Olympics Edition — Day 13: Nazgul just won the Olympics
From The GIST (hi@thegistsports.com)
Leveling The Playing Field
Buongiorno!
Today brings one of the most-anticipated events of these Olympics: the women’s hockey gold medal game, featuring Team Canada vs. Team USA at 1:10 p.m. ET. Pass the time until puck drop with a little preview, plus the rest of the best from Milano Cortina.
- Speaking of, we want to know your favorite moment from these Winter Olympics. Click here to send us your core memories — you just might see them featured in a future newsletter.
Country | 🥇 | 🥈 | 🥉 | Total |
| 🇳🇴 Norway | 15 | 8 | 10 | 33 |
| 🇮🇹 Italy | 9 | 5 | 12 | 26 |
| 🇺🇲 USA | 7 | 11 | 6 | 24 |
| 🇨🇦 Canada (11th) | 4 | 4 | 6 | 14 |
Ice hockey
🏒 Stressed is desserts spelled backwards
The GIST: Grab a Tim Hortons double-double and throw on that lucky jersey — it’s officially the time of the Olympics when Canadian joy is intrinsically linked to a small rubber puck. Let’s skate through the latest hockey headlines from the rink.
🐶 Uncharted territory for Canadian women: For the first time ever, Team Canada women’s hockey are clear-cut underdogs ahead of today’s 1:10 p.m. ET gold medal match against Team USA. Olympic history favors the red and white — Canada’s won five of seven gold medals at the Games — but recent history? That’s squarely with the Americans.
- Canada’s lost seven straight games to their archnemesis, including a 5–0 blanking in the group stage. The Canadians will have the inimitable Marie-Philip Poulin back on the ice for today’s rematch, but this youthful American team is a juggernaut, outscoring opponents 31–1 at the Games.
- Still, Canada has one edge: experience, their core has faced adversity before. Look no further than the 2014 gold medal game, where both MPP and Brianne Jenner lit the lamp with less than four minutes left to force overtime. Counting this veteran team out? Never.
😅 Forward Mitch Marner sends Canadian men to semifinal: Fans from coast to coast to coast collectively exhaled when Marner scored in overtime yesterday, sending the boys to the semis with a nail-biting 4–3 win over Czechia. It was the team’s first taste of tribulation this tourney, overcoming two one-goal deficits and a Czechian skater surplus in the win.
- It wasn’t all good news though as captain and two-time Olympic gold medalist Sidney Crosby exited the game in the second period with a lower-body injury. Someone bake this anti-littering advocate a restorative banana bread before Friday’s semifinal.
🏒 Canada’s quarter-final win wasn’t the only men’s hockey game that required extra time: Both the U.S. and Finland needed overtime to book semifinal tickets, beating Sweden and Switzerland, respectively, while Slovakia dismantled Germany 6–2 in regulation.
🥇💨⛸️ Short track speed skater Steven Dubois kept Canada’s gold rush alive, winning the 500m yesterday to secure Canada’s fourth straight day atop the podium. Dubois’ victory also took some of the sting out of his compatriot Williams Dandjinou’s disappointing disqualification in the final.
- 🥉 Fellow Canadian speed skater Courtney Sarault scored her fourth medal of the Games by leading the women’s 3000m short track relay team to bronze, giving her the most podium finishes by a Canadian short track speed skater at a single Olympics. What, like it’s hard?
🥇⛷️ American skiing icon Mikaela Shiffrin closed her Milano Cortina Games with slalom gold yesterday, defeating her closest competitor by 1.5 seconds — the largest margin of victory in an Olympic Alpine skiing event since 1998. Crown her.
⛸️ Japan could sweep the women’s individual figure skating podium today, with three athletes in the top four after Tuesday’s short program. But if anyone can shake things up, it’s American Alysa Liu, the reigning world champ who is currently in third.
🥌 Canada’s women’s curling team picked up a pivotal 8–7 extra-ends win over Italy yesterday and now control their own destiny ahead of today’s 8:05 a.m. ET group stage finale against Korea. A win and Rachel Homan’s rink will play for a medal.
- As for the men, Team Jacobs is flying headfirst, fearless into the semifinals despite a surprising 8–6 loss to Norway while you were sleeping. The red and white will look to redeem themselves when they take on the Norwegians again today at 1:05 p.m. ET.
🎿🏔️ Ski mountaineering will make its Olympic debut today, with the women’s final slated for 7:55 a.m. ET and the men’s following shortly after at 8:15 a.m. ET.
- What is skimo exactly? Athletes run up a hill using skis with “skins” on them, hiking with their skis on their back if it gets too steep, before skiing down that very same hill — all in about three minutes. Exhausted just thinking about it.
Event | ⏰ (ET) | 👀 |
| 🥌 Women’s curling | Today at 8:05 a.m. | 🇨🇦 Canada vs. 🇰🇷 Korea |
| 🏅⛸️ Women’s figure skating free skate | Today at 1 p.m. | 🇯🇵 Ami Nakai, Kaori Sakamoto, 🇺🇸 Alysa Liu |
| 🏅🏒 Women’s hockey gold medal game | Today at 1:10 p.m. | 🇨🇦 Canada vs. 🇺🇸 United States |
| ⛷️ Freestyle skiing women’s halfpipe qualification | Today at 1:30 p.m. | 🇨🇦 Cassie Sharpe, Rachael Karker, Amy Fraser; 🇨🇳 Eileen Gu |
🐺 A photo finish
The latest breakout star from the Games? Nazgul, the dog that stormed the cross-country skiing course as the women’s team sprint qualifying race wrapped yesterday. He crossed the line (with his own photo finish from Omega, the official Olympic timekeeper) and celebrated with the athletes in the post-race area with plenty of pets to go around. The goodest boy.
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