Great Britain suffered skeleton misery on day seven of the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Laura Deas and Brogan Crowley were both outside the top 20 after the first two runs of an event which concludes on Saturday, meaning Britain’s 20-year-old streak of Olympic medals in the women’s skeleton is over.
Britain’s men’s curlers bounced back from defeat to the United States to boost their semi-final hopes by beating Norway
The women’s quartet were beaten 9-7 by South Korea and have now lost two of their three round-robin matches.
But the headlines were dominated by 15-year-old Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva testing positive for a banned heart medication and her uncertain future at the Games.
Star of the day
Japan’s Ayumu Hirano is no ordinary athlete. Six months ago he was competing as a skateboarder at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. Hirano missed out on a medal that time after winning winter Games silvers in 2014 and 2018 in the halfpipe event. Hirano went one better in Beijing as he became the first boarder to land the triple cork at the Olympics. This is a 1,440 degree spin on the horizontal axis whilst corkscrewing the rotation, meaning the head dips under the board three times. Hirano’s heroics denied three-time gold medallist Shaun White a trumphant end to his glittering snowboard career.
Fail of the day
Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva could be thrown out of the Winter Olympics after the International Testing Agency confirmed she tested positive for a banned heart medication in December. The 15-year-old Valieva’s team successfully challenged a provisional suspension, and she was practising again on Friday. Both the ITA, on behalf of the International Olympic Association, and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) have launched separate challenges to the lifting of the provisional suspension, with a view to determining the women’s individual gold medal favourite’s continued participation in the Games.
Picture of the day
Social media moment
What’s on tomorrow
Charlotte Bankes gets the chance to atone for her missed opportunity in the women’s snowboard-cross when she teams up with Huw Nightingale in the mixed team event at Genting Snow Park (0200 UK). Laura Deas and Brogan Crowley wrap up their disappointing women’s skeleton campaign (1220 UK), while Eve Muirhead needs to get back to winning ways as her women’s curling team faces the United States (1205 UK)
