Daily Olympic Briefing: Mikaela Shiffrin hopes for final chance at medal on Day 16

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.

On Day 16, competition concludes with Mikaela Shiffrin and Jessie Diggins, men’s hockey and women’s curling finals and four-man bobsled.

All times listed below are Eastern Time on the night of Saturday, February 19 or the morning of Sunday, February 20.

Alpine Skiing

Mikaela Shiffrin headlines the mixed-gender team event, the last Alpine skiing competition of the Games. It was rescheduled from Saturday due to high winds. Shiffrin has no medals in her first five events, and the U.S. is seeded sixth among the 15 teams.

It is a bracket-style competition where two skiers race each other on short, adjacent giant slalom courses. Each round has four head-to-heads (two men, two women) between the two nations, with the team that has the majority of wins (4-0 or 3-1) advancing. If it's 2-2, the tiebreaker is the lower combined time of each nation’s fastest male and female skier.

The U.S. has never won a team medal at the world championships (debuted in 2005) or Olympics (debuted in 2018). Shiffrin competed once among the previous editions. The U.S. roster also includes Paula Moltzan, who was fourth in the individual parallel race at 2021 Worlds, and River Radamus, who was fourth in the GS earlier at these Games.

Seedings are based on international results across all disciplines. The U.S. faces Slovakia in the Round of 16, then either No. 3 Italy or No. 14 Russian Olympic Committee to reach the medal round. Slovakia is missing its top skier, slalom gold medalist Petra Vlhova, who left the Olympics early due to an ankle injury.

SEE MORE: Mikaela Shiffrin crashes out for third time at 2022 Olympics

Hockey

The ROC didn’t win any of the five Olympic men’s hockey tournaments with NHL players, but they won eight of the last 10 tournaments without them.

The Russian Olympic Committee so far has made good on predictions that they will repeat as Olympic champions, though they needed 3-on-3 overtime, followed by a shootout, followed by sudden-death shootout rounds to dispatch Sweden in the semifinals.

“It is the game of our life,” ROC defenseman Damir Sharipzyanov said of the final.

Finland is the most successful hockey nation without an Olympic gold medal: 10 silver or bronze medals between the men’s and women’s teams. It can become the first nation to win an Olympic men’s hockey title, without NHL players, without losing a game since 1984.

SEE MORE: Juraj Slafkovsky powers Slovakia to first-ever Olympic hockey medal

Bobsled

Germany is posed to win a ninth gold medal in 10 sliding events, and is likely to go one-two for the sixth time in nine possible sliding events (only one entry per country in team relay competition).

A four-man bobsled driven by Francesco Friedrich leads Johannes Lochner’s four-man sled by 0.03 seconds after the first two of four runs, a much closer battle than anticipated. Friedrich, bidding to become the first driver to win two- and four-man gold at multiple Olympics, won 14 consecutive international four-man races up until a runner-up at the last World Cup before the Games. Starting in 2017, he won the last five Olympic or world championships four-man titles.

Cross Country Skiing

Norwegian Therese Johaug won the first of 109 medal events at these Games. She is favored to win on the last day of competition, too. Johaug, who missed the 2018 Olympics while banned for doping (due to a lip cream given to her by a team doctor, they both said), has been one of the dominant athletes across all sports. She won the opening 15km skiathlon by 30 seconds, greater than the margin separating second place from seventh. She won the 10km classic (by just 0.4 seconds). Between sitting out sprint events, she had the fastest classic leg on the relay, where Norway ended up fifth.

American Jessie Diggins raced all five events thus far and could pick up her second medal of the Games in the finale. The 30km is a little long for her, but freestyle is her better technique. She finished second and fourth in the two top-level 30km freestyle events in this Olympic cycle.

Curling

A rematch of the 2018 Olympic bronze-medal game won by Japan for its first curling medal. Japan and Great Britain were the last two teams to make the four-team playoffs, via draw shot challenge tiebreaker over Canada after all three teams went 5-4 in round-robin play. Then Japan ousted reigning world champion Switzerland, and Great Britain dispatched reigning Olympic champion Sweden.

British skip Eve Muirhead, from the home of curling in Scotland, made her Olympic debut in 2010 at 19. She owns a world championship title, four world junior championships, three European Championships and an Olympic bronze medal.

Closing Ceremony

The 2022 Winter Olympics will conclude with the Closing Ceremony on Sunday, Feb. 20, and NBC and Peacock will offer multiple ways to watch the festivities.

The Closing Ceremony will stream LIVE on Peacock on Sunday at 7 a.m. ET, with a commentary-free feed featuring natural sound from inside the venue. It will also stream live on NBCOlympics.com and in the NBC Sports app, with authentication.

An NBC-produced show of the Closing Ceremony will air at 8 p.m. ET on NBC, with that show also streaming on Peacock, NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app.

Also airing on NBC Sunday evening will be Olympic Gold, a one-hour retrospective on the defining moments of the 2022 Winter Olympics. It airs at 7 p.m. ET, one hour before the start of NBC's Closing Ceremony show.

The final NBC Daytime show of these Olympics also airs Sunday at 2 p.m. ET, featuring coverage of some of the final events of the Games.

Both Olympic Gold and NBC Daytime can also be streamed on Peacock, NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app.