A liquid silence covers the snow-covered Colorado backcountry in February.
The close-knit community of backcountry skiing was in mourning Monday, a day after an avalanche in Washington state killed a prominent judge in the extreme sport plus two other experienced skiers.
Lindsey Vonn from the U.S. has won her fifth consecutive women's World Cup downhill title after finishing third at Saturday's alpine skiing event in Sochi, Russia.
Jeret Peterson has died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He's featured in this 2010 video after winning silver medal.
CNN's Paula Hancocks reports from Pyeongchang, South Korea, just after it was picked to host the 2018 Winter Olympics.
Comcast/NBC will remain the U.S. Olympic network in 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2020. But for now, it's time to focus on 2012.
The Russian Figure Skating Federation filed an official bid with the International Skating Union on Tuesday to host the 2011 World Figure Skating Championship, which was canceled following Japan's massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami, Alexander Gorshkov, federation president, told CNN.
BASE jumpers took the plunge in 2010 during the "New River Gorge Bridge Day Festival" in West Virginia.
Skiers understand the capricious nature of fame in a sport that is largely hidden from public view for years at a time. It's all about timing. (And back stories, too, but that's another matter. And sometimes it's about timing and back stories together). You can win all the races you like, on any mountainside in the world, but unless you win at the Olympics, you are anonymous. Ted Ligety knows all about this.
The head of the Vancouver Olympics organizing committee warned that an athlete could get "badly injured or worse" almost a full year before Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was killed during a practice run at the 2010 Winter Games.
Snowboard queen Kelly Clark isn't resting on her laurels or her board. At the X Games in Aspen, Colo., over the weekend, the 27-year-old, two-time Olympic medalist became the first woman to land a frontside 1080, on her way to a gold medal in the superpipe.
This month on Revealed, Snowboarding legend and Olympic gold medallist, Shaun White.
Want to pile through chest-deep powder in Japan? Find massive air in China? Here's the guide to Asia's downhill thrills.
Lots of people may be cursing the early arrival of winter this year, but the blast of snow is translating into a blast for skiers and snowboarders.
So much for the idea that Lindsey Vonn and the rest of the U.S. ski team would have a down season in the post-Olympic year. Vonn and fellow Olympic champ Ted Ligety both earned decisive victories in World Cup events as the Cup tour made its annual fall pass through North America. Vonn captured the Super G race in Lake Louise, Alberta on Sunday, while Ligety won the giant slalom event on the Birds of Prey course in Beaver Creek, Colo. It marked the first time since 2006 that two U.S. alpine skiers had won World Cup events on the same day.
Sports Illustrated will announce its choice for Sportsman of the Year on Nov. 29. Here's one of the nominations for that honor by an SI writer.
The Olympian says he'll be like a combination of Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul
She's one of South Korea's biggest stars -- with sellout shows, legions of devoted fans and a plethora of advertising deals.
In February, former figure skater Elvis Stojko discussed how the luge accident may affect athletes at the winter games.
Usain Bolt may bolt from another event, depending on the source you choose to believe. Although Bolt's coach, Glen Mills, says the sprinter will not run in the Jamaican team trials for the Commonwealth Games next week, Mills now says the quadrennial competition, set to open in Delhi on Oct. 3, was never actually on his schedule in the first place. That comes as news to organizers, who have been promoting Bolt's appearance since last year.
A tough economy compels a champion Iditarod musher to donate to the prize money for the very race in which he's competing.
Cash is of little to no use for mushers along the isolated frontier trail that marks the self-titled "Last Great Race on Earth." However, even the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race has proven it's not immune to a struggling economy.
71 mushers and dog teams start their race across more then a thousand miles as the 2010 Iditarod begins in Alaska.
CNN's Mark McKay takes a look back at the 2010 Winter Olympics.
MOORESVILLE, North Carolina -- Winning the 1986 Daytona 500 may have been Geoff Bodine's shining moment, but the United States Olympic Four-Man Bobsled Team provided his golden moment last Saturday night in Vancouver. It was the culmination of a dream as the Bo-Dyn Bobsled -- known as "Night Train" and piloted by Steve Holcomb, won the first four-man gold medal for the U.S. in 62 years.
