Thursday was a quieter day in the medal department for the United States, but there were still plenty of highlights in Milan. The U.S. men’s hockey team dominated, and Breezy Johnson’s great week continued.
54-year-old Rich Ruohonen made history, and Chloe Kim just missed out on it. Lastly, Jessie Diggins medaled in her farewell tour.
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Here are five of the top stories from Day 6 of the Milan Cortina Olympics:
U.S. men’s hockey makes opening statement
Team USA men’s hockey couldn’t have gotten off to a better start as it opened Olympic play on Thursday. For the first time since the 2014 Olympics, NHL players are back, and they made their presence known in a 5-1 win over Latvia behind a strong performance from Brock Nelson.
Nelson, who plays for the Colorado Avalanche in the NHL, finished the game with two goals, and had another goal and assists denied after successful challenges by Latvia. The Ottawa Senators’ Brady Tkachuk, Buffalo Sabres’ Tage Thompson and Toronto Maple Leafs’ Auston Matthews each scored a goal.
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No three-peat for Chloe Kim
Going into Thursday’s women’s halfpipe final, Chloe Kim had the opportunity to become the first snowboarder to win three straight gold medals. Kim was unable to make history after finishing behind South Korea’s Gaon Choi as a silver medalist for the first time in her career.
Choi was able to overcome a scary fall in her second run to finish in first and make history of her own, becoming the youngest snowboarding gold medalist in history, at 17 years and 101 days old. American snowboarder Red Gerard previously held the record when he won the 2018 slopestyle at 17 years and 227 days old.
Breezy Johnson trades in Olympic gold for an engagement ring
What a week for U.S. skier Breezy Johnson. After winning Olympic gold in Sunday’s downhill competition, Johnson got engaged to her boyfriend, Connor Watkins, at the base of the super-G run in Cortina d’Ampezzo on Thursday.
Johnson told NBC’s Cara Banks that she had hopes of getting engaged at the Olympics. The big news lifted her spirits after she crashed out of Thursday’s super-G and did not finish. Johnson will have to be extra careful with her new hardware after she broke her gold medal earlier this week.
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Rich Ruohonen becomes America’s oldest Olympian
Rich Ruohonen is a perfect example of why you are never too old to go for it. At 54 years old, Ruohonen became America’s oldest person to ever compete in the Winter Games. Ruohonen, a personal injury lawyer from Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, originally filled in as skipper last season for Team USA’s Danny Casper. On Thursday, Ruohonen was subbed into Team USA’s game against Switzerland.
Ruohen’s temporary role turned into a part-time job as the team’s alternate — or fifth player. After 30 years of Olympic Trials frustration, he was able to finally secure a spot in the 2026 Winter Games. Joseph Savage (52 in 1932) and Mac McCarthy (51 in 1948) were the only other Olympians over 50 to compete in the Winter Olympics, according to the co-founder of the International Society of Olympic Historians, Bill Mallon. Many elite curlers retire in their late 30s.
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Jessie Diggins wins bronze during her final Olympics
U.S. cross-country skier Jessie Diggins’ farewell tour added an exclamation point, taking bronze in Thursday’s women’s 10km — while competing with bruised ribs. Diggins said this will be her final Olympics and that she will retire after the season finale in Lake Placid, New York, in March.
Diggins won gold at the 2018 team event in PyeongChang and won silver in the 30km freestyle and bronze in the individual sprint in 2022. The 33-year-old’s list of accomplishments also includes 33 career World Cup wins and reaching the podium 87 times.
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Highlight of the day
Have yourself a day, Brock Nelson!
One more thing
The action in Milan provided plenty of highlights on Thursday, but mogul skier Tess Johnson’s boyfriend’s grandpa might be the best thing you’ll see all day.
The 2026 Milan Cortina Games became the last moment of freedom for a Slovak man who wanted to see his nation’s ice hockey team play in the Winter Olympics.
A 44-year-old Slovak national was arrested Wednesday in Milan, ending a run during which he eluded Italian authorities for 16 years for alleged shopping thefts perpetrated in 2010. The man was apprehended after checking into a guest house outside of Milan, reportedly after police received a tip from hotel staff, according to a statement released by the local Carabinieri police force (via Reuters).
