David Wise considers himself a dad and husband first, a freestyle skier second. That might be why he also became an Olympic champion. Soaring through sloppy snow and sleet, Wise won the first gold medal in the young sport of halfpipe skiing Tuesday, outclassing a field in Sochi that had trouble with the slow, waterlogged conditions.
The politics got a little hotter. The slopes got a lot slushier. On a day when the mountain courses seemed better suited for the crawl or butterfly but posed no obstacle to Tina Maze, the Sochi Olympics took a more overt political turn.
Easing her way down the Olympic giant slalom course, pop violinist Vanessa-Mae completed Tuesday's first run with the slowest time of the 74 skiers who finished.
Bob Costas returned as host for NBC's prime-time Olympic coverage Monday night, if still not exactly clear-eyed, at least with a sharpened sense of respect for the colleagues and crew who covered for him during a six-day absence.
It was Belarus day Monday at the Sochi Olympics. A Belarussian woman made Olympic history by becoming the first female ever to win three biathlon titles at the same games, and one of her teammates captured the men's freestyle skiing aerials competition to complete a gold-medal sweep on the event.
Zbigniew Brodka won Poland's first gold medal in the men's 1,500 meters, finishing 0.003 seconds ahead of Koen Verweij of the Netherlands. It was one of the closest 1,500 finishes in Olympic history.
Ski jumper Kamil Stoch completed a gold medal sweep of the normal and large hills in the Sochi Olympics on Saturday in a close tussle with 41-year-old Noriaki Kasai of Japan.
T.J. Oshie brainstormed while he skated to center ice, desperately trying to come up with one last move to end an epic shootout. He had already taken five shots at Sergei Bobrovsky, and the Russians were still even.
