Editor's note: Each and every day of the 2022 Winter Games, NBCOlympics.com will break down the biggest overnight stories from across the competition landscape that you might have missed. A separate daily article will also detail what not to miss over the next day of competition.
Alpine Skiing
Thanks to a wind-induced reschedule of the men's downhill, it was a busy day at the Yanqing Alpine Skiing Center Monday. And things got out to a rocky start.
Pundits expected the women's giant slalom to be a battle between Mikaela Shiffrin of the United States and Petra Vlhova of Slovakia. But just seven racers into Run 1, Vlhova clocked a mistake-filled run and Shiffrin lost her edge, went down, and skied out.
With the door open, Sweden's Sara Hector barged through, securing the gold medal on the final run of the event after she clocked the fasted time in the field on Run 1. Hector, 29, competed in the 2014 Olympics in Sochi and the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang, but Monday's gold medal marks her first Olympic hardware. She became the second Swedish woman to win Olympic giant slalom gold after Pernilla Wiberg was fastest in 1992.
Italy's Federica Brignone, who won bronze in the giant slalom in PyeongChang, took silver. And Switzerland's Lara Gut-Behrami earned the bronze.
Only 49 of the 82 skiers successfully completed both of their runs.
Results: Women's Giant Slalom
🥇 Sara Hector (SWE)
🥈 Federica Brignone (ITA)
🥉 Lara Gut-Behrami (SUI)
Sandwiched between the women's GS runs, the men took the "The Rock" with varying degrees of success. Switzerland's Beat Feuz left nothing on the hill, edging his competition by 10 hundredths of a second to secure the gold medal and title of fastest man on skis. Feuz averaged 68.7 miles per hour over his 1:42.69 descent, an Olympic record.
Behind him, France's Johan Clarey made history by becoming the oldest man to win an Olympic medal in Alpine skiing. The 41-year-old was just six hundredths of a second ahead of reigning Olympic champion Matthias Mayerof Austria.
Results: Men's Downhill
🥇 Beat Feuz (SUI)
🥈 Johan Clarey (FRA)
🥉 Matthias Mayer (AUT)
Figure Skating
With the bottom five teams eliminated, the top five teams took the ice for the final three legs of the figure skating team event Monday. The three-day event took a number of turns, but in the end the podium went as expected. Led by 15-year-old phenom Kamila Valieva, the ROC finished first with 74 total points. The United States secured its first ever silver in the event with 65 points, narrowly edging Japan's 63-point total.
The battle for silver was real when, in the night's first action, USA's Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier finished fifth in the pairs' free skate while Japan slotted second behind ROC. But Madison Chock and Evan Bates delivered a first-place free dance to all but lock up the silver. Karen Chen closed things out for the U.S. with a fourth-place finish in the women's free skate.
Valieva became the first women ever to land a quad in the Olympics during the women's free skate -- and she landed two. Her 179.92 total was more than 30 points better than Japan's Kaori Sakamoto in second place. Earlier in the event, she became the fourth woman to land a triple axel in the Olympics when her Olympic record 90.18 was she bested the rest of the field by more than 15 points.
Results: Team Event
🥇 Russian Olympic Committee
🥈 United States
🥉 Japan
Snowboarding
More than three years after being diagnosed with cancer, Canadian snowboarder Max Parrot won a long-awaited gold medal in men's slopestyle.
Parrot, who has been pioneering progressive tricks for much of the last decade, has been among the favorites at the last two Winter Olympics but ended up finishing fifth in 2014 and second in 2018. This time around, his second run of the contest — which included a pair of triple cork 1620s — held up as the winning run and earned him the victory.
The win didn't come easy, as only a couple points separated Parrot from China's Su Yiming and Canadian compatriot Mark McMorris. Su impressed by landing a backside triple cork 1800 on the final jump and looked like he might take the top spot away, but the judges favored Parrot's jib sections, which ultimately left Su in a silver-medal position. McMorris put down a great run of his own on his final attempt but ended up with his third consecutive bronze medal in Olympic slopestyle.
Parrot's win brought an end to the United States' Olympic reign in this event after Americans Sage Kotsenburg and Red Gerard won the last two editions. Gerard was once again Team USA's top performer with a fourth-place finish. Teammate Sean FitzSimons fell on all three of his runs, including his final one when he attempted a switch backside 1800.
Results: Men's Slopestyle
🥇 Max Parrot (CAN)
🥈 Su Yiming (CHN)
🥉 Mark McMorris (CAN)
Speed Skating
Dutch legend Ireen Wuest, competing in her final Olympics at age 35, set a new Olympic record in the women's 1500m and added to her prolific medal haul.
Wuest's time of 1:53.28 was enough to finish ahead of world-record holder Miho Takagi of Japan and Dutch teammate Antoinette de Jong. Now with 12 medals in her storied career — including six golds — Wuest continues to be the most decorated speed skater in Olympic history. She's now won a medal in the 1500m at the last five Winter Games and has won gold at three of the last four.
American star Brittany Bowe finished 10th but has the 500m and 1000m races still to come at these Olympics. She'll be a medal favorite in the 1000m, which is the strongest of her three events.
Results: Women's 1500m
🥇 Ireen Wuest (NED)
🥈 Miho Takagi (JPN)
🥉 Antoinette de Jong (NED)
Short Track
Arianna Fontana of Italy successfully defender her Olympic title from the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics and captured her fourth medal in the event, having also won silver in Sochi 2014 and bronze in Vancouver 2010. It's Fontana's second medal of the Olympics after a silver with Italy's mixed relay team to become the most decorated Olympic short track athlete of all-time with 10 medals. Fontana is now tied with cross-country skier Stefania Belmondo as the most decorated Italian winter Olympian.