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The fugitive intended to watch Slovakia play Finland in men’s ice hockey the following day. Alas, the man did not get to see the Slovaks take the ice versus the Finns.
Slovakia defeated Finland 4-1 on Wednesday to open group play in the men’s ice hockey tournament in Milan. (Photo by Wang Kaiyan/Xinhua via Getty Images)
(Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images)
Slovakia won its opener in group play with a 4-1 victory over Finland. The man was taken to the San Vittore prison in Milan after being arrested and will serve 11 months and seven days.
Had the man avoided capture for three more days, he might have been able to see Slovakia play home country Italy in its next group-play matchup. Apparently, that would’ve been pushing his luck too far. He had already evaded arrest for 16 years since Italian prosecutors issued a warrant for him.
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The end result of the story feels like what ultimately took down Neil McCauley (played by Robert De Niro) in 1995’s “Heat.” McCauley could have gotten away from Los Angeles police and detective Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) and presumably enjoyed the rest of his life on the run.
But just like the Slovak fugitive decided to go back to Italy to watch his nation’s ice hockey team, McCauley felt the need to exact revenge on Waingro (Kevin Gage) for ratting his heist crew out to police. That’s what got him caught in the end.
For years now, I’ve searched for a simple way to explain the current state of college athletics to those unfamiliar.
How do you best help people understand the instability of a structure and system so profitable and popular?
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“Everything seems to be going well. What’s all the hubbub about?” they’ll say.
Perhaps they are right. Perhaps the cries of chaos from stakeholders are only necessary growing pains for an entity evolving from amateur to professional.
Perhaps that’s OK.
But on Thursday afternoon, for a few fleeting moments, a realtime snapshot existed that, more than anything, highlights the absurd state of the industry.
Within a county courthouse, situated in the tiniest of towns in the most rural of areas in north Mississippi, a 23-year-old quarterback’s collegiate eligibility — his Heisman Trophy hopes, his team’s championship aspirations, his more than $5 million in promised compensation — hinged on a decision from a 70-plus-year-old chancery court judge who just so happens to hold a law degree from the school, Ole Miss, that stands to benefit most from his ruling.
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This is less than ideal.
Set aside your feelings on the decision from Judge Robert Q. Whitwell to grant quarterback Trinidad Chambliss an extra year of eligibility. Remove the names and school logos. Put away your inherent bias and partiality. Look at the whole.
Is it healthy for college sports to have the eligibility of athletes determined within courtrooms across America?
In fact, as Whitwell, his Southern accent thick enough to peel paint, completed the 90-minute reading of his order and subsequent decision, the judge grew emotional, unable to keep within the joyous feelings of being the man who permitted Chambliss — by all accounts a standup human being and brilliant footballer — another year of collegiate eligibility, another chance to chase dreams, to earn millions.
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It was a scene ripped from the pages of a novel from famed Mississippi-reared author John Grisham.
Trinidad Chambliss will be back in uniform for the Ole Miss Rebels next season after Thursday’s eligibility ruling. (Photo by CFP/Getty Images)
(CFP via Getty Images)
It’s easy to argue that this is one of the most compelling stories in recent college football history: a Michigan-born kid so lightly recruited that he began his career in Division II, did well enough there (Ferris State) to earn a spot playing major college football in the South as a backup, before replacing the starter midseason and leading the Ole Miss Rebels to their best season in more than 60 years.
The latest chapter came Thursday, within that courtroom as part of a lawsuit against an organization, the NCAA, that denied Chambliss three different times in the last two months an additional year of eligibility — all over claims that illness (lingering tonsillitis, plus mononucleosis and COVID) kept him from playing in 2022.
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Let’s not get bogged down on the facts of the case. Here’s the gist: Over a five-hour hearing Thursday, Chambliss and his attorneys argued before the judge that he was sick enough to warrant a medical redshirt for that season; the NCAA argued he did not produce enough medical evidence to back up that claim; the judge sided with the quarterback.
There is something more important here.
This case was different from many other judicial decisions deeming the NCAA in violation of antitrust law. This was not an “antitrust” case. It was a “contract” case.
In fact, this case may have cracked a door to a new avenue of legal challenges against the NCAA’s rules. Chambliss’ attorneys, instead of suing over antitrust claims (more difficult to prove), sued the NCAA over breaching its contract with Ole Miss as a member university of which all athletes, including Chambliss, are third-party beneficiaries.
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In layman’s terms, the NCAA “failed,” as the judge said, to uphold its membership agreement with Ole Miss, which states that it must “commit to the well-being and development of student-athletes” and apply its rules in “good faith.”
By not granting Chambliss a sixth year of eligibility, the NCAA breached its contract and acted in bad faith, causing harm to Chambliss in a number of ways in which the judge detailed, including the loss of compensation in what he described as the new “labor market” of college sports; loss of an additional year to develop for the NFL (something that Ole Miss assistant coach Joe Judge, a witness in the case, stressed during his time on the stand); and, in an interesting twist, the loss of college football’s fan base in witnessing one of the best players in the country, the judge said.
As in many of these cases, the NCAA is made to be the bad guy here. Evil. Sinister.
But there is something important to remember: The NCAA is charged with enforcing rules and standards that are created by member schools. As it turns out, a committee of school administrators — not the NCAA staff — denied Chambliss’ waiver appeal.
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The root of the denial has gone mostly unreported, but here it is: Committee members requested to see practice logs from Chambliss’ 2022 season as a way to determine the severity of his illness. However, since 2022, Ferris State has switched operation systems that archive practice logs. The records were lost or were so difficult and costly enough to obtain that they never made it to the committee.
The NCAA staff’s original denial of Chambliss’ eligibility waiver in December preceded the denied appeal from the committee in early January and triggered the lawsuit to be filed soon afterward. And then, on the morning of Thursday’s hearing, Chambliss’ last resort for eligibility through the NCAA — a “reconsideration” — was rejected.
It mattered not, of course.
Within a courtroom, from a local judge, another college athlete received additional eligibility.
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Since Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia successfully sued the NCAA in December of 2024, Chambliss is the 11th player to receive an injunction for extended eligibility in 55 lawsuits filed. In 34 of those cases a judge ruled in favor of the NCAA in a preliminary judgement, or the case was voluntarily dismissed.
About a dozen cases are still pending, including one coming Friday, when Tennessee quarterback Joey Aguilar and attorneys plan to argue for an eighth year of eligibility before, yes, a Tennessee judge.
Of the 11 successful injunctions granted to extend a player’s eligibility, seven of them have come in state court from a local judge — a new way that attorneys have found to reach a decision that most benefits their clients, moving away from filing federally.
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On Thursday, Chambliss’ counsel paved the way, perhaps, for another avenue to test and eventually topple NCAA standards.
In its statement in reaction to the news, the NCAA says the decision illustrates the “impossible situation” created from differing court decisions in lawsuits supported by its member schools attacking the very rules that they created. These “conflicting court decisions,” the statement read, make “partnering with Congress essential to provide stability” — another plea to lawmakers to adopt federal legislation to govern the industry.
At the very least, all of this has provided something personally useful: I’ve found a simple way to explain the current state of college athletics to those unfamiliar.
A courthouse. Congress. And an infinity of billable hours.
Chicago White Sox general manager Chris Getz issued a mea culpa Thursday after wrongly calling one of his more important players a switch-hitter for a month.
Acuña is a right-handed hitter. He was right-handed when the Texas Rangers signed him out of Venezuela in 2018, and he has never dabbled in switch-hitting as far as we can tell. He was still right-handed when the White Sox acquired him for one of their top trade chips.
Still, for some reason, Getz repeatedly referred to Acuña as a switch-hitter in public appearances, as Roundtable’s Sam Phalen compiled:
That highlight reel made the social media rounds Wednesday, leading to Getz admitting he was wrong, with some tongue-in-cheek comments via MLB.com:
“So I probably have been getting carried away describing his versatility,” Getz joked. “He can play every position on the field. Why does it have to stop there? I called Luisangel and told him that even though he’s just right-handed, we still love him.”
On the one hand, this is silly. Everyone’s made a mistake like that, such as thinking an athlete plays a position he doesn’t. It’s hard to imagine the White Sox declining to pull the trigger on the Robert trade because Acuña is right-handed.
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On the other hand, it would be polite to call this a bad look for Getz. An MLB general manager is supposed to have deep knowledge of not just every player on their team but also every player in the minor-league organization. If a no-name outfielder suddenly hits a homer over the batter’s eye in Low-A or a teenage pitcher reaches 100 mph in the Dominican complex, the GM is supposed to know about it.
