Snowboarder seeks peculiar triple

When Torah Bright, the defending Olympic women's halfpipe champion, announced a year ago she was planning for an unprecedented snowboarding triple in Sochi, her friends suspected it was a prank. Certainly it seemed a little ambitious, even for Australia's answer to Shaun White.

Halfpipe, slopestyle and snowboardcross in the same Olympics?

It doesn't seem so funny now, not with Bright already assured of a berth in the women's slopestyle final on Sunday and spots in halfpipe and snowboardcross awaiting her later in the Games.

It's not unusual for snowboarders to crisscross between slopestyle and halfpipe, where tricks have parallels, but snowboardcross is a hurtle down a mountain alongside five others desperate to beat you to the bottom. Why, Torah?

"It's an Olympic journey done my way," Bright said. "It's been a year of self-exploration. I had to challenge myself more than I ever have on my snowboard, mentally and physically switching between three disciplines.

"I was having people tell me, 'Why bother? Just go back and defend your gold medal.' Snowboarding to me isn't about the accolades. It isn't about competing. I do it because I love to snowboard, not because I love to compete."

Course workers added 40 meters (130 feet) to the biathlon track on Friday because it was too short.

"It's still the Olympics, so they should have measured that before," U.S. head coach Per Nilsson said. "It was the right decision they corrected it. Everybody is happy with that."

Anger has kept Claudia Pechstein skating until 41 and right into the Sochi Games. Now the German is setting off for her 10th Olympic medal, with a good chance to make it golden.

She missed the 2010 Vancouver Games because of a contested doping suspension, imposed because of suspicious blood levels but without a positive test. On Sunday, she is among the favorites in the 3,000 meters.

"Without evidence. Without a positive doping test," she said. "That still makes me angry.

"I vowed that I would be in Sochi, bent on winning my 10th Olympic medal."

After Banani won the right to be the first Tongan to compete in the Winter Games, he approached the company Bruno Banani for money. All he had to do was change his name.