medals

Welcome to the Olympic Edition of the Sports Report, an L.A. Times newsletter published every morning during the Winter Olympics. To sign up to receive it via email (it’s free), go here and select the Sports Report. If you’ve already signed up for the Sports Report, you will receive the Olympics edition as well.

Welcome to your daily review and preview of this year’s Milan-Cortina Olympics. My name is John Cherwa and I’m your tour director for the Games as the U.S. surpassed the gold total of its last five Winter Olympics early Saturday. The U.S. men’s hockey team could add to that mark.

It’s been two pretty good Olympic hockey tournaments. And the U.S. could win both of them. On Friday, the U.S. men beat Slovakia, 6-2, in the semifinals and will meet Canada for the gold on Sunday. The better game was Canada and Finland. Our once-friendly neighbor to the north fell behind 2-0, tied the game with 9½ minutes to go and then won with 35 seconds left. We’ll preview that game more tomorrow.

And, who can forget the U.S. women beating Canada, 2-1, in overtime in a gold-medal quality game.

The ninth gold for the U.S. was in the men’s freestyle halfpipe Friday when, as we predicted in yesterday’s newsletter, Alex Ferreira got the gold on his last run. It completed the lifetime gold, silver, bronze trifecta for the 31-year-old from Colorado. The U.S. also had the bronze until the last run when Nick Goepper was bumped to fourth.

The only other U.S. medal of the day was Corinne Stoddard’s bronze in the women’s 1,500 meters in short track speed skating. South Korea was first and second. The Netherlands won the men’s 5,000 relay. The U.S. did not make the finals.

It’s kind of a light day, so let’s do some random thoughts on the TV coverage.

• Snoop Dogg was fresh and exciting in Paris. The act isn’t as fresh or exciting in Italy. Snoop and buddy Martha Stewart remind me of CBS’ Gayle King’s unofficial “I’m Privileged and You’re Not Tour” where she goes to awards shows, Broadway plays, Jeff Bezos’ wedding, Bad Bunny in Puerto Rico and into “space.” Well, Snoop and Martha seem almost as privileged, getting into all the best places that you or I couldn’t. Just saying, for a reported $500,000 a day for Snoop, it wasn’t as good as Paris. No idea how much Martha is making, but she’s not likely being paid in garden vegetables.

• I’ve heard the Captain and Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together” more times the last two weeks than in all of 1975, when it was No. 1 for four consecutive weeks.

• Do you think an NBC executive made the wrong decision to put the women’s figure skating on NBC and the U.S.-Canada women’s hockey game on USA? I do. You could have shown the game, use the time between periods to cut to the figure skating and it would seem as if you had the pulse of the Games. And the hockey game was over before the medal skaters took the ice.

• Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir on figure skating get our vote for best analysts.

• Kenny Albert (hockey) and Dan Hicks (skiing) have been the best play-by-play announcers.

• Did you know that most of the Games are being called from Connecticut and not Italy? Sports called from stateside are curling, biathlon, cross-country skiing, ski jumping, Nordic combined, speedskating and most freestyle skiing. And a lot of the studio shows were also from Stamford. (In fairness, this newsletter is being done from Florida. But Thuc Nhi, Sam, Kevin and Robert are in Italy.)

• The Games have been a ratings success for NBC with numbers almost double what they were in 2022 in Beijing. The time difference between the U.S. and Italy was six hours and it worked to the benefit of U.S. viewers.

• Mike Tirico is very good at whatever he does. Glad to see they gave him some afternoon time.

• When Hoda Kotb interviewed the “Blade Angels” on Friday, I told those around me she would tell them that she loved them. I was right.

Best Thing to Watch on TV today

• The gold medal chances of the U.S. women’s curling team died on the last shot in the last frame when Switzerland, holding the hammer, knocked the U.S. rock out of the house and got two points to win, 7-4. Switzerland will now play Sweden, a 6-3 winner over Canada, for the gold while the U.S. will play Canada for the bronze. On the men’s side, Switzerland won the bronze by beating Norway, 9-1. Britain plays Canada for the gold.