That applies to players outside the organization, too. A move such as the Robert trade should be coming after hours of legwork evaluating every interested team’s minor-league system for under-appreciated talents. Getz acquiring Acuña is a bet that a guy who was Baseball America’s No. 66 prospect in 2024 can still be an impact talent, despite slashing .248/.299/.341 in 233 MLB plate appearances, and you don’t make those calls unless your staff has pored through reams of data and scouting reports.
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So if a GM has something as basic as a player’s handedness wrong, that’s worth remembering.
Getz has worked for the White Sox since 2016 and was promoted to general manager in 2023. His tenure has so far consisted of overseeing a rebuilding system while fielding one of the worst teams in MLB. Despite some interesting moves such as the signing of Munetaka Murakami, Vegas isn’t expecting a much better team this year, with BetMGM pegging the Sox’s over/under at 66.5, third-worst in MLB.
Oklahoma City Thunder guard Nikola Topić made his NBA debut in Thursday’s 110-93 loss against the Milwaukee Bucks. Topić received a standing ovation when he entered the game, his first since being diagnosed with testicular cancer. He’d been out since October as he underwent chemotherapy treatment.
He finished the game with two points, 1 rebound and 1 assist in 12 minutes.
The 20-year-old was assigned to the OKC Blue on Sunday and played in two G League games, averaging 14.5 points and 5.5 assists through two games with the OKC Blue.
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The 6-foot-6 Serbian guard had yet to make his NBA debut since being drafted with the 12th overall pick in the 2024 draft. Topić missed his rookie season and essentially had a redshirt rookie season after partially tearing his ACL before the draft. He played in the Summer League and preseason before his diagnosis this year.
Topić received minutes with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell out on Thursday night. Gilgeous-Alexander and Mitchell have missed time with abdominal injuries, while Williams is dealing with a hamstring injury. Thunder center Isaiah Hartenstein also rested in the team’s last game before the All-Star break.
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The defending champions sit atop the West standings at 42-14.
The NBA is getting fed up with some of the most obvious tanking in recent memory.
The league announced Thursday it has fined the Utah Jazz $500,000 and the Indiana Pacers $100,000 for their roster management in recent games. In the statement, NBA commissioner Adam Silver took the rare step of describing both teams’ actions as blatant attempts to improve their draft position by losing:
“Overt behavior like this that prioritizes draft position over winning undermines the foundation of NBA competition and we will respond accordingly to any further actions that compromise the integrity of our games,” said NBA commissioner Adam Silver. “Additionally, we are working with our Competition Committee and Board of Governors to implement further measures to root out this type of conduct.”
The statement points to specific examples for both teams. The Jazz’s offense was described as “conduct detrimental to the league,” with the NBA noting the franchise removed star players Lauri Markkanen and Jaren Jackson Jr. after the third quarter in a game against the Orlando Magic on Feb. 7 and Miami Heat on Feb. 9.
Funnily enough, the Jazz actually won that second game 115-111. The Magic, however, came back to win 120-117 in that first game.
Jazz owner Ryan Smith took exception with the fine in a social-media post: “agree to disagree … Also, we won the game in Miami and got fined? That makes sense …”
The Pacers, meanwhile, are accused of violating the NBA’s Player Participation Policy in connection to its game against the Jazz on Feb. 3. An NBA investigation that included a review by an independent doctor found that star forward Pascal Siakam and two other starters, all of whom were held out, could have played under the policy’s medical standard.
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Siakam was officially held out due to rest, but the NBA said the Pacers could have held the players out of other games “in a way that would have better promoted compliance with the Policy.” The Jazz “won” the game 131-122.
The fines represent the NBA taking a stance against tanking, though the teams might just see them as the cost of doing business. It’s certainly not like they’re going to be better going forward, as Jackson was ruled out for the season earlier Thursday and Markkanen has missed games on both Tuesday and Thursday due to rest.
Along with the Washington Wizards, Sacramento Kings and New Orleans Pelicans (whose unprotected 2026 first-round pick is controlled by the Atlanta Hawks), the Jazz and Pacers are two of five teams with 18 or fewer wins this season. The prize is obvious for whichever team manages to finish the season with the NBA’s worst record: a guaranteed top-five pick in a draft with one of the strongest college freshman classes in the history of basketball.
