Men’s Skiing
With Alberto Tomba watching his last Olympic race from a hotel room, orange-haired Hans-Petter Buraas of Norway won the men’s slalom to wrap up the weather-plagued Alpine skiing at the Nagano Games.
Buraas, a 22-year-old snowboarding enthusiast who has dyed his hair white, then green, then orange-red this season, rallied on the second run to win in a total time of 1 minute, 49.31 seconds.
Norwegian teammate Ole Christian Furuseth won the silver medal in 1:50.64 and first-run leader Thomas Sykora of Austria dropped to third in 1:50.68. Sykora’s bronze gave Austria eight of the 15 men’s Alpine medals.
Women’s figure skating
Tara Lipinski, 15, became the youngest Olympic figure skating champion in history, jumping over fellow teen and U.S. teammate Michelle Kwan to take the gold. Lipinski was the next-to-last skater to take the ice; minutes later, she stood alone in first, two months younger than Sonja Henie was in her 1928 victory. The 1-2 finish was the first for the American women skaters since 1956.
Kwan, 17, the leader after the short program, took the silver. China’s Lu Chen won the bronze for the second Olympics in a row.
Nicole Bobek, U.S. champion and world bronze medalist in 1995, finished 17th.
Men’s hockey
The battle for the gold medal will be fought not between friendly but intense North American rivals, but by bitter Eastern European enemies.
The Czech Republic, which ousted Canada 2-1, in a dramatic shootout, will meet Russia, which defeated a gritty team of Finns, 7-4, in semifinal matches before a capacity crowd at the Big Hat Arena.
Russian captain Pavel Bure scored five goals to lead his team to the finals.
Canada and the United States were the top two seeds in the eight-team field. Both were eliminated by the underdog Czechs led by the sensational goaltending of Dominik Hasek, who held the Canadians scoreless for nearly 59 minutes, then held them off in overtime and in the shootout.
Hasek stopped a quintet that included Theo Fleury, Ray Bourque, Joe Nieuwendyk, Eric Lindros and Brendan Shanahan. Captain Robert Reichel, the first of four shooters for the Czechs, scored the lone penalty shot goal on Patrick Roy for the game-winner.
Women’s speedskating
Germany’s Gunda Niemann-Stirnemann skated into the record books with a silver in the 5,000 meters, her eighth medal in the last three Winter Olympics. Her three golds, four silvers and a bronze equaled the total compiled by Karin Enke-Kania of East Germany.
The gold went to her teammate Claudia Pechstein, the 5,000-meter winner in Lillehammer four years ago. The bronze went to Lyudmila Prokasheva of Kazakstan.
Men’s bobsled
A steady rain and mild temperatures forced cancellation of the second heat in the four-man. Through one run, the United States was in fourth place; the leaders were Germany, followed by Britain and Switzerland.
The shortened four-man race will be decided after today’s scheduled twin heats, with Brian Shimer’s USA-1 sled on the cusp of grasping the first American Olympic medal in this sport in 46 years.
Shimer was in fourth place, just five-hundredths of a second behind the third-place Swiss-2.
Biathlon
The German team of Ricco Gross, Peter Sendel, Sven Fischer and Frank Luck won the Olympic gold medal in the men’s 30-kilometer biathlon relay, the Nagano-high 11th gold medal for the Germans. Norway won the silver and Russia the bronze.