Daily Olympic Briefing: Viewing schedule for first full day of Winter Games competition

Each day of the 2022 Winter Games, NBC Olympics will run down every sport in action, highlighting the biggest athletes and marquee events. Every single event streams live on NBCOlympics.com, the NBC Sports app and Peacock, and many are also on the TV networks of NBC. Visit the Olympic schedule page for listings sorted by sport and TV network. All times listed below are Eastern Time on the night of Friday, February 4 or the morning of Saturday, February 5.

The first day of medal competition includes six medal events. U.S. stars in action include snowboarder Jamie Anderson, cross-country skier Jessie Diggins, short track speed skater Kristen Santos and luger Chris Mazdzer.

Snowboarding

Jamie Anderson is already very arguably the greatest female snowboarder in history. She eyes a third consecutive Olympic gold in slopestyle, starting with qualifying on Saturday morning in China (Friday night in the U.S.).

Anderson’s story is usually a smiling one. Beaming after winning the first two Olympic women’s slopestyle titles in 2014 and 2018. An affinity for hugging trees. Lounging in hot springs or spending family time in Tahoe with seven siblings and her parents, who call her “Little Bear.”

But you don’t win as much as she has without sacrifice and struggle. Anderson, trying at 31 to become the oldest woman to take snowboarding gold, knows it.

In December, she opened the Olympic season by matching her worst slopestyle result in seven years. She fell in all three runs, placed seventh and left the competition in tears. It could have been the beginning of the end of her reign.

“I was pretty burnt out,” she said in a vlog posted Thursday.

Then somebody broke into her house. A turkey crashed into her truck. She arrived in Mammoth Mountain, California, for her next contest and couldn’t find her snowboard on a practice day.

Her fiancé, Canadian snowboarder Tyler Nicholson, said she wanted to go home. This was less than a month ago.

Yet Anderson stuck around. She got her snowboard. She won, landing a cab double cork 1080 in a slopestyle competition for the first time.

Two weeks later, Anderson put together the best run of her career with a pair of double cork 1080s at X Games. Only New Zealand's Zoi Sadowski-Synnott, who became first woman to land back-to-back double cork 1080s, could beat her.

“I need that fire under my ass to keep me working hard,” Anderson, who has competed on the top level since age 13 and is the only woman with two snowboarding golds, said Thursday. “For a long part of my career it was pretty easy to win. I didn't have to do much, and I didn’t have anyone really pushing me.”

In 2014, Anderson won gold with a 720, a 540 and another 720. In 2018, in heavy winds that had many calling for the final to be postponed, Anderson won with a pair of 540s and a 720.

It’s going to take much more this time. Nicholson, who celebrated her gold in 2018 with a Molson in the finish corral, said this would be her most impressive victory. He has sensed the pressure when looking into her eyes.

“Sometimes I just want to crawl under a rock and hide from the world,” she said. “I definitely had a lot of back-and-forth with coming to these Games.”

Moguls

Men’s moguls is all about Mikael Kingsbury, looking to deliver a fourth consecutive gold to Canada in the event. The Québécois owns a record 71 World Cup wins between moguls and dual moguls, plus six world titles and the 2018 Olympic gold. His win rate (60 percent) and podium rate (85 percent) is comparable to Mikaela Shiffrin in slalom.

However, Japan's Ikuma Horishima is a worthy challenger after winning three of the seven World Cups this season.

Cross-Country Skiing

Norwegian Therese Johaug has lost just one skiathlon in the last eight years, and that defeat was five years ago. She missed the 2018 Olympics while serving an 18-month ban for a steroid she said was in a cream she was provided by a team doctor to treat lip sunburn.

Jessie Diggins, who in the 2018 team sprint helped earn the first U.S. Olympic cross-country skiing title, has an outside shot here for the first individual women’s cross-country medal in U.S. history. She was fifth in the skiathlon in PyeongChang and is better in shorter freestyle races.

Short Track

The first Olympic mixed-gender short track relay could produce the host nation’s first medal of the Games. Possibly its first gold. China, one of the traditional short track powers, is ranked No. 1 in the world. The U.S. is not expected to make the podium.

Speed Skating

The Dutch swept the 3000m medals in 2018 and could do it again with the reigning Olympic champion (Carlijn Achtereekte), reigning world champion (Antoinette de Jong) and the world’s top woman this season (Irene Schouten). The nation is so strong that Ireen Wuest, a two-time Olympic 3000m champion, didn’t make the team in this event.

Ski Jumping

The lone individual women’s event is without the reigning Olympic champion and the world’s top-ranked jumper. Norwegian Maren Lundby, gold medalist in 2018, chose not to compete this season for health reasons. Austrian Marita Kramer, who won six of the 11 World Cups this season, is out after positive COVID tests.

In their absences, Japan’s Sara Takanashi, who owns a record 61 World Cup victories, could win her first Olympic gold.

Biathlon

Each nation fields two men and two women in the mixed relay, which debuted in 2014. Norway, upset in 2018 by a better-shooting France, had the world’s top two men and top two women last season. France has the top two men this season, but no women in the top six.

Luge

The first two of four runs. In 2018, Chris Mazdzer earned the first U.S. men’s singles luge medal (a silver) despite entering the Games ranked 18th in the world. Another medal would be just as unexpected. Mazdzer ranked 22nd this season.

The favorites are Germans Johannes Ludwig (World Cup champion) and Felix Loch (two-time Olympic singles champ). Either would be the oldest man to win Olympic luge gold, according to Olympedia.org.

Curling

Americans Vicky Persinger and Chris Plys could really use at least one win out of their two games today against the host nation and defending Olympic champion. Persinger and Plys are 2-2 in the nine-game round-robin. The top four teams make the medal rounds.

Hockey

The U.S., after losing star forward Brianna Decker to a tournament-ending leg injury, gets ROC, which has been down skaters due to positive COVID tests. Canada, whose star forward Melodie Daoust was knocked out of its opening win, gets bronze-medal favorite Finland. All four teams have guaranteed quarterfinal spots.