Dutch skater Suzanne Schulting finished 0.071 seconds behind Fontana in the final for the silver medal and Canadian Kim Boutin secured third for back-to-back bronze medals in the 500m event after the same finish in PyeongChang.
U.S. skater Maame Biney didn't advance to the semifinals after finishing third in quarterfinal 2 and American Kristen Santos was penalized and didn't finish in quarterfinal 4.
Results: Women's 500m
🥇 Arianna Fontana (ITA)
🥈 Suzanne Schulting (NED)
🥉 Kim Boutin (CAN)
A penalty-filled men's 1000m came down to a wild A Final that consisted of five skaters from just two countries.
The race was stopped with four laps to go to locate a loose fragment of a skate blade before it was completely restarted.
Shaolin Sandor Liu of Hungary finished first, but was given a yellow card after a referee review, which elevated China's Ren Ziwei to gold. This was China's first Olympic medal in the event since 1998 and its first men's 1000m gold ever.
American Andrew Heo made it to the B Final, where he finished third with a time of1:36.140, while John-Henry Krueger, who won silver in PyeongChang for the U.S. but who now competes for Hungary, was penalized and eliminated in the quarterfinals due to a crash.
Results: Men's 1000m
🥇 Ren Ziwei (CHN)
🥈 Li Wenlong (CHN)
🥉 Shaoang Liu (HUN)
Biathlon
After winning bronze in cross-country skiing at the 2018 Sochi Olympics in the women's 4x5km relay, Denise Herrmann of Germany won gold for her first Olympic medal in biathlon with a time of 44:12.7 after one missed shot.
France's Anais Chevalier-Bouchet crossed the finish line 9.4 seconds behind to claim her second silver medal of the 2022 Winter Olympics after finishing second in the mixed relay earlier in the Games. Olsbu Roeiseland, who won gold in the mixed relay with the Norwegian team, walked away with the bronze for her second medal of the cycle.
Deedra Irwin (7th) was the top American finish and the best Olympic biathlon result for the U.S. in any non-relay event, besting Lowell Bailey's 8th-place result in the 2014 individual 20km. Clare Egan finished 39th, Joanne Reid 57th, and Susan Dunklee 63rd.
Results: Women's 500m
🥇 Denise Herrmann (GER)
🥈 Anais Chevalier-Bouchet (FRA)
🥉 Marte Olsbu Roeiseland (NOR)
Ski Jumping
Slovenia won the debut of the ski jumping mixed team event at the 2022 Winter Olympics thanks to Nika Kriznar, Timi Zajc, Ursa Bogataj, and Peter Prevc. The quartet of athletes submitted a final total of 1001.5, which blew away the competition.
Athletes from the Russian Olympic Committee (Irma Makhinia, Danil Sadreev, Irina Avvakumova, Evgeniy Klimov) came second with 890.3, while the Canadians (Alexandria Loutitt, Matthew Soukup, Abigail Strate, Mackenzie Boyd-Clowes) ended third at 844.6 total points for the country's first-ever ski jumping medal.
Results: Mixed Team
🥇 Slovenia
🥈 Russian Olympic Committee
🥉 Canada
Luge
The women's luge competition kicked off with the first and second runs of singles.
The duo of Natalie Geisenberger and Anna Berreiter represented their home country of Germany well and are comfortably ahead of competition.
Germany's Julia Taubitz was in the lead following the first run, but fell during run two, pushing her further down the leaderboard.
Other countries with athletes currently in medal contention include the Russian Olympic Committee, Austria, and Latvia.
The final two runs for women's singles is scheduled for Monday, Feb. 8 at 6:50 a.m. ET. Stream the event on NBCOlympics.com and watch on USA Network or Peacock.
Freeskiing
Freeski big air made its debut as an Olympic event with qualifying rounds for both the women and men.
In women's qualifying, 18-year-old Chinese star Eileen Gu safely made it into the final, where she will be the gold medal favorite, especially with young Estonian Kelly Sildaru missing the cut. Gu's leading challengers will include top qualifier Megan Oldham of Canada and last month's X Games champion Tess Ledeux of France.
On the men's side, skiers didn't bother waiting for the final to unleash 1800s and 1980s as plenty of huge tricks where thrown during the preliminary round. Norway's Birk Ruud was the top qualifier, but the field for the final will be stacked with the likes of Sweden's Henrik Harlaut and the American trio of Alex Hall, Colby Stevenson and Mac Forehand also making the cut.
The women's final will take place Monday night (U.S. time) and the men's final will follow one night later.
Curling
Before the semifinals got underway, there was one preliminary game that held significance, and it ended in dramatic fashion. Canada, the defending mixed doubles gold medalist, needed to beat Italy to make it into the semifinals, but lost in extra ends after two measurements determined that Rachel Homan's final shot was just a millimeter too deep, awarding the game-winning point to Italy and eliminating Canada from the tournament.
Hours later, Italy turned the tables with an 8-1 drubbing of Sweden in just seven ends with 90% accuracy to reach the gold medal game. The Norwegians also advanced after taking down Great Britain, 6-5, in the semifinals.
They'll play for the gold medal on Tuesday, Feb. 8 at 7:05 a.m. Earlier in the morning, Sweden and Great Britain will face off for curling mixed bronze at 1:05 a.m.
