Pyeongchang Games by the Numbers: Russian Figure Skaters Wow, Dutch Speed Skaters Dominate

Russian women compete in a stunning figure-skating finale, Canada scores in ski cross and the Netherlands skates to dominance — as the 2018 Winter Olympics enter their last exciting days. Here are the Pyeongchang Games by the numbers.

1 Figure skater Alina Zagitova edged teammate Evgenia Medvedeva to become the first gold medalist of the Pyeongchang Games for the Olympic Athletes from Russia. Her winning score: 239.57 points. Medvedeva skated as Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina for a silver-medal score of 238.26 points. Canada’s Kaetlyn Osmond won the bronze.

The Russians have collected 14 medals in these Games, five of them silver and eight of them bronze. Russia was barred from competing as a nation due to a state-sponsored doping scandal. 

15 Alina Zagitova at 15 has become the second-youngest Olympic women’s figure-skating gold medalist. Zagitova is second only to Tara Lipinski, who was a few weeks younger when she beat Michelle Kwan for the gold at the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano. And when Zagitova and Medvedeva won gold and silver on Friday (Thursday night in the United States), it was the first time two women from the same country had finished one-two in women’s figure skating since Lipinski and Kwan.

156.65 — Alina Zagitova and Evgenia Medvedeva completed the women’s free skate with the exact same score: 156.65. Zagitova’s better short program kept gold-medal favorite Medvedeva at silver.

5 — Canada added two more medals in the women’s ski cross, with gold and silver-medal finishes from Kelsey Serwa and Brittany Phelan. That brings Canada’s total number of medals in ski cross to five, the most of any country in the event.

7 The Netherlands has won the gold medal in seven of the 12 speedskating events so far. It has failed to reach the podium in just two of those events — the men's and women's 500 meters. The latest victory: Kjeld Nuis in the men’s 1,000 meter with a time of 1 minute 7.95 seconds. The best American finisher was Joey Mantia at fourth. The world record of 1 minute 6.42 seconds, set by American Shani Davis in Salt Lake City in 2009, stands, but Davis finished seventh.

4-3 The Canadian men’s hockey team can do no better than a bronze medal when they play the Czech Republic on Saturday. In what Canadians are describing as a dark day for their national sport, the men’s team fell to Germany 4-3 in the semi-finals. Germany’s unlikely run has brought them to a gold-medal match against Russia’s “Red Machine.” “It's as disappointing as it gets right there,” Canadian defenceman Mat Robinson told The Globe and Mail. “A tough loss for us and we let our country down today. It's a tough pill to swallow.”

8-7 The surprise success of South Korea’s women’s curling team, known as the Garlic Girls for their hometown’s locally grown garlic, continued Friday when they beat Japan 8-7 in an extra end to advance to the final against Sweden. Not considered contenders for a medal before the Winter Games, they have risen to the top of the rankings and are a phenomenon on the Internet. But the women don’t know they’re superstars. They’ve turned off their phones during the Games.

55 Sweden took gold in the men’s biathlon relay Friday in front a special spectator, Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf, in the stands shouting as the competitors crossed the finish line in 1 hour, 15 minutes and 16.5 seconds. Sweden was more than 55 seconds ahead of Norway, while Germany was third. The Swedish women’s team won silver in the team relay event the night before, also with the king in attendance.

2 A second Russian athlete, bobsled pilot Nadezhda Sergeeva, tested positive for doping at the Olympics, the president of the Russian Bobsled Federation told The Associated Press. The substance found was trimetazdine, an angina medication that is banned, the Russian delegation said. Sergeeva denied taking any medication and her first drug sample was negative. Her crew finished 12th in the women’s bobsled competition. 

Hers is the fourth doping case of the games. The others: Russian curler Alexander Krushelnitsky, stripped of his bronze medal after testing positive for the banned substance meldonium, Slovenian hockey player Ziga Jeglic and Japanese speedskater Kei Saito.

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