Lindsey Vonn crash overwhelms some good U.S news at Winter Olympics

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 wondering if we saw the end of one Olympic superstar (Lindsey Vonn) and the birth of a new Olympic superstar (Ilia Malinin). And, we got to hear the U.S. national anthem twice.

As America woke up on Sunday morning, it learned of the drama in the women’s downhill as Olympic darling Lindsey Vonn crashed at the top of the course, ending her medal dreams in her fifth Olympics. Good news, nothing life threatening but a broken left leg. Frankly, scenes of her being helicoptered off the mountain seemed scarier than going down a hill on skis at around 90 mph. Vonn was also scheduled to run in another race but this injury will likely stop that.

I watched the morning replay on NBC, which truncated the incident to just a few minutes rather than the near 20-minute delay the crash caused. Then I went to Peacock and watched the live feed, which stayed with the story in its entirety with most of the shots being of teammates, coaches, family and fans. Lead skiing announcer Dan Hicks had just the right tone of concern without hysterical overreaction. NBC played it perfectly. (Too late, but Hicks would have been a better choice to host the opening ceremony rather than Terry [Vanilla] Gannon.)

On the live feed, you could hear some wailing in the background, presumably by Vonn, but the sound wasn’t cranked up. NBC also waited a while to show the replay, which wasn’t gruesome. In short, she hit a gate and it threw off her balance and her race was over.

Lost in all of this was that Breezy Johnson of the U.S. was the gold medal winner, the first of the Games for the U.S. While most had no idea who she was being dwarfed in the shadow of Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin, she was the world champion in the downhill last year so her win was not a huge surprise.

Interestingly, NBC continued its rose-colored glasses coverage by not mentioning — at least we didn’t hear it — that Johnson was suspended for 14 months for skipping three drug tests. NBC also ignored the boo-fest when Vice President JD Vance was shown at the opening ceremony. You would think the Games were on CBS.

The injury to Vonn brings up the question of how dangerous is Alpine skiing. By comparison, not so much. A study by the British Journal of Sports Medicine of the past four Winter Olympics showed that Alpine skiing is low on the chart with a 13.4% average injury rate, slightly ahead of figure skating, at 12.2%.

It’s the action sports that are the most dangerous, where six disciplines are at the top of the injury chart. They are ski big air (28.1%), ski halfpipe (27.6%), snowboard cross (26.6%), snowboard slopestyle (26.2%), ski aerials (24.3%) and ski slopestyle (23.2%).

The U.S. finished the day by winning gold in the team figure skating in dramatic fashion. Tied with Japan at 59-59 heading into the final competition, the men’s singles, Ilia Malinin of Virginia overcame a slip where both hands touched the ice to win the men’s singles with an astonishing score of 200.03. It gave the U.S. a 69-68 win and the gold. We’ll see more of the “Quad God” later in the Games.

Elsewhere on Sunday

—The U.S. mixed doubles curling team rebounded from two losses on Saturday to beat Sweden (8-7) and Estonia (5-3) on Sunday to improve to 4-2.

—Norway won a gold and bronze in the men’s 10-kilometer skiathlon. The U.S. got a 24th out of Gus Schumacher.

—France won the biathlon mixed relay, the only Winter Olympic sport in which “open carry” is allowed. The U.S. was fifth.

—Norway picked up its third gold (most of any nation) in men’s 5,000 meters in speedskating. Watching a 5K race is the Olympic version of watching the late Bob Ross paint, but not as entertaining. Great for tingleheads. (Look it up.)

—Germany won its seventh straight men’s single luge competition. Jonathan Gustafson was tops for the U.S. in 11th. If you bet the prediction markets, always pick Germany in sliding sports.

—Austria and Czechia won the men’s and women’s parallel giant slalom. The U.S. was not competitive in either races.

