Beijing Olympics Day 2: Rachel Homan and John Morris lose big match to Australia; Ted-Jan Bloemen, Laurie Blouin miss podium
Note: This story is no longer being updated. A new article page will be created for Day 3 events later Sunday evening.
The latest Olympics news from Beijing and around the world on Saturday. Web links to longer stories if available:
9:50 a.m.: Canadian freestyle skier Elena Gaskell has pulled out of Monday's big air competition.
Gaskell, a medal hopeful in the event, made the announcement Sunday in an Instagram post but provided no explanation.
Was supposed to compete in my first Olympic event tomorrow but unfortunately (I) am going to have to pull out," she wrote. I'm absolutely heartbroken ... need some time to process."
The Canadian Olympic Committee confirmed Sunday that Gaskell had pulled out of the competition due to a non-COVID-related issue.
8:55 a.m.: There was plenty of pre-game curling drama Sunday at the Beijing Games. Rachel Homan and John Morris then took things to another level with an absolute thriller at the Ice Cube.
Homan threw her last stone with one second left to score a game-tying pair and Canada won it with a deuce in the extra end for a 7-5 victory over the Czech Republic.
Absolutely the most dramatic curling game I've ever been a part of," Morris said. Just a roller-coaster. We just had to hang tough and just hope for the best."
Canada settled for a split on the day. Homan and Morris came out flat in the evening game, initially down7-0 before storming back to tie 8-8, and couldn't quite recover, dropping a 10-8 decision to Australia in an extra end.
A win would have secured a spot in the semifinals. Instead, Canada is tied with multiple teams at 5-3 and will take on Italy next at 8 p.m. ET on Sunday.
7:35 a.m.: The women's moguls final did not go as planned for Canada, with two of the three Canadians falling on their last runs of the event.
Justine Dufour-Lapointe, who won moguls gold in Sochi in 2014, fell in her first finals run to finish 20th. She was comforted by her sister, Sochi silver medallist Chloe Dufour-Lapointe, the top Canadian who finished ninth in the competition.
Shortly after, Sofiane Gagnon fell on her second finals run, ending an impressive first Olympics for the Canadian in 13th place.
5:55 a.m.: Canada's Sofiane Gagnon and Chloe Dufour-Lapointe have advanced to the women's moguls final at the Beijing Olympics.
Gagnon, from Whistler, B.C., had the best performance of the second qualifying round, scoring a 75.63 to advance to the final at her first-ever Olympics.
Dufour-Lapointe, from Montreal, made it to the medal round thanks to a 70.45.
They join Chloe's younger sister Justine Dufour-Lapointe in the final after she qualified on Thursday.
Justine Dufour-Lapointe won moguls gold in Sochi in 2014 and then silver at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games.
5:05 a.m.: Canada's Ted-Jan Bloemen, the 2018 Olympic silver medallist at the in the 5,000-metre long-track speedskating, wasn't able to medal in the same event this time around.
After a quick start, Bloemen faded as the race went on and ended in 10th place.
Nils van der Poel of Sweden won in a thrilling final kick at the end.
3:40 a.m. (updated): Canada's John Morris and Rachel Homan scored two points in an extra end for a dramatic 7-5 win over Zuzana Paulova and Tomas Paul of the Czech Republic in mixed doubles curling Sunday at the Beijing Games.
Homan made a draw for two in the eighth end to extend the game, releasing the stone with about one second left on the clock.
With the victory, Canada moved into a second-place tie with Great Britain at 5-2 while the Czechs fell to 3-5.
Morris and Homan were scheduled to play Australia (1-7) on Sunday evening at the Ice Cube.
3:35 a.m.: Does Mikael Kingsbury, the most dominant moguls skier on the planet for the better part of the last decade, have another Olympic quadrennial in him?
I am 29, I'm not getting any younger," said Kingsbury, who won silver on Saturday. . . . I'm still passionate and motivated about my sport. I still feel like I have some good skiing inside me. But I don't want to think too far. I'll go one year at a time, and if I'll make it to Italy, to 2026, I'll be ready.
And yeah, let's keep that trend going. I have a silver, gold, silver. So, if we follow that trend, the next one should be gold."
3:10 a.m.: Jeremy Colliton brought his players together toward the tail end of practice.
Let's have that urgency," Canada's Olympic men's hockey coach calmly told the group. Let's have that desperation."
It was instruction - and a job title on the other side of the world - he never would have envisioned three short months ago.
You don't roadmap these things," the 37-year-old told a group of North American reporters about 30 minutes later. You just do the best you can and prepare for your opportunities."
Colliton certainly has a big one under the bright lights of the Beijing Games.
