Olympic Recap: February 11

The eighth day of the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing is now in the books with a world record in long track speed skating as the headliner. In the men’s 10000 metres, Nils van der Poel of Sweden broke his own world record in taking gold. The 25-year-old posted a time of 12:30.74 to beat silver medalist Patrick Roest of the Netherlands by 13.85 seconds.

We also saw a world record in the quarterfinals of the women’s 1000 metre short track speed skating event. There, Suzanne Schulting of the Netherlands posted a time of 1:26.514. She would eventually go on to win the gold medal for the Netherlands’s fifth gold medal of the Olympic Winter Games so far. We successfully predicted the gold medals for van der Poel and Schulting in our pre-Olympic predictions.

In addition to being right with van der Poel and Schulting, we also succesfully predicted gold medals for Marte Olsbu Roeiseland of Norway (women’s 7.5 kilometre sprint biathlon), and Ayumu Hirano of Japan (men’s halfpipe snowboarding). The other Olympic gold medalists on Friday went to Lara Gut-Behrami of Switzerland (women’s super giant slalom), Iivo Niskanen of Finland (men’s 15 kilometre classic cross country skiing), and Christopher Grotheer of Germany (men’s skeleton).

In women’s hockey, the United States and Canada moved on to the semifinals as expected with quarterfinal wins. While it was an easy 11-0 Canada win over Sweden, the Americans only beat the Czech Republic 4-1. The United States were actually trailing the Czech Republic 1-0 before they scored four unanswered goals, including three in the third period. One must realize, the score was really the only part of this game that was close. That is because the United States out shot the Czech Republic 59-6.

It was a very successful day for the United States in curling. In men’s action, the reigning Olympic champion John Shuster of Chisholm, Minnesota beat Great Britain 9-7 to improve to 2-1, while in women’s action, the American team skipped by Tabitha Peterson of Burnsville, Minnesota beat China 8-4. Peterson is tied with Switzerland’s Silvana Tirinzoni at 3-0.