WHISTLER, British Columbia -- You could see the signs, building in the subtle but unmistakable way that a low-pressure system gathers and roils before bringing the end of a drought -- in this case, 62 years without Olympic gold in the four-man bobsled. It ended Saturday, in spectacular fashion, to the clanging of cowbells omnipresent at such races, as Steven Holcomb drove team Night Train -- as USA 1 is known -- to the gold medal.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- If this was the last night of his Olympic career, let the record show that Anton Apolo Ohno's finale was in keeping with his career -- with his life, really. It was a little bit messy, a little bit controversial, ultimately successful and above all, one hell of an entertaining ride.
Vonn crashes out
updated: Sun Feb 28 2010 02:49:00
Lindsey Vonn's Olympics come to an end. Alex Thomas wraps up Friday's competition.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- All of Canada is holding its breath for the result of today's men's cross-country 50km mass start.
WHISTLER, British Columbia -- Here was a familiar scene: Bode Miller standing benignly on skis at the side of race course, poles dragging in the snow, a look of vague disappointment on his face. He is wearing a racing helmet and speed suit, but he is as still as the pine trees behind him and the plastic gates that line the mountainside, all dressed up with no place to go.
WHISTLER, British Columbia -- As massive, wet snowflakes fell on the Creekside alpine racing stadium Friday afternoon, Lindsey Vonn worked an adoring crowd. Autographs here, photos there, always a smile. The hood was pulled up on her white, U.S. Ski team jacket and a hat was yanked down to the top of her eyebrows, but there was no mistaking who was beneath the down and wool. You cannot cover up stardom.
An American duo continues to make history, as CNN's Alex Thomas reports from the Winter Olympics.
South Koreans react to Kim Yu-Na's historic gold medal win in women's figure skating at the Olympics in Vancouver.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- After the brilliance of the short program, it was hard to imagine there wouldn't be a letdown. How could South Korea's Kim Yu-Na be perfect a second night in the face of the suffocating pressure of expectations? How could Japan's Mao Asada skate mistake-free again and push Kim with her amazing arsenal of triple axels. And, most poignantly, how could Canada's Joannie Rochette keep herself together in the free skating program just four days after her mother's sudden death after arriving in Vancouver to watch her compete?
WHISTLER, British Columbia -- Bill Schuffenhauer, a pusher for the USA 3 bobsled, which starts four-man competition Friday, was detained and questioned by Canadian police Wednesday night.
Things were good for Canadian figure skater Joannie Rochette in the weeks before the Winter Olympics. She had a 2009 world silver medal. Training was going well. And, she told her agent, she had her confidante and source of strength by her side.
WHISTLER, British Columbia -- If there were to be a bobsled episode of The Twilight Zone, the final two runs of the women's bobsled at the Whistler Sliding Centre Wednesday night would do well as inspiration: Canada, which had zero prior medals in women's bobsled, took gold and silver; the Germans, who had nabbed three of the six medals awarded at the two prior Games that had women's bobsled, went missing from the podium; the USA 2 sled ended up not only as the top American sled, but the third best in the world; and one of the world's best technical drivers crashed herself out of contention.
Douglas F. Gansler: Maryland's attorney general said Wednesday that the state may legally recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. The 45-page opinion from Gansler was addressed to state Sen. Richard Madaleno Jr.
WHISTLER, British Columbia -- Measure these odds: Julia Mancuso is prepared to push out of the start house in the first of two runs of the Olympic giant slalom on Wednesday morning. She is skier No. 18, and at this point in the competition -- bib numbers 16 through 30 -- the racers are sent off every 60 seconds, a shorter interval than originally planned, to hurry the race in bad weather. For the fastest racers, the run takes a little more than 1:15. This means that when one skier is approaching the final pitch of the course, another is starting. Two racers on course at the same time.
Talk about being 21st-century pioneers.
Olympic medalist Nelson Carmichael has some tips on how to bump ski.
CNN's Alex Thomas wraps up Tuesday's competition at the Winter Olympics.
The battle belonged to Korea's exquisite Kim Yu-na and Japan's sensational Mao Asada, who are the two best women skaters of their time. But the night belonged to Canada's courageous and heartrending Joannie Rochette, who was competing just two days after her mother, Therese, died of an apparent heart attack early Sunday morning shortly after arriving in Vancouver to watch her daughter skate.
