It’s a Winter Olympics which could easily be remembered for many wrong reasons but there have been enough outstanding sporting feats so far to ensure Beijing 2022 has been a treat for TV viewers around the world.
Ireen Wust, Irene Schouten and Kamila Valieva might not have been household names before Beijing, but a worldwide audience of millions know their names now after they starred in the first few days of action from China.
Congratulations!
#Gold IRENE SCHOUTEN – NED#SpeedSkating Women's 5000m https://t.co/SO693RQIlt
— Beijing 2022 (@Beijing2022) February 10, 2022
And the United States, in particular, is celebrating the feats of Nathan Chen and Lindsey Jacobellis, two athletes who have found redemption at these Games.
Jacobellis Cherishes Golden Redemption
Snowboarder Jacobellis must have had many days when she doubted she’d ever get to hang an Olympic gold medal round her neck after spectacularly blowing that chance at Turin in 2006.
Breezing to victory in snowboard cross 16 years ago, the young entertainer tried a celebratory move heading towards the line, crashed and had to settle for silver. She famously tried to laugh it off – snowboarding is all about having fun, she insisted – but that must have hurt.
Sixteen years later and 16 years wiser, she made no mistake in Beijing. Fellow American figure skater Nathan Chen felt much the same on the ice, righting the wrongs of four years ago when he should have won gold but didn’t. This time he nailed it.
As for speed skater Wust, she was celebrating becoming the first athlete to win an individual gold at five different games, another Dutch speed skater Schouten bagged two golds a few days apart in the 3,000m and 5,000m, while 15-year-old Valieva captured hearts with a pair of quadruple turns during the team figure skating.
Odermatt’s The Man For GS Glory
There is still plenty to come with the much-fancied US, Canadian and Russian men’s ice hockey sides making winning starts to their campaigns while there were no surprises in the women’s competition with all the major powers making it through to the quarters.
The bobsleigh stars have yet to take to the ice with a new event to look forward to, the women’s monobob.
And there are still a handful of alpine skiing shootouts to come, including the men’s giant slalom where Switzerland’s Martin Odermatt is going to take some beating.
Odermatt is a 6/5 shot to win gold and it’s easy to see why after he has dominated this season’s World Cup campaigns, winning four of the five races completed and finishing second in the other.
The only man to beat him was Norwegian Henrik Kristofferson, who touched off Odermatt by three-tenths of a second at Alta Badia in Italy.
Kristofferson is a 15/2 chance, so too Manuel Feller of Austria, while last year’s world champion, Frenchman Mathieu Faivre, is 16/1.
The US men and Swedish women will also be hoping to successfully defend their curling titles after the Italian pair of Amos Mosaner and Stefania Constantini sprang a massive surprise by winning the mixed doubles.
*All odds correct at time of writing.
