Mancuso again outthinks herself
Julia Mancuso thought too much. Again. It cost her. Again.
Mancuso and Team USA suffered another blow Saturday at Rosa Khutor Alpine Center while Austria reigned on the super-G course.
After eight of the 13 racers before her failed to finish because of difficult conditions, Mancuso worried about getting to the bottom of the challenging course instead of letting loose.
"The super-G takes confidence, and watching some of these people go down and have bad runs it kind of took me back a notch," she said.
Anna Fenninger of Austria won the gold medal, followed by Germany's Maria Hoefl-Riesch and Austrian Nicole Hosp. Fenninger completed the track in 1 minute 25.52 seconds, a whopping .55 of a second ahead of the silver medalist.
Mancuso placed eighth, 1.52 seconds behind the winner on a day 18 of 49 starters failed to complete the course.
Canada perfect in women's curling
The Canadian women took the shortest route possible to the Olympic curling semifinals. Seven games. Seven wins.
Jennifer Jones' rink beat Japan and Russia on Saturday to cruise through to the playoffs undefeated. Canada is guaranteed to be the No. 1 seed.
Five teams look to be vying for the three spots with Canada in the playoffs. Sweden, the two-time defending champion, is favored to take one of them after scoring two points in the final end on a measurement to beat the United States 7-6. The Americans are in last place with a 1-6 record.
Etc.
• Alexander Tretiakov won the gold medal in men's skeleton, pulling away from the world's top sliders. Latvia's Martins Dukurs finished second, and Matt Antoine won the bronze, the first skeleton medal for an American man since Jimmy Shea's gold in 2002.
• Ski jumper Kamil Stoch of Poland completed a gold medal sweep of the normal and large hills on Saturday, holding off 41-year-old Noriaki Kasai of Japan, who nearly became the oldest-ever Winter Games champion.
• Viktor Ahn gave Russia its first Olympic short-track gold medal Saturday, and just behind him was Vladimir Grigorev as the home team finished 1-2 in the men's 1,000 meters. The Seoul-born Ahn also won gold medals for South Korea in 2006. His victory Saturday made him the first man to win four short-track golds and the first to win Winter Olympic gold medals for two unrelated countries.
• Canada, the gold medal favorite in men's curling, stayed on course for the semifinals on Saturday. Canada stole a point in the final end to beat Britain 7-5 and avoid dropping back into trouble in the standings. China and Sweden earned far more convincing wins to move into a two-way tie for the lead at 6-1 and guarantee at least a tiebreaker for a spot in the playoffs. The Chinese silenced the home crowd early in a 9-6 victory over Russia, and Sweden needed only nine ends to beat Germany 8-4.
• Zhou Yang of China won the women's 1,500-meter short-track gold medal, successfully defending the Olympic title she won four years ago.
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