• No surprise that Norway picked up a gold and silver in the biathlon men’s 15-kilometer mass start. Campbell Wright of the U.S. was 29th.

• Besides the U.S. gold in freestyle skiing halfpipe, Germany won the women’s ski cross. The U.S. did not make the final. And, China got gold and bronze in the men’s aerials. Christopher Lillis was the top U.S. athlete in eighth.

Favorite photo

Times photographer Robert Gauthier is at the Winter Olympics. Each day, Times newsletter editor Houston Mitchell will select a favorite photo from the many Gauthier has taken.

Saturday’s Olympic TV and streaming schedule

MULTIPLE SPORTS
8 p.m. — “Primetime in Milan” (delay): Cross-country skiing, bobsled, figure skating, freestyle skiing and more. | NBC

BIATHLON
10:30 a.m. — 🏅Women’s 12.5-kilometer mass start (re-air) | USA

BOBSLED
8 a.m. — Four-man bobsled, runs 1-2 | USA
10 a.m. — Two-woman bobsled, Run 3 | NBC
12:05 p.m. — 🏅Two-woman bobsled, final run | Peacock
12:15 p.m. — 🏅Two-woman bobsled, final run (in progress) | NBC
2:15 p.m. — Two-woman bobsled, runs 3-4 (delay) | NBC

CROSS-COUNTRY SKIING
8:30 a.m. — 🏅Men’s 50-kilometer mass start classic (delay) | NBC

CURLING
🏅Women’s bronze-medal match
5:05 a.m. — U.S. vs. Canada | Peacock
7:20 a.m. — U.S. vs. Canada (delay) | USA
🏅Men’s gold-medal match
10:05 a.m. — Britain vs. Canada | CNBC
Women’s bronze-medal match
1 p.m. — U.S. vs. Canada (re-air) | CNBC

FIGURE SKATING
11 a.m. — Exhibition gala | Peacock
11:55 a.m. — Exhibition gala (in progress) | NBC
12:50 p.m. — Exhibition gala (in progress) | NBC

FREESTYLE SKIING
8:45 a.m. — 🏅Men’s skicross, finals (delay) | USA
9:15 a.m. — Mixed team aerials, final (re-air) | USA
10:30 a.m. — 🏅Women’s freeski halfpipe, final | NBC
1:30 p.m. — Mixed team aerials, final (re-air) | NBC

HOCKEY
🏅Men’s bronze-medal game
11:40 a.m. — Finland vs. Slovakia | USA

SPEEDSKATING
6 a.m. — 🏅Men’s and women’s mass start, semifinals and finals | Peacock
7 a.m. — 🏅Men’s and women’s mass start, semifinals and finals (in progress) | NBC

In case you missed it …

Check out the following Milan-Cortina Olympics dispatches from the L.A. Times team on the ground in Italy:

Winter Olympics Day 15 live updates: Klaebo wins record sixth gold medal

U.S. men rout Slovakia, will play Canada for hockey gold medal

After shedding pressure, American Alysa Liu rides wave of joy to Olympic gold medal

‘A magical moment.’ Hilary Knight caps off U.S. women’s hockey career with Olympic gold

Olympians Hilary Knight and Brittany Bowe get engaged before gold-medal hockey match

Jordan Stolz takes silver in Olympic 1,500 meters; China’s Ning Zhongyan wins gold

U.S. bobsledder Azaria Hill adding to her family’s rich Olympic Games legacy

Until next time…

That concludes today’s Sports Report Olympic Edition newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email newsletter editor Houston Mitchell at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here and select the Sports Report.

If Hilary Knight is the GOAT of women’s ice hockey, then Caroline Harvey is the kid.

That isn’t just a reference to her age, 23, which makes her the seventh-youngest player on the U.S. Olympic team. The term is also used for baby goats. And with Knight, the oldest player on the U.S. team, expected to retire from Olympic competition after the Milan Cortina Games, that makes Harvey the GOAT in waiting.

