Men’s Luge
The medal drought is over for the U.S. luge team.
After 34 years of Olympic failure, the doubles teams of Gordy Sheer and Chris Thorpe, and Mark Grimmette and Brian Martin, each won medals Friday. Thorpe and Sheer got silver, and Grimmette and Martin took bronze behind the winning duo of Stefan Krausse and Jan Behrendt of Germany.
The winners finished the two runs in 1 minute, 41.105 seconds for the gold. Thorpe and Sheer, who had faltered all during the World Cup season, had a time of 1:41.127. Martin and Grimmette, the reigning World Cup champions, were third in 1:41.217.
It’s the first time the United States has won a medal in Olympics luge, which was added in 1964. The previous best finish by the team was a fourth in doubles at Lillehammer, by Grimmette and his former teammate, Jon Edwards.
Alpine skiing
Hermann Maier, a 10-time winner on this year’s World Cup circuit, was one of eight skiers sent sprawling on a treacherous turn near the top of the Olympic downhill course on a day when one-third of the entrants never made the finish line.
Surviving the turn and winning the gold was Jean-Luc Cretier of France - the first Frenchman since Jean Claude Killy in 1968 to win the Alpine race. The silver went to Lasse Kjus of Norway and Hannes Trinkl of Austria was third.
Defending downhill champion Tommy Moe of the United States finished 12th.
Men’s figure skating
The men’s figure skating - Part I, the short program - started Thursday with the favorites setting up a Saturday showdown for the gold medal. The top three finishers, in order: Ilya Kulik of Russia, Elvis Stojko of Canada and Todd Eldredge of the United States.
Women’s hockey
The United States meets Canada in an historic women’s hockey match Saturday night, but it might be academic when this tournament ends Tuesday.
No matter what happens Saturday, the United States and Canada will play again Tuesday night for the first women’s Olympic hockey gold medal. Saturday’s game - the last of round-robin play - simply will determine which team is seeded first in the final. A home-ice advantage is worth the game’s last line change, but not much else. Whether that affects the outcome is difficult to say.
In a pre-Olympic tour, the teams proved to be as close as humanly possible, splitting their four-month series, 7-6, Canada. In 13 games, the teams were never separated by more than three goals. Nine were one-goal games.
Canada (4-0) might hold back in the meaningless Saturday game to allow four of its players to heal from injuries suffered over the course of the tournament.
The world’s best teams have made a mockery of the Nagano Olympics. To wit: The United States’ 10-0 drubbing of hapless Japan on Thursday. The Americans and Canadians raced through the tournament except for 4-2 victories against Finland, which is expected to win the bronze in its matchup against China.
Nordic combined
The crowd of 35,000 cheered for its hometown favorites - until Norway’s Bjarte Engen Vik silenced them with his second ski jump in the Nordic combined. Vik, a bronze medal winner four years ago, held first place heading into Saturday’s 15-kilometer cross-country race.
Earlier, the Japanese crowd had plenty to cheer about when Tsugiharu Ogiwara and Junichi Kogawa had put Japan in the first two positions. They wound up in the next two spots behind Vik.
Speedskating
The gold goes back to Norway. For the third consecutive Winter Games, a Norwegian captured the 1,500-meter speedskating - and Adne Sondral did it in a world-record time of 1 minute, 47.87 seconds.
Sondral’s showing prevented a Dutch sweep at the M-Wave arena, where Ids Postma of the Netherlands was second and his teammate Rintje Ritsma won the bronze.