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Kansas’ Darryn Peterson, BYU’s AJ Dybantsa, Duke’s Cameron Boozer and UNC’s Caleb Wilson all loom as potential franchise-changers, with plenty more impact talents behind them for teams unlucky in the lottery. Teams have had this draft circled on their calendars for years, and have acted accordingly.
The Winter Games have begun in Italy. From the rink to the slopes, a new generation of stars has emerged to chase gold. We’ll keep you connected to all of the thrilling moments and top stories as we track the medal race each day of the Games.
The United States is up to 14 total medals so far in Italy, and will have several opportunities to add to that count in Day 7 of the 2026 Winter Olympics.
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Here are the top five things to watch on Friday at the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics:
1. Ilia Malinin goes for ascension — and a quad axel (1 p.m. ET)
Malinin holds a five-point lead going into the free skate and is virtually guaranteed a gold medal if he lands all of the major parts of his routine. He’s also poised to become the first skater to successfully land a quad axel in the history of the Olympics, if he pulls off figure skating’s most difficult jump. He landed it just fine in practice Thursday.
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A win would make him and Nathan Chen the first Americans to win the event back-to-back since Scott Hamilton and Brian Boitano did it in 1984 and 1988.
2. Team USA enters women’s hockey knockout round (3:10 p.m. ET)
The first challenge of the playoffs will be against the host country, Italy, which isn’t seen as a medal threat here. It’s widely assumed every game in this event is just a warm-up for the USA-Canada gold medal game, but teams like this deserve to be appreciated.
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3. 17-year-old Alessandro Barbieri tries to shock world in men’s snowboard halfpipe (1:30 p.m. ET)
In a stacked men’s halfpipe field featuring defending gold medalist Ayumu Hirano of Japan and four-time world champion Scotty James of Australia, 17-year-old Alessandro Barbieri looms as Team USA’s best chance at a medal. He had the fourth-best score in qualifying, but will need something even better in the final.
4. The chaos of women’s snowboard cross (7:30 a.m. ET)
Lindsey Jacobellis’ breakthrough win after 16 years of crushing disappointment was one of the best stories of the 2022 Olympics. She’ll be in the broadcast booth for this one, with a wide-open field in a sport prone to chaos.
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Stacy Gaskill is the top-ranked American in the field, while reigning world champion Michela Moioli of Italy will be trying to keep another gold in the host country.
5. Contenders face off in men’s hockey (10 a.m. ET)
Canada and Team USA are the co-favorites in men’s hockey, but Sweden and Finland are the two other countries to most benefit from the reintroduction of NHL players, and they’re about to take each other on in group play. This could be a bronze medal match preview, or even more if they can take down one of the top teams.
Friday, Feb. 13, 2026 (Day 7)
All times ET.
Biathlon
10 kilometer sprint
8 a.m.: Men’s final (airs on USA Network at 11 a.m.)🏅
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Cross-Country Skiing
10 kilometer
5:45 a.m.: Men’s final (USA Network coverage begins at 6 a.m.; airs on NBC at 12 p.m.)🏅
Curling
Men’s round-robin
3:05 a.m.: Canada vs. USA (USA Network), Great Britain vs. Italy, China vs. Norway, Switzerland vs. Czechia
1:05 p.m.: Switzerland vs. China, Czechia vs. Norway, Germany vs. Italy, Canada vs. Sweden (airs at 9:30 p.m. on USA Network)
Women’s round robin
8:05 a.m.: Denmark vs. Sweden, China vs. Switzerland, USA vs. Canada (airs at 5 p.m. on CNBC), Great Britain vs. South Korea
Figure Skating
Free skate
1 p.m.: Men’s final (USA Network; NBC coverage begins at 3 p.m.)🏅
Hockey
Men’s pool play
6:10 a.m.: Finland vs. Sweden (USA Network), Italy vs. Slovakia
10:40 a.m.: France-Czechia
3:10 p.m.: Canada-Switzerland (airs at 12:30 a.m. Saturday on USA Network)
Women’s quarterfinals
10:40 a.m.: Czechia vs. Sweden (airs at 8 p.m. on USA Network)
3:10 p.m.: USA vs. Italy (USA Network)
Skeleton
10 a.m.: Women’s runs 1, 2 (USA Network)
1:25 p.m.: Men’s runs 3, 4 (airs on USA Network at 5:30 p.m.)🏅
Snowboarding
Snowboard cross
4 a.m.: Women’s qualifying (4 a.m.)
