Olympics opening weekend roundup – Russia leads medal count, Shiffrin wipeout

by Seth Udinski

Seth Udinski, FISM News

 

The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games are underway after a weekend full of competition.

Russia is currently leading the Beijing Winter Olympics games with seven total medals, including two gold. Canada sits at second with six total medals, while the Netherlands and Italy sit tied for third at five. Team USA has won three total medals, all silver, in snowboarding, freestyle skiing, and team figure skating. Sweden currently leads the gold medal count at 3.

One of America’s biggest stars, alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin, a two-time gold medalist, wiped out in the first run of the giant slalom, an event she won in the last Olympics. The 26-year-old Shiffrin is one of the most celebrate U.S. athletes at the Games, and this wipeout proved to be a devastating blow to her quest to defend her gold medal in 2018.

Shiffrin said afterward,

I think there’s a lot of questions that will be asked and I think many people are going to say: ‘What went wrong this entire time? We can go back to right after Sölden (World Cup event in October 2021) and rather than being able to train, being stuck inside because of a back injury. We can go to the 10 days I’ve had to take off in quarantine and missing training there. We can go to a lot of different places in the season where we can put the blame, but the easiest thing to say is that I skied a couple of good turns and I skied one turn a bit wrong and I really paid the hardest consequence for that…That heartbreak never goes away and I think that’s what drives me to keep working. Sometimes, they do still happen and, unfortunately, it happened today.
Shiffrin is trying to put this one behind her but said it may prove difficult: “I never get over it and I won’t ever get over this either.”

She still has a chance to capture a gold medal on Wednesday, as she will compete in the slalom event.

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