05 February 2022

Today at the Winter Olympics: Mixed results for Great Britain

05 February 2022

The Winter Olympics began in earnest on Saturday, with the first full day of action in Beijing.

Great Britain had an up and down day in mixed curling with victory over the Czech Republic and defeat to unbeaten Italy, while Katie Ormerod failed to qualify for the women’s snowboard slopestyle final and some short-track speed skating hopes hit the deck.

Here the PA news agency provides a quick guide to what has happened so far – and the highlights still to come.

Star of the day

Sweden’s freestyle skier Walter Wallberg tore a cruciate ligament in February 2020 and when he returned eight months later he snapped his meniscus. But Wallberg recovered to dethrone Canada’s defending moguls champion Mikael Kingsbury. The 21-year-old is Sweden’s first-ever gold medallist in freestyle skiing.

Fail of the day

Brothers Niall and Farrell Treacy both failed to qualify from the heats of the men’s 1000m short track speed skating. Niall went in the opening heat and was fighting for second place on the back straight. But he clashed blades with Itzhak De Laat of Holland and crashed out. Older sibling Farrell faded in the penultimate lap of his heat to finish fourth behind China’s Ziwei Ren.

Picture of the day

Great Britain’s Kathryn Thomson falls in the women’s 500 metres short track speed skating on the opening day of the 2022 Winter Olympics (Andrew Milligan/PA) (PA Wire)

Social media moment

What’s on tomorrow

The Olympic men’s downhill skiing event takes place on Sunday (Barry Coombs/PA) (PA Media)

Curling mixed doubles pair Bruce Mouat and Jennifer Dodds could book a semi-final slot for Great Britain as they face China (0105 UK) and Norway (1205 GMT) in the round-robin phase. Andrew Musgrave aims to improve on his seventh place from four years ago in the men’s cross-country skiathlon (0700 GMT). The men’s downhill, considered by many the blue riband event of the Winter Games, takes place at Genting Snow Park (0300 GMT) and is seen as a straight shoot-out between Marco Odermatt and Aleksander Aamodt Kilde.

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