Olympic Recap: February 4

The Opening Ceremonies of the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing takes place on Friday. However before the Olympic Winter Games officially commence, there was action in figure skating and curling.

At the Capital Indoor Stadium in Beijing, team figure skating got underway, with the United States currently in first place with 28 points. They lead the Russian Olympic Committee by two points. On Friday, they received outstanding performances from Nathan Chen of Salt Lake City, Utah, in the men’s short program, and Madison Hubbell of Lansing, Michigan, and Zachary Donohue of Hartford, Connecticut in the rhythm dance. Chen had a score of 111.71 points to lead all male skaters, while Hubbell and Donohue posted a score of 86.56 points to narrowly get by the Russian duo of Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov, who had a score of 85.05 points.

Another big story on Friday was the fact that the Chinese pair of Sui Wenjing and Han Cong posted a short program score of 82.83 points. That is the highest point total ever registered in the short program of an international figure skating competition. In fact, the Russian pair of Anastasia Mishina and Aleksandr Galliamov of the Russian Olympic Committee posted a second place score of 82.64 points, which also broke their previous world record of 82.36 points, which was set in the short program of the 2022 European Figure Skating Championships in Tallinn, Estonia this past January.

In other figure skating news, a major reason why Canada, the defending Olympic gold medalists in team figure skating, is in sixth place at this time, is because they are without their top men’s figure skater in Keegan Messing. The two-time Grand Prix medalist and Canadian champion is waiting in Vancouver for two consecutive negative coronavirus tests. The fact that Messing is awaiting the results is bizarre, and there needs to be people held accountable and responsible for Messing not getting to China as early as possible. The bottom line is that Roman Sadovsky is not the same caliber of a figure skater as Messing, and as a result Canada will be in tough to reach the podium.

Meanwhile in mixed doubles curling, Italy is in first place with a record of 4-0. So far they have beaten the United States, Norway, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic.