women’s Giant Slalom – Kronplatz, Italy
Wednesday 04/10/2019 09:30 PM FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup – Women’s Super-G – Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Wednesday 04/10/2019 11:00 PM FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup – Women’s Giant Slalom – Maribor, Slovenia
Wednesday 04/10/2019 12:00 AM FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup – Women’s Slalom – Maribor, Slovenia
Thursday 04/11/2019 07:30 PM FIS World Alpine Skiing Championships – Women’s Super-G
Thursday 04/11/2019 09:00 PM FIS World Alpine Skiing Championships – Women’s Giant Slalom (Run 2)
Thursday 04/11/2019 10:30 PM FIS World Alpine Skiing Championships – Women’s Slalom (Run 2)
Friday 04/12/2019 07:30 PM FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup – City Event – Stockholm, Sweden
Friday 04/12/2019 09:00 PM FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup – Women’s Slalom – Spindleruv Myln, Czech Republic
Friday 04/12/2019 10:00 PM FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup – World Cup Finals: Women’s Slalom – Soldeu, Andorra
Friday 04/12/2019 11:00 PM FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup- World Cup Finals: Women’s Giant Slalom – Soldeu, Andorra

Clare Egan notches first World Cup podium in biathlon season finale

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By Alex AzziMar 25, 2019, 12:14 PM EDT
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Finland, without its NHL stars, tops Canada for hockey world title U.S. diving roster for world championships finalized at nationals Kerri Walsh Jennings, Brooke Sweat Kerri Walsh Jennings, Brooke Sweat win first tournament title together

In the final biathlon event of the 2018-19 season, American Clare Egan recorded her first career World Cup podium finish, placing third in the mass start in Oslo, Norway. She hit 19 of 20 targets and crossed the finish line 10.4 seconds behind winner Hanna Oberg of Sweden. Norway’s Tiril Eckhoff finished second.

Egan, 31, made her Olympic debut at the 2018 PyeongChang Games, but considered retiring from biathlon at the end of the last season. “I decided that I wanted to do one more year, just for fun, just to see how much I could learn and how good a biathlete I could become,” Egan said in a U.S. Biathlon press release.

Her decision to continue has paid off: since the start of the 2018-19 season, Egan has posted the top eight finishes of her career (including three top-10 results). She concludes the season ranked 18th in the overall World Cup standings.

“I skied much faster this year than I have in the past and I think that was due to finally finding a good balance in my training, between working hard and resting. I did not train more, but the quality was much higher. I’m very excited for the next season,” Egan told U.S. Biathlon.

Olympic medalists Kathleen Baker, Caeleb Dressel headline TYR Pro Swim Series stop in Des Moines

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By Alex AzziMar 7, 2019, 1:13 PM EDT
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The TYR Pro Swim series continues this week with a stop in Des Moines, Iowa. The meet marks the first time that Iowa has hosted a professional swimming competition.

The women’s field is headlined by a handful of Olympic medalists, including Allison Schmitt, Kathleen Baker, Leah Smith, and Olivia Smoliga.

Baker, a two-time Olympic medalist and backstroke specialist, will look to improve on her performance at the first stop of the series in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she finished third in the 50m back, eighth in the 100m back (an event in which she holds the world record), and scratched the 200m back.

Schmitt, an eight-time Olympic medalist, is entered in her first meet of 2019. The three-time Olympian is slated to compete in six events, including the 200m free, where she holds a six-year-old American record. Schmitt originally planned to retire after the 2016 Rio Olympics, but she never officially took herself out of the drug-testing pool, and returned to competition in April 2018. The 28-year-old has been open in recent years about battling depression and says one of her goals is to destigmatize conversations surrounding mental health.

The men’s field features seven-time world champion Caeleb Dressel, who is entered in seven events: the 100m free, 100m breast, 200m free, 50m breast, 50m fly, 100m fly, and 50m free. The 22-year-old had a slow start to the meet on Thursday morning, finishing 15th in the preliminary round of the 100m free (an event in which he holds the American record). Given that it is still early in the season, it is hard to draw too many conclusions from results in Des Moines as most swimmers are currently in the middle of a heavy training period as they look ahead to this summer’s World Championships in Gwangju, South Korea.

Michael Andrew, 19, is also expected to compete in seven events, including five that overlap with Dressel. At last summer’s U.S. National Championships, the two swimmers dueled in multiple events, with Andrew out-touching Dressel in both the 50m fly and 50m free, while Dressel secured the win in the 100m fly.

Live coverage of Thursday’s finals begins at 8:00pm ET on Olympic Channel, while Friday’s finals get underway at 8:00pm ET on NBCSN.