“Hilary is a great role model,” Harvey said. “She did blaze that trail. It’s been exciting to see what she did, the legacy she left.”

Like the 10 world championship gold medals, most by a hockey player of either gender; the soon-to-be five Olympic appearances, most by any American hockey player; the scoring titles and MVP awards. But the real legacy she’ll leave will have little to do with any of that.

In 2019, while at the height of her career, Knight risked everything when she joined more than 200 other players in boycotting the existing women’s hockey leagues to form the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Assn. Four years later that led to the creation of the well-funded Professional Women’s Hockey League, with eight teams playing in the U.S. and Canada.

Knight said she took inspiration for that campaign from the 1999 Women’s World Cup soccer team of Mia Hamm, Julie Foudy and Brandi Chastain, which not only won the title but soon after began the decades-long fight with the U.S. Soccer Federation that eventually ended with the women getting the same pay and benefits as the men’s team.

“We credit the ‘99ers to sort of helping us with our vision and creating more equitable space,” she said. “We’re far from there but we’re taking great steps in that direction.”

In fact, women’s hockey has never been better, a popularity both Knight and Harvey hope to build on in the Olympic tournament, which begins Thursday with the U.S. facing Czechia.

“Visibility is really important; continuing to get those eyes,” said Knight, a tireless promoter of the game. “We’re going to have some new and unique viewership. With the Olympics in itself [viewers] might accidentally watch hockey and be like ‘I love this sport.’

“Just having more programming elevates the game on the global stage. And that’s really exciting.”

The game Knight, 36, is championing is really one she built, especially in the U.S. A two-time NCAA champion at Wisconsin, she’ll be going for her fifth Olympic medal — and second gold — in Milan. Yet she insists the experience never gets old.

“Every Olympics feels like my first Olympics,” she said. “Each is so unique. You’re in a different country, a different culture, just so much fun to be able to explore. The Olympics are so special, whether it’s your first or your fifth.”

These Games are likely to feel a little different, though, since they’ll end with her passing the baton to Harvey, who followed Knight to Wisconsin. The two women have more in common than just their alma mater, though.

Both were the youngest players on the team when they made their Olympic debuts, Knight as a high-scoring forward in 2010 and Harvey as a physical, offensive-minded defenseman in 2022. Both have won multiple world championships and both began their careers playing on boys teams. As children, they both told relatives they would someday play in the Olympics — a prediction that was particularly bold for Knight since women’s hockey wasn’t even an Olympic sport then.

When Harvey joined the national team ahead of the 2021 world championships, Knight shared some advice.

“She said something to the effect of ‘it’s the same game, no matter what level you’re at. Trust your instincts, play natural, play free,’” Harvey said. “That just really stuck with me.

“Hopefully at some point [I] grow into that leadership role,” she continued. “I’ve had some years now and that past Olympics, it was more of a being a sponge. I’m always trying to learn something new every day from the veterans.”

One thing she’s learned recently is how to beat Canada, which could come in handy in Milan since the U.S. will face its northern neighbors in the final game of group play, and likely a second time in the knockout rounds.

Canada has won five of the last six women’s Olympic tournaments, beating the U.S. in four of the those finals, including the most recent one in 2022. But the U.S. swept Canada in the pre-Olympic Rivalry Series, winning the four games by a combined 24-7. Knight and Abbey Murphy led the tournament in scoring with five goals each.

“When the puck drops, your heart is beating out of your chest,” Knight said of playing Canada. “You’re like ‘am I human? This is insane. This is awesome.’”

Still, when Knight finally does hang up her skates for the final time, those won’t necessarily be the memories she holds closest from her Olympic career.

“I get to do cool things with cool people on a daily basis,” she said. “What I’ve been able to accomplish in my career is incredible. And I’ve obviously played with amazing women and I’m so grateful for every opportunity that I’ve had.

“I’m just at a place where I want to embrace these lasting memories and moments with teammates and friends and family, all those people that go into this journey. That’s what I’m looking forward to.”

After that, the GOAT will give way to the kid.