A U.S. two-woman bobsled sits in second place heading into Wednesday's final two runs, but it isn't the American sled everyone predicted. Everyone except perhaps driver Erin Pac and her brakewoman Elana Meyers, that is.
WHISTLER, B.C. -- For the first time in a week, it was snowing Tuesday afternoon in the mountains around Whistler. At least it was trying to snow, as dense, wet flakes turned occasionally to rain and then back again to snow, soaking spectators who were leaving the alpine racing stadium after Carlo Janka's victory for Switzerland in the men's giant slalom. It was a return to the conditions that had postponed the start of ski racing for two days at the beginning of the Games, but it was something else, too: Mancuso Weather.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- No man has ever won four Alpine skiing medals at a single Olympics, but Bode Miller is a threat to make history today in the men's giant slalom. Medals will also be handed out in biathlon, Nordic combined, women's ski cross and the men's speedskating.
I don't have room to get into individual letters here, but a surprising number of you wrote regarding my column on the Capitals being jobbed in a controversial "no-goal" ruling at Montreal in which the Canadiens ended Washington's 14-game win streak.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Question: Will American audiences tune in to a ladies figure skating competition in which an American is not in the hunt for the gold medal? Maybe not even make an appearance on the podium? It hasn't happened since 1964, but we may find out in the next few days, for this Olympic gold will be decided between a couple of longtime Asian rivals: South Korea and Japan.
Apolo Anton Ohno becomes the most decorated American Winter Olympian. Alex Thomas reports.
Will the death of 21-year-old Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili during a training run for the XXI Olympic Winter Games lead to a civil action?
The bronze medalist hits the slopes - and the books
With a new bronze, Ohno becomes the most decorated American athlete in Winter Olympics history
WHISTLER, British Columbia -- Bode Miller woke up on Sunday morning feeling "pretty whipped," as he put it. His crash a few days earlier, during a downhill training run for the men's super combined, had left him not so much sore as out of alignment. "I flew 35 feet through the air and landed on my hip," he said. "I'm fine, but it kind of feels like I'm crooked."
WHISTLER, British Columbia -- It's not the way top U.S. driver Steve Holcomb wanted to move up, but the crash of Canada's top two-man bobsled Saturday left Holcomb's team in fourth place and in sight of breaking a U.S. two-man bobsled medal drought that dates to 1952.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- SI's Michael Farber calls today Hockey Day in Heaven, and with good reason: "The top six teams in the world are meeting in their most natural and appealing configurations, reprising the three Olympic finals that have included NHL players," says Farber. "There will be Canada against the United States and Sweden versus Finland in a pair of borders wars, all preceded by the geopolitical (and hockey) antipathy between Russia and the Czech Republic. Prague Spring, anyone?" Canada's Hockey Place becomes the epicenter of puckhead revelry today with a dream tripleheader on the ice. Of course, there are actual medals to be had in other venues, including the men's super-combined at Whistler Creekside (Bode alert!), women's 1,500-meter speedskating and the conclusion of men's two-man bobsled. It's also the debut of freestyle ski cross, the wild four-at-a-time plunge down the hill at Cypress.
It would have been one of the most memorable moments in the history of the Olympic Games.
The 21-year-old Georgian luger who propelled to his death after sliding off the track during an Olympic practice run in Vancouver was laid to rest in his hometown Saturday.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Forget the NFL, and apologies to baseball:
U.S. snowboarder Louie Vito, a first-time Olympian, will be in checking in with SI.com's Cory McCartney throughout the Games to offer an inside view of the sights and sounds in Vancouver.
WHISTLER, British Columbia -- The controversial track at the Whistler Sliding Centre -- where Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili died in a crash last Friday -- was again stirring debate after seven bobsleds crashed on the first day of two-man training. But despite the requests of some athletes and coaches, course officials say they have no plans to adjust the ice on the track.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Terrible day for the United States Olympic team yesterday: It won only four medals.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- In the end, the artistic skater didn't win because of his artistry. Evan Lysacek, without a quadruple jump, became the first American man to take home Olympic gold in figure skating since Brian Boitano in 1988, laying down a passionate, difficult, nearly perfect program to pass Russia's Evgeni Plushenko, he of the quad-triple jump.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Wasn't it romantic? Long ago, in a world before American Idol, judges with fickle hearts and talents with wow factors gripped and enchanted audiences on ice stages. All it took was that one moment in a skater's program to change everything -- like the money spiral from Michelle Kwan. She would gain speed in a sequined blur, then suddenly throw her arms out wide, burst into a flirty smile and glide elegantly on one skate blade across the rink in a curving line as if she were drawing hearts.