7:30 a.m.: Women’s final (airs at 8:30 a.m. on USA Network and 1 p.m. on NBC) 🏅
Halfpipe
1:30 p.m.: Men’s final (NBC)🏅
Speed Skating
10,000 meters
10 a.m.: Men’s final (airs at 10:30 a.m. on USA Network)🏅
One day, the NBA record books will be safe from LeBron James. But not Thursday.
The Los Angeles Lakers star recorded 28 points, 12 assists and 10 rebounds in a 124-104 win over the Dallas Mavericks, making him the oldest player in NBA history to record a triple-double at 41 years and 44 days. Karl Malone was the previous record-holder at 40 years and 127 days.
It was also James’ first triple-double since Feb. 1, 2025, breaking the longest drought of his career. He now has 123 total in the regular season, placing him fifth all-time behind Russell Westbrook, Nikola Jokić, Oscar Robertson and Magic Johnson.
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As for the oldest triple-double leaderboard, here’s how that looks now:
LeBron James (41 years, 44 days)
Karl Malone (40 years, 127 days)
LeBron James (40 years, 33 days)
LeBron James (40 years, 22 days)
LeBron James (39 years, 359 days)
LeBron James (39 years, 342 days)
LeBron James (39 years, 333 days)
LeBron James (39 years, 321 days)
LeBron James (39 years, 319 days)
LeBron James (39 years, 316 days)
LeBron James (39 years, 314 days)
LeBron James (39 years, 301 days)
LeBron James (39 years, 106 days)
LeBron James (39 years, 88 days)
LeBron James (39 years, 28 days)
LeBron James (38 years, 353 days)
LeBron James (38 years, 320 days)
James has spent the past few years shredding every idea we have of what is possible this late in a player’s career, and the above list is certainly one way he’s doing that. Thursday was also James’ fourth straight game with double-digit assists, breaking John Stockton’s record for the longest such streak by a player 40 or older.
So there’s something else Malone and Stockton share.
The Lakers were still missing Luka Dončić, who remains out with a hamstring injury, but had no trouble with a limited Mavericks roster down one Cooper Flagg. The game was still close early in the third quarter, but a late run gave the Lakers a double-digit lead and Dallas never get within striking distance in the fourth quarter.
That hasn’t been a popular result in the U.S., and Chock and Bates acknowledged the controversy on Thursday while speaking with USA Today. While they didn’t go as far as some of their fans, they did acknowledge this episode hasn’t been the best look for figure skating:
“Any time the public is confused by results, it does a disservice to our sport,” Chock said on Thursday.
“It’s hard to retain fans when it’s difficult to understand what is happening on the ice. I think there needs to be a lot more clarity for the skaters, for the coaches and for the audience, in order to just have a solid fan base moving forward. People need to understand what they’re cheering for and be able to feel confident in the sport that they’re supporting.”
At issue is a scoring system in which the majority of the judges favored the Americans, but gave the French the win.
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When reviewing the individual judges’ scores in the free dance, the French judge sticks out with their compatriots’ second highest score and the lowest score Chock and Bates received, with a delta of nearly eight points. By comparison, the American judge favored Chock and Bates by about four points.
“We haven’t actually seen it, we’ve just heard about it, but it means a lot that people are voicing their opinions on our behalf,” Bates said. “I think the way that we skated and the way we’ve approached chasing these goals hopefully has resonated with people at home, and even in our response I think hopefully that too can reflect the Olympic spirit.”
“It is normal for there to be a range of scores given by different judges in any panel and a number of mechanisms are used to mitigate these variations. The ISU has full confidence in the scores given and remains completely committed to fairness.”
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Together, Chock and Bates have won the last three ice dance world titles and hold a pair of Olympic gold medals as part of the U.S.’ wins in the team event in 2022 and 2026. They have been skating together since 2011 and married in 2024.
They declined to tell USA Today if they would go for a fourth straight world title in March, but said they “have plans to remain on the ice” for now.