Best Thing to Watch on TV today

The return of the work week means there could be a slowdown in production in America’s offices, especially because the most interesting stuff is in the morning. Got to say, have found little to no reason to watch the primetime show so far. Maybe when Mike Tirico gets to Italy the show will be more than a replay show. (Remember before the proliferation of cable stations when you would tune in Sunday mornings for the Notre Dame football highlights show? We miss you, Harry Kalas.) We’re going away from big sports for today’s recommendations. We have some interest in the women’s 1,000 meters in speedskating, where U.S. flag bearer Erin Jackson makes her first appearance. She’s the world record holder, set in 2019, in this event. She won the 500 meters in Beijing. She goes in the 10th pair of competition that starts at 8:30 a.m. PST. Also in the race, in the 12th pair, is Brittany Bowe, who won bronze in Beijing. Also, on Monday morning is the curling mixed team semifinals. The U.S. is 4-2 and in second behind Britain and plays third place Italy on Monday morning. Presumably, the U.S. will make the semifinals. The semis start at 9:05 a.m. PST. Stick to the big network as the SilverZone (demoted from gold) on Peacock shows no respect for curling (See Sunday’s newsletter.)

Monday’s full Olympic TV and streaming schedule

Monday’s live TV and streaming broadcasts for the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics unless noted (subject to change). All events stream live on Peacock or NBCOlympics.com with a streaming or cable login. All times Pacific. 🏅 — medal event for live broadcasts.

MULTIPLE SPORTS

8 p.m. — “Primetime in Milan” (delay) Figure skating, skiing, snowboarding, speedskating, luge and more. | NBC

ALPINE SKIING

1:30 a.m. — Men’s combined, downhill | USA

2:45 a.m. — Women’s downhill (re-air) | USA

4:50 a.m. — 🏅Men’s combined, slalom | USA, Peacock

9:45 a.m. — Men’s combined (delay) | NBC

10 p.m. — Men’s combined (re-air) | USA

CURLING

Mixed doubles (round robin)

1:05 a.m. — Italy vs. U.S. | Peacock

1:05 a.m. — Czechia vs. Estonia | Peacock

1:05 a.m. — Norway vs. South Korea | Peacock

1:05 a.m. — Switzerland vs. Canada | Peacock

6 a.m. — Italy vs. U.S. (delay) | USA

9:05 a.m. — Semifinal, teams TBD | Peacock

2 p.m. — Semifinal, teams TBD (delay) | CNBC

5:45 p.m. — Semifinal teams TBD (re-air) | USA

FIGURE SKATING

8:20 a.m. — Rhythm dance, warmup | Peacock

10:20 a.m. — Rhythm dance, Part 1 | USA

11:40 a.m. — Rhythm dance, Part 2 | NBC

11 p.m. — Rhythm dance (re-air) | USA

FREESTYLE SKIING

3:30 a.m. — 🏅Women’s slopestyle, final | USA

HOCKEY

Women (group play)

3:10 a.m. — Japan vs. Italy | Peacock

7:40 a.m. — Germany vs. France | Peacock

9 a.m. — Germany vs. France (delay) | USA

11:40 a.m. — Switzerland vs. U.S. | USA

12:10 p.m. — Canada vs. Czechia | Peacock

2 p.m. — Canada vs. Czechia (delay) | USA

8 p.m. — Switzerland vs. U.S. (re-air) | USA

LUGE

4:30 a.m. — Women’s doubles, training | Peacock

8 a.m. — Women’s singles, Run 1 | USA

9:35 a.m. — Women’s singles, Run 2 | USA

5 p.m. — Women’s singles, runs 1-2 (re-air) | USA

SKI JUMPING

9 a.m. — Men’s normal hill, trial round | Peacock

10 a.m. — Men’s normal hill, first round | Peacock

11:10 a.m. — 🏅Men’s normal hill, final | Peacock

2:30 p.m. — Men’s normal hill, final (delay) | USA

7:15 p.m. — Men’s normal hill, final (re-air) | USA

SPEEDSKATING

8:30 a.m. — 🏅Women’s 1,000 meters | USA

9 a.m. — Women’s 1,000 meters (in progress) | NBC

3:45 p.m. — Women’s 1,000 meters (re-air) | USA

SNOWBOARDING

10:30 a.m. — 🏅Women’s big air, final | NBC

You can find the full medal table here.

In case you missed it ...

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

Ilia Malinin powers U.S. to Olympic gold in team figure skating competition

U.S. Olympic athletes in Italy are speaking out about the political situation at home

Are you ready for the Olympics? Here are some U.S. stars worth a follow

After Lindsey Vonn broke her leg, Breezy Johnson earned redemptive gold medal

Italian police fire tear gas in clash with anti-ICE protesters near Olympics venue

Until next time...

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