After an extremely busy Tuesday at the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing, it will be a little quieter on Wednesday for the sixth day of competition. Medals will still be awarded in alpine skiing, freestyle skiing, luge, nordic combined, short track speed skating and snowboarding.
Like the men’s figure skating competition where we saw Skate America champion Vincent Zhou needing to withdraw because of a positive coronavirus test, the pandemic has impacted the Olympic nordic combined competition too. That is because Germany’s Eric Frenzel and Norway’s Jarl Magnus Riiber have tested positive for coronavirus according to Michael Houston of insidethegames.biz. Frenzel has won the Olympic gold medal in the individual normal hill nordic combined competition at the last two Olympic Winter Games, while Riiber has won the last two individual normal hill nordic combined events at the Nordic World Ski Championships. The beneficiary to the positive tests is expected to be Johannes Lamparter of Austria, who won the gold medal in the individual large hill nordic combined event at the 2021 Nordic World Ski Championships in Oberstdorf, Germany. The individual/normal hill nordic combined competition takes place Wednesday at 3 a.m. ET with ski jumping and 6 a.m. ET with 10 kilometre cross country skiing.
In alpine skiing, Mikaela Shiffrin of the United States finds herself in an unfamiliar position as not the favourite in the women’s slalom event (Tuesday evening, 9:15 p.m. ET). That belongs to Slovakia’s Petra Vlhova, the winner of five women’s slalom events so far this World Cup season. Shiffrin will try to bounce back after a fall in the giant slalom.
In men’s curling, John Shuster of Chisholm, Minnesota begins his quest to defend his Olympic gold medal in men’s curling when the United States faces the Russian Olympic Committee (Wednesday, 7 a.m. ET). Canada meanwhile skipped by Brad Gushue, the 2006 Olympic champion and our gold medal favourite, faces Denmark (Wednesday, 7 a.m. ET).
In freestyle skiing, it will seem to be a battle between Alex Hall of the United States, the four-time Winter X Games gold medalist, versus Bird Ruud of Norway, the two-time Winter X Games gold medalist, in the first ever Olympic men’s big air competition (10 p.m. ET on Tuesday). Ruud won qualifying with 187.75 points, while Hall was second with 180.25 points.
In men’s doubles luge, we are predicting four-time world champions Toni Eggert and Sascha Benecken of Germany to win gold (7;20 a.m. ET). The other gold medalists we are projecting are Jang Hyun Park of South Korea (men’s 1500 metre short track speed skating, 8:20 a.m. ET) and Charlotte Bankes of Great Britain (women’s snowboardcross, 2:50 a,m. ET).
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