WHISTLER, B.C. -- The truth? It's tempting to say that we - those of us disseminate our words through magazines, websites, newspapers and television -- missed on Julia Mancuso. That we spent the better part of a year hyping Lindsey Vonn as the star-in-waiting of the 2010 Olympics and cruelly overlooked Mancuso, whose giant slalom gold from Turin in 2006 gave her one more Olympic medal than Vonn had won in two trips to the Games.
Vonn, White and Davis all win gold for the U.S. in Vancouver. CNN's Alex Thomas reports.
Tim Burke, the top U.S. biathlete, tends to get asked what, exactly, it is that he does. When he left Europe for Vancouver last month for a final stint of pre-Olympic training, Burke landed in Chicago for a connecting flight and got that very question from a curious customs officer. After Burke told the man that he competes in biathlon, "he asked me if biathlon is a combination of handball and something else," says the 28-year-old Burke. "I can't even remember what the other thing was. I stopped listening when he said handball."
SI.com's writers will preview each event from the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Here's David Epstein's look ahead to bobsled.
The skiing champ proves that her injured shin won't get in the way of her dreams
Eight months before the Vancouver Games, Lindsey Vonn skis the Olympic downhill in her mind. She is in a subterranean workout room at the Red Bull soccer club's training center in Salzburg, Austria, balanced with each foot on a nylon slack line suspended three feet off the pebbled orange rubber floor. She is crouched in an aerodynamic tuck, her hands thrust out in front of her chin. Trainer Oliver Saringer speaks gently into her right ear: You're on the downhill course at Whistler .... Vonn closes her eyes and begins shifting her weight rhythmically from one foot to the other as if executing high-speed turns on a Canadian mountainside more than 5,000 miles away.
Bode Miller and Seth Wescott collect medals for the U.S. CNN's Alex Thomas reports.
It's a familiar story -- we look at the athletes' bodies and they seem unusual somehow. We think about what lengths they might have gone to in order to achieve such an abnormal build. Whatever it is they did, we wonder: Is it natural? Is it healthy?
CNN's Jo Ling Kent talks about her experience training with China's gold medalists, Zhao Hongbo and Shen Xue.
It was 12 years ago at a U.S. ice rink that I suddenly realized I was watching something special. I was a 13-year-old aspiring to be an Olympic figure skater and practicing my modest double lutzes and double axels when Chinese pair skaters Zhao Hongbo and Shen Xue whizzed by me at lightning speed.
Skier Lindsey Vonn is using an Austrian cheese to help heal the shin injury she suffered while at the Winter Games.
Luge is a dangerous sport in which accidents happen. That was the refrain from athlete after athlete when asked how they felt about the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, who was killed when he flew off the Olympic track during training in Whistler on Friday.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Finally, we ski. The men's downhill event, where helmeted racers tear down the side of a mountain in search of Alpine immortality, is scheduled to begin at Whistler Creekside today at 1:30 p.m. (The caveat, as always, is weather permitting.) Medals will also be awarded in men's and women's cross country, women's luge, and men's speedskating.
A Georgian luger was killed during Olympic practice. CNN's Mark McKay reports.
Luge is a dangerous sport in which accidents happen. That was the refrain from luger after luger when asked about the death of Georgia's Nodar Kumaritashvili, who was traveling at 88 mph when he flew off the last turn of the Olympic track in Whistler during a training run on Friday and was killed.
The Vermont-based mogul skiing champ has been on the slopes since she was 2
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- The long national nightmare ended at precisely 6:18 p.m. PDT on a soothing Sunday when a scoreboard at the bottom of Cypress Mountain flashed the final standings. Canada exhaled. The man who brought such relief is preternaturally upbeat fellow named Alexandre Bilodeau, a moguls skier who bumped his way down a 250-meter course and into the sporting history of his country.