2:55 a.m.: Explore Guangzhou's old city. Wander a historic neighborhood in Shanghai. Visit with the giant pandas out west in Sichuan province. All these experiences are available to those attending the Beijing Olympics. By videolink - without ever leaving the press center.
Welcome to China. But not really.
The Olympics are usually a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the host country to showcase its culture. This year, however, athletes, coaches and others traveling to the Winter Games in Beijing are entirely sequestered in a bubble so complete that it even contains its own intercity trains. It's all part of the elaborate effort by China to control the spread of COVID-19 (and, some say, control the curious visitors as well).
Nothing is supposed to leave this alternate universe. But what clues of China might seep in?
2:20 a.m.: Regina's Mark McMorris was the top Canadian in qualifying for men's slopestyle at the Beijing Olympics on Sunday.
China's Su Yiming had the best overall score headed into Monday's final, with an 86.80 in his first run.
McMorris was second overall, with an impressive 83.30 in his second run carrying him through to the final.
Sebastian Toutant of L'Assomption, Que., was eighth overall thanks to a second-run score of 70.11.
Max Parrot of Bromont, Que., was 10th with his 70.11 score in the first run standing up to take him to the final.
Darcy Sharpe of Comox Valley, B.C., was outside the top 12 and will miss the final after placing 23rd.
1:20 a.m.: The Australian mixed doubles curling team was back in the Beijing Games after getting a late reprieve" Sunday before their round-robin games against Switzerland and Canada.
Earlier in the day, the Australian Olympic Committee said Tahli Gill and Dean Hewitt had pulled out of the competition after Gill returned a series of positive COVID-19 tests.
However, the AOC later said the duo was allowed to return to competition following an urgent meeting of the Medical Expert Panel (MEP) in Beijing.
The committee said the AOC received an email from the Chinese Public Health System advising that the pair can continue under the close contact provisions."
12:25 a.m.: The Olympic men's downhill was postponed Sunday because of high winds at the venue.
No new date was immediately announced. The 11 a.m. race start was delayed three hours before it was called off.
At the top of the speed course, known as The Rock, the wind gusted to 60 kilometres per hour Sunday.
The men's third and final training run Saturday was cancelled because of wind after three skiers went down the course, but the men got two training runs in earlier in the week.
Toronto's James Crawford and Broderick Thompson and Brodie Seger of Whistler, B.C., will represent Canada in men's downhill.
Thompson was third-fastest in the second training run and Crawford was fifth in the first. Crawford has a No. 2 start bib, Seger starts 26th and Thompson 28th.
11:42 p.m.: Australia's Olympic mixed doubles curling team has pulled out of the Beijing Games after team member Tahli Gill returned a series of positive COVID-19 tests.
The Australians were scheduled to face Switzerland on Sunday before taking on Canada's John Morris and Rachel Homan.
The Australian Olympic Committee said it was trying to make arrangements to have Gill and Dean Hewitt fly home rather than having Gill remain in an isolation hotel. They will miss their final two games and finish 0-7 in round robin play.
11:05 a.m.: There is a photograph from the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics that captured curling fans' hearts worldwide. In it, Canadian curler John Morris and American rival Matt Hamilton sit side by side, arms draped around each others' shoulders, grinning faces inches apart, beer cans mid-clink.
It was a moment that perfectly captured the spirit of curling, a sport best known for its sweeping but perhaps best loved for its socializing. Yet it is a moment that will likely be impossible to repeat in the socially distanced world of the Beijing Games.
Of all of COVID-19's cruelties, the necessity of distance has caused particular angst throughout the curling community. This is a sport built around closeness, from the pre-game handshakes between opponents, to the post-game drinking sessions, in which the winners typically buy the losers a round. That tradition, dubbed broomstacking" for the original practice of opponents stacking their brooms in front of a fire after a game and sharing a drink, all but vanished after the coronavirus emerged.
10:12 p.m.: Quebec City's Laurie Blouin narrowly missed out on a second Olympic medal with a fourth-place finish in women's snowboard slopestyle Sunday at the Beijing Olympics.
After a rough second run, Blouin rebounded with an impressive score of 81.41 points on her final trip through the course. But it wasn't enough to break into the top three. New Zealand's Zoi Sadowski-Synnot won the first Winter Games gold in her country's history after scoring 92.88 on her blistering final run.
10 p.m.: Olympic rookie Madeline Schizas has put Canada into the final round of figure skating's team event at the Beijing Games.
Starting the day in sixth place, and needing to finish top-five to advance, the 18-year-old from Oakville, Ont., skated a virtually flawless program to Dulcea Si Tandra Mea Fiara" to finish third with 69.60 points. Canada is in fourth place with 24 points. Russia leads with 36, the United States is second (34) and Japan, third (29).
6:26 p.m.: Canadians are making an impact at the Beijing Olympics, and not just the athletes. Behind the scenes are Canadians vital to the smooth running of the Games.