LIVIGNO, Italy — If you could snap your fingers and remove officiating mistakes in every sport, would we have the same Super Bowl winners, NCAA champions and Olympic gold medalists that show up in the history books?
It’s an impossible question to answer. But it’s one former Olympic skier and football player Jeremy Bloom wishes we didn’t have to ask.
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“Teams and individuals lose well-deserved winning moments because of human error,” Bloom told Yahoo Sports. “Being an athlete, understanding how hard it is to climb that mountain, I think everybody — literally everybody — should be united on a front of ‘we can’t make mistakes.’ These moments are too big. That’s the problem I think all of us that care about these athletes and these sports should be trying to solve.”
Owl AI, the company Bloom founded, might be part of the answer.
It involves ice dance, where a French judge’s scorecard showed a larger gap between a French team and American team than other judges in one of the components. The Americans, Madison Chock and Evan Bates, settled for second while the French team won gold.
“Any time the public is confused by results, it does a disservice to our sport,” Chock told USA Today on Thursday. “… I think there needs to be a lot more clarity for the skaters, for the coaches and for the audience, in order to just have a solid fan base moving forward. People need to understand what they’re cheering for and be able to feel confident in the sport that they’re supporting.”
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Though there’s been no formal accusation of wrongdoing, the controversy has echoes of a scandal from the 2002 Games involving a French judge who allegedly agreed to boost the Russian team in pairs figure skating in exchange for judging help with a French team in a different event.
At the beginning of these Olympics, there were also questions surrounding the score given to Chinese snowboarder Su Yiming, a former gold medalist, who did not perfectly execute his trick in Big Air but was scored high enough to knock American Ollie Martin off the podium.
In many ways, these controversies are inherent to judged sports like figure skating, snowboarding and freestyle skiing. Subjectivity and unconscious biases come into play. The pressure on judges to deliver scores quickly can lead to mistakes.
What if the answer to all that is artificial intelligence? Bloom, who has raised $11 million in seed funding for Owl AI, is on a mission to figure out what’s possible. And as the CEO of the X Games, Bloom is already putting the product to work on a limited scale with bigger plans for the future.
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“What we’ve found today is, it’s an incredible judge,” Bloom said. “It’s showing — it’s got to be proven — but it’s showing objectivity. I think we’re just continuing to throw everything at the technology to see where it’s good and where it’s not.”
It’s unclear, ultimately, how important AI will be — and how important humans want it to be — in officiating sports.
Professional tennis has already replaced line judges at most tournaments with a form of AI that instantly calls shots in or out. Some fans and players like the objective nature of the system; others don’t trust the technology to be 100-percent accurate and believe a layer of drama has been lost with players no longer having the ability to challenge calls they feel were incorrect.
The next level of possibility is more complex — and controversial. Imagine a world where you’re watching an NFL game and a computer immediately flashes a graphic on your television screen whether a pass interference penalty should be called. Or perhaps an NBA game where there’s no need for a coach’s challenge on a controversial block-charge call because AI instantly gives us the final word.
There have been growing questions about the juding in the ice dance competition that awarded the gold to Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron of France (right) over Americans Madison Chock and Evan Bates. (Photo by Tim Clayton/Getty Images)
(Tim Clayton via Getty Images)
Would it be a fairer system for the athletes? Probably. Would it be as enjoyable to watch without the controversy and human element? That’s in the eye of the beholder.
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But the impact of AI isn’t going away, and in many ways Olympic sports are an ideal canvas for experimentation — even if some competitors have reservations about what it could mean down the road.
“Our sport, and judged sports in particular, there’s a level of artistry that I don’t think an AI could really judge — or at least that anybody would feel good about,” said Nick Goepper, a freestyle skier with medals from the last three Olympics. “There’s some intangible factors you have to put into play like, ‘Has this ever happened before? How does a new trick affect the sport and culture as a whole?’ There are some of those audibles that a human judge can throw when you really understand the larger scope of things and connect to the sport on an emotional level.”
At their most fundamental level, though, sports like snowboarding and freestyle skiing face a judging conundrum. Each year, competitors continue to advance and push boundaries, executing harder tricks with more mid-air rotations and subtle stylistic elements that can be difficult to pick up. A winning routine at one Olympics is likely to be considered passé by the next.
