Winter Olympics Day 10 recap: Elana Meyers Taylor wins gold at last, U.S. pairs skating drought extends to 38 years

Monday’s competition at the Milan Cortina Olympics produced elation, heartbreak and an unexpected decision to cancel the final stage of an event.

A 41-year-old U.S. bobsledder secured her first gold medal after five silvers and bronzes in four previous Olympics. Team USA’s podium drought in pairs skating extended to 38 years. And a slalom skier’s heartbreak played out on the mountain after his dream of Olympic gold ended in an instant.

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Here are five of the top stories from Day 10 of the Milan Cortina Olympics:

U.S. women cruise into hockey gold-medal round

Six games in, and U.S. women’s hockey’s run through the Olympics has been nothing short of a coronation.

Team USA continued its dominance Monday with a 5-0 win over Sweden in the semifinals, securing a medal and a trip to the gold medal game. The U.S. women are now guaranteed at least a silver medal and will face Canada on Thursday.

At this point, anything short of gold would be a stunner.

Team USA and Canada entered Olympic competition as co-favorites, and since then, the U.S. has established itself as the overwhelming favorite.

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Team USA opened its Games with a 5-1 win over Czechia in group play. It hasn’t allowed a goal in five games since while scoring five-plus goals in each of those games. That includes a 5-0 win over rival Canada in group play.

Monday saw more of the same. The U.S. dominated the puck early, but left the first period with just a 1-0 advantage. Then Team USA opened the floodgates with a four-goal second period to secure the game’s final margin. Five different U.S. players scored.

Team USA now has a 31-1 goal differential through six games and will enter Thursday’s final as the clear-cut favorite to win gold.

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Elana Meyers Taylor gets her gold

U.S. bobsledder Elana Meyers Taylor, at last, has her first gold medal following a dramatic come-from-behind victory in Monday’s monobob final.

She’s now tied with speedskater Bonnie Blair for the most Winter Olympic medals won by a U.S. woman with six.

Meyers Taylor’s U.S. teammate Kaillie Humphries won bronze, while Germany’s Laura Nolte secured silver.

Meyers Taylor entered her final run in silver medal position, knowing the time she needed to finish ahead of her teammate, Humphries, who secured a podium position one run earlier.

She had a clean run and crossed the finish line with a combined time across four runs of 3:57.93, 0.12 seconds ahead of Humphries. The run secured silver at worst and put pressure on Nolte, who had held the lead through the first three runs of competition.

Nolte sledded the final run of the day and crossed the finish line with a combined time of 3:57.97, .04 seconds behind Meyers Taylor’s run, ensuring gold for Meyers Taylor.

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Meyers Taylor started the Games with two silver Olympic medals and two bronze medals in two-woman bobsled from Vancouver (2010), Sochi (2014), Pyeongchang (2018) and Beijing (2022). She also won the silver medal in Beijing in monobob. Now she has gold.

Japan duo tops pairs podium; USA shut out again

Japan’s Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara secured gold in the pairs figure skating competition with a nearly flawless free skate that vaulted them to the top of the standings after a fifth-place finish in the short program.

Their free skate score of 158.13 was the best of the day and the best of their careers. It put them in gold medal position with four teams remaining.

But their gold wasn’t secure going into the final skate of the day by Germany’s Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin, who had a shot to overtake them thanks to their first-place finish in the short program.

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But Hase and Volodin made mistakes where Miura and Kihara did not, ensuring gold for the Japanese pair. Hase and Volodin dropped to third place for the bronze medal, while Georgia’s Anastasiia Metelkina and Luka Berulava won silver.

Ellie Kam and Daniel O’Shea posted the best U.S. finish in seventh place. They will take home gold from Milan Cortina thanks to their contributions to Team USA’s win in the team skating event last week.

The U.S. is still in search of its first Olympic medal in pairs since Jill Watson and Peter Oppegard won bronze in 1988.

Ski jump medals awarded sans finals

Harsh winter weather came for the Games on Monday. It was enough for officials to call the men’s super team ski jump competition early.

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With heavy snow and high winds, officials canceled the third and final round of competition in progress before the top teams had a chance to land their final runs. The runs of the teams that competed in Round 3 were wiped out, and the medals were awarded based on standings after two rounds.

The weather had changed enough to create drastically unfair conditions for athletes jumping later in the competitions.

“We had this sudden, heavy snowfall, wet snowfall, and we were trying to clean the track, but we saw immediately that we lost the speed in the in-run,” Sandro Pertile, the International Ski and Snowboard Federation race director, told NBC Sports. “The difference was very [significant]. We also had completely different wind conditions. … With these conditions it was really unfair to continue.”

That meant gold for Austria’s Jan Hörl and Stephan Embache, silver for Poland’s Paweł Wąsek and Kacper Tomasiak and bronze for Norway’s Kristoffer Eriksen Sundal and Johann André Forfang.

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Slovenia’s Domen Prevc and Anze Lanisek, who won gold last week in the mixed team normal competition, finished fifth.

“Unfortunately, we have to take this as it is,” Prevc said, per NBC.

It wasn’t immediately clear why officials opted to cancel the final run rather than postpone it.

Canada’s Megan Oldham tops Eileen Gu in big air final

Eileen Gu put down a great third run with Olympic gold on the line. But it wasn’t enough to overtake Canada’s Megan Oldham for the top of the podium in the freestyle skiing big air final.

Oldham’s first two of three runs in the big air final were good enough to secure gold with a score of 180.75, and her final jump of the day was a victory run. A skier’s two best runs out of three are added up for a final score. With the gold medal, Oldham unseated Gu as Olympic champion after Gu won gold for China in Beijing.

Gu’s third-round 89 gave her a combined score of 179, 1.75 points behind Oldham’s total. It was good enough for a silver medal, her second of the Milan Cortina Games in addition to two golds and one silver from Beijing. She and Oldham shared a hug after Oldham’s final run. Italy’s Flora Tabanelli won bronze.

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Gu will have a chance to secure her first gold medal of the Games in halfpipe, her best competition. Halfpipe qualifying is scheduled for Thursday, and the finals are scheduled for Saturday.

Highlight of the day

First, it was Japan’s Ikuma Horishima in moguls. On Monday, it was Italian speed skater Pietro Sighel.

Sighel lost his footing near the end of his preliminary heat in the 500-meter short track competition after two skaters collided behind him. But he remained upright and crossed the finish line backward. He placed second in his heat, which was good enough to advance to Wednesday’s quarterfinals.

Here’s another look at Sighel’s backward finish next to Horishima, who had a similar finish while falling in Sunday’s dual moguls competition.

Horishima ended up winning silver in his competition. Sighel is certainly hoping that his wild finish also helps him onto an Olympic podium.

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One more thing

The misery of defeat played out in dramatic fashion in Monday’s men’s slalom final.

Norway’s Atle Lie McGrath had a shot at gold after finishing first in the first of two runs. He skied last in Run 2 and had a spot on the Olympic podium in his sights.

But he didn’t finish the race. He missed a gate early in his run, and his Olympic dream was over in a flash. He did not react well.

NBC declined to make footage of his reaction available. But as soon as he missed his gate, McGrath launched his poles into the air. He then unstrapped his skis and walked off the course to the adjacent forest nearby.

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He lay down in the snow as he processed the disappointment.

Officials eventually approached him and gave him a ride down the mountain on a snowmobile.

“I thought I would get some peace and quiet, which I didn’t because photographers and police found me out in the woods,” he told media after it was over. “I just needed some time for myself.”