Mark Messer, for example, is in charge of making the ice for long-track speedskating, a sport that depends on a fast, consistent surface. He's the operations manager at the Calgary Olympic Oval and has been to Beijing a dozen times in the last two years, getting the Games venue ready for the spotlight.
The Star's Kerry Gillespie has more: Beijing behind the scenes: Meet the Calgary icemaker who keeps long-track speedskating smooth without a Zamboni
5:20 p.m.: German luge star Felix Loch is a two-time Olympic champion in singles, but his bid for a third straight title collapsed in shocking fashion when he bumped a wall on the final run in 2018. He's back, although he faces strong competition from countryman Johannes Ludwig, among others.
5:18 p.m.: U.S. bobsledder Elana Meyers Taylor said Saturday she was about to leave isolation and could start preparing in earnest to compete at the Beijing Olympics.
Meyers Taylor revealed Tuesday she had tested positive for COVID-19. She had to give up her spot as a flag-bearer at the opening ceremony, but bobsled doesn't begin until about a week into the Olympics.
5:15 p.m.: Whatever faint hope there was of the rest of the world closing the gap on the Canadian and U.S. women's hockey teams is quickly being dashed three days into the Beijing Games.
Canada outclassed its first two Group A opponents with a pair of 11-1 victories, beginning with Switzerland on Thursday and the Finns on Saturday. And Finland, the defending Olympic and world championship bronze medallist, hardly fared much better against the United States in 5-2 loss on Thursday night.
Canada looks to improve to 3-0 in Beijing when it meets the Russians on Monday.
1:50 p.m.: Despite high expectations, Canadian freestyle ski champion Mikael Kingsbury will take home a silver medal after coming in second to Walter Wallberg, a 21-year-old Swede who'd spent a lot of the past couple of years rehabbing a knee injury, writes Star columnist Dave Feschuk.
Full column from Dave Feschuk here: Mikael Kingsbury unseated from Olympic moguls throne by the young Swede he used to coach
12:40 p.m.: But at the end of the chaotic and inaugural short-track speedskating mixed team relay Saturday night, Canada came away with zippo, writes Star columnist Rosie DiManno from Beijing.
Four teams made a final that didn't include No. 2-ranked Netherlands or short-track gold-gaudy South Korea. And still the Canadians - with the best times in the quarters and semis, earning the prized inside lane - muffed it, the only medal-less country from among those that had remained for the 18-lap event at the Capital Indoor Stadium.
Full column from Rosie DiManno here: Costly mistake leaves Canada off the podium in frantic final of inaugural short-track speedskating mixed team relay
12 p.m.: China's first gold medal drew cheers from city residents gathered at a downtown shopping district.
China won its first event of the 2022 Winter Olympics with a victory in short track speedskating's mixed team relay. Wu Dajing edged Pietro Sighel of Italy by .016 seconds - or half a skate blade - to claim gold.
11 a.m.: China did not move mountains to host the 2022 Winter Olympics. But it flooded a dried riverbed, diverted water from a key reservoir that supplies Beijing and resettled hundreds of farmers and their families, all to feed one of the most extensive snow-making operations in the history of the Games.
In Beijing's version of the Winter Games, the competitions that began this weekend will for the first time take place almost entirely on artificial snow, necessitating an Olympic snow-making and water-management operation of enormous scale, and foreshadowing the reality of snow sports everywhere as the planet warms.
11 a.m.: As soon as a Uyghur athlete helped light the Olympic flame at the Beijing Olympics, the debate began: Was it a defiant signal from Chinese leaders, or proof that protests around the world were having impact?
The selection of Dinigeer Yilamujiang for the supreme honor of being a final Olympic torchbearer at the ceremony that opened the Winter Games in Beijing on Friday night was a huge surprise.
10 a.m.: Three-time snowboarding gold medallist Shaun White made it clear Saturday that the Beijing Games won't just be his final Olympics, the 35-year-old American plans to retire from the sport he put on the international map after the halfpipe medal round next week.
In my mind, I've decided this will be my last competition," he said.
9:30 a.m.: Canadian women's hockey star Blayre Turnbull and her fiance, bobsledder Ryan Sommer, are both representing Canada at the Games this year.
The engaged couple had an extra special reunion, meeting each other for the first time in three months at the opening ceremony in Beijing on Friday.
Previously: Canada claims a bronze in speedskating and a silver in men's moguls skiing on Day 1 of the Winter Olympics; Canada whoops Finland 11-1 in ice hockey; Jamaica's bobsled team qualifies at the Olympics for the first time in 24 years; Olympic organizers report 45 new positive tests for COVID-19.
For a full write-up of what you missed yesterday at the Beijing Olympics, click here.