In a sport like big air, where competitors jump off a ramp and get scored from 0 to 100 on one trick, judges are expected to identify and score a variety of elements including amplitude, rotations, inversions, grabs and landing. And even though they have instant replay available, asking judges to deliver scores quickly on these complex tricks — usually within about 90 seconds to two minutes — is in some ways unfair to them, not to mention the competitors.
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“It’s tough because a lot of the judges have never performed the tricks we have done,” freestyle skier Alex Ferreira said. “The level is so high they’ve really had to lock in and pay more attention. In a perfect world there would be more time. In the moment, the weight and the pressure is so heavy to get the score out that it can probably lead to some mistakes. But for the most part they’re doing the best they can. I would hate to be a judge.”
A properly trained AI could, theoretically, both identify all the technical elements of a trick and give some context to degree of difficulty without bias or giving benefit of the doubt to more famous competitors. Whatever unquantifiable judging advantage Shaun White might have had in the Olympic halfpipe simply by virtue of being Shaun White goes away when AI is making the call.
So far, Bloom has been blown away by the results.
“Our judges have been part of this process,” he said. “We had to teach it what good style looks like. That was a fun challenge, and it turns out good style is just good economy of motion in the air. Is the rider on axis or do they throw up a hand because they missed the take off and they need to get back on axis? What is a good landing and what is a great landing? What is a good grab and what is a great grab?”
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For now, AI replacing a judging panel seems like a bridge too far. But under Bloom’s leadership, X Games has been integrating it into the experience since last year.
At last month’s X Games Aspen, Owl AI was used not only to project scores as soon as riders completed their runs [the AI scores were not factored into the outcome this time], a human voice predicted winners based on the AI’s evaluation of practice runs and translated commentary into various languages for YouTube viewers around the world.
Also, for the first time, judges were given the AI breakdown of what occurred during a trick to help them with their scores.
Jeremy Bloom has gone from the Olympics to the NFL to entrepreneur trying to eliminate human error in sport officiating. (Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for Fast Company)
(Eugene Gologursky via Getty Images)
“Providing real time superpowers to human judges is part of the strategy,” Bloom said. “Was that a tail grab or a mute grab? How many rotations was it? What was the amplitude — 12 or 13 feet. I think in a perfect world today, it sits amongst the humans for sure, not replaces humans.”
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As these sports keep progressing, often faster than the evolution of the judging, it could become a necessary tool. But some athletes fear that a critical element of what makes their sports compelling will be lost if AI is allowed in the door. After all, AI is only as good as what it’s taught, which might stifle artistic expression if athletes are trained to perform for what the AI values and not a more malleable, emotional human experience.
“What is correct technique? There’s not necessarily one correct way,” figure skater Amber Glenn said. “It is an artistic sport. There’s always going to be an opinion.”
Here’s another issue: In many of these high-leverage competitions like the Olympics, competitors will debut something completely new that the sport has never seen before. That’s what won freestyle skier Alex Hall the gold medal four years ago in slopestyle when he executed a “double cork 1080 bring back,” which became known as the pretzel because it required him to stop his rotation mid-air and almost defy physics by pulling back the opposite direction.
In other words, while the raw number of rotations is often the separator in these events, Hall impressed the judges with creativity. He’s dubious about AI being able to account for that.
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“It’s so niche and there’s an element of execution style that’s so subjective,” Hall said. “I’m not doubting it. I think it could work at some point. But I kind of like the human nature of it, and it’s slightly imperfect in a way. I know it’s not great for a competition but anyone who’s in freestyle skiing gets that and is OK with the chance of it not being perfect.”
There’s no way to predict where all this leads. Could we see a future Olympics where AI is utilized either as a tool to help judges or to provide some component of scoring? It’s far too soon to say.
But there’s no doubt it has potential to disrupt longstanding officiating and judging practices across an array of sports as the technology is refined and gradually implemented into events like the X Games.
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“It’ll never solve pass interference because that’s a subjective call, but if this technology can call it the same whether it’s the fourth quarter or the first quarter, whether it’s a superstar or someone you’ve never heard of and create a level of consistency around that call, that’s the goal and objective,” Bloom said. “Whether it’s a $5 billion or a $100 million [company] matters a lot less than us trying to figure out how we can make sports more fair so that nobody is sitting on the sidelines when they should be hoisting the trophy. It’s not an easy mission at all, but it’s an important mission.”