It's fitting that Valentine's Day, a day when people lead with their hearts, fell during the Vancouver Games. Olympians bring the same dedication to training and competing as they do to supporting their communities and the causes that inspire them. Here are some examples.
An investigation blames the fatal high-speed crash on his error at a turn - not on a track problem
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- The third day of Olympic competitions falls on Valentine's Day, and no one can use a bigger hug than Canada following a tough Saturday in which the host country failed to end its home-gold medal drought. It's unlikely the Canadians will win a medal today (though they have a shot in men's moguls), but Sunday holds major promise for the U.S. in Nordic combined. Medals will also be awarded in the biathlon sprint, men's singles luge and women's speedskating. The highlights:
WHISTLER, British Columbia -- Through protests and tragedies, the Games have always gone on, and it was no different Saturday evening at the luge course in Whistler. The first two runs of the men's competition went on as scheduled, one day after 21-year-old Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was killed during a training run when he lost control of his sled and hurtled out of the course.
The last time it visited was four years ago, and right now it's embracing Vancouver. It's not the Olympic spirit, it's El Niño, the weather phenomenon that is helping to give Olympic organizers headaches by bringing warm air and rain from the South Pacific. The fog might be manna from heaven for American skier Lindsey Vonn, though, who wanted a few more days of cancelled training and races to let her bruised shin heal.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- The International Olympic Committee's need to push the envelope is sewn into its motto Citius, Altius, Fortius - or swifter, higher, stronger - as if to be swift enough, fast enough or strong enough were a weakness or, at the least, a lame marketing idea. So over the past decade, in an effort to remain edgy, relevant and riveting, the IOC has ratcheted up the drama by going to the extreme, enlisting the hotdog hounds of freestyle skiing and seducing daredevil snowboarders to the Games.
WHISTLER, British Columbia -- Alpine skiers are great waiters. Not that kind of waiter (although sometimes that kind, too, because if you're not at the highest level of the sport, like Lindsey Vonn and Bode Miller, you sometimes need another job, too; but that's a different discussion). Waiters. As in: They are very experienced at waiting.
CNN' Ayesha Durgahee catches up with Ghanian ski racer who qualified for 2010 Winter Olympics.
SI.com's writers will preview each event from the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Here's Tim Layden's look ahead to Alpine skiing.
Athletes from 97 nations will march in Vancouver tonight at the Opening Ceremony of the XXI Winter Olympic Games. Turn on your TV. Watch and cheer.
WHISTLER, British Columbia -- At just before noon on Thursday, Thomas Vonn was sitting in a mountainside media center talking to two reporters, waiting out a snow delay in what would be the first official Olympic training session for his wife, Lindsey. A voice crackled from Vonn's portable radio, the type that ski racing coaches wear to communicate from various points on and around the mountains.
WHISTLER, British Columbia -- Look at it this way: Ski racers are generally injured so often that half their careers are spent in some combination of pain-management and rehabilitation. And even by those standards Lindsey Vonn is an outlier, with a long and colorful medical history that has alternately compromised her career and elevated her personal mythology. She has a scar somewhere to match every title she's won.
The starts are crucial in the regulated mayhem of ski cross, the newest Olympic sport. Sometimes the whole race is right there at the outset. A few seconds, the top of the world. You can feel the tension even during a practice run like the one early last December when Casey Puckett and Daron Rahlves were settling into the stalls of a steel gate at the top of a training course at the Telluride Ski Resort. The Olympic qualifying races were just three weeks away and the Vancouver games themselves were looming in less than two months. The snow that had been falling over southwest Colorado for most of the day was erasing the blue dye lines meant to help the racers gauge the contours of the course, which featured a tricky array of banked turns, rollers, jumps and the deep U-shaped trenches right below the gate known as wu-tangs.
SI.com's writers will preview each event from the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Here's David Epstein's look ahead to Nordic combined.
SI.com's writers will preview each event from the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Here's Sarah Kwak's look ahead to freestyle skiing, broken down into the event's three disciplines: aerials, moguls and the brand-new ski cross.
SI.com's writers will preview each event from the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Here's Brian Cazeneuve's look ahead to luge.
Dr. Jennifer Shu explains how to be prepared to travel to the 2010 Winter Olympics.
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