Winter Olympics: curling, cross-country skiing and more – as it happened

Canada win hockey bronze: The Canadians wanted gold, but have to settle for bronze as they see off the Czech Republic 6-4. Interestingly, injured Canada net-minder Ben Scrivens, who played no part in this match, has pulled a full John Terry and has dressed in full kit, and that’s a lot of kit, including his helmet, to join in the celebrations.

View image in fullscreen

Czech’s bouncing back! That bronze medal hockey match isn’t over yet! It’s Canada 6-4 Czech Republic with 1min 40sec left in what’s turning out to be a thrilling conclusion.

Canada lead Czech Republic in the ice hockey: With just a couple of minutes to go in the men’s ice hockey bronze medal match, Canada are firmly in control. They lead the Czech’s 6-2.

View image in fullscreen

• Ester Ledecka has made history by winning gold in two sports - the Alpine super-G and the Parallel giant slalom. Arguably the story of the Games.
• Billy Morgan takes bronze in the men’s Big air to lift Britain’s medal tally to five - the highest in a single Winter Games in the country’s history. Sebastien Toutant of Canada takes gold.
• Switzerland’s Nevin Galmarini wins gold in the men’s Parallel giant slalom, pipping South Korea’s Lee Sangho.
• It’s been a good day for the Swiss all round - with gold in the Alpine team event too.
• Finland’s Iivo Niskanen puts in a marathon effort to win the 50km cross-country ski.
• Both of Britain’s four-man bobsleigh teams are out of medal contention after the initial runs.
• The British women’s curling team miss out on bronze after going for the win with the final shot of their match against Japan. Eve Muirhead had the courage to take on a potentially match-winning shot, but lacked the composure to make it.

Team GB speak: “The shot was there and of course we went for it,” says Eve Muirhead, talking to the BBC. “As a skip it’s hard when you miss with the last shot. We’ve battled so hard and it’s sad that we’re going home with nothing. We had control in the last end and unfortunately it just didn’t work out. It’s going to take a long time to sink in. It’s hard when you don’t make that last shot because that’s what you practice for day in and day out.

“The Olympics is a hard gig and unless you’re here you don’t see that. We played our hearts out but Japan played well. I’m absolutely devastated, I’m gutted. I’m gutted for myself, I’m gutted for my team and for everyone who helped us along the way. It’s going to take a long time to sink in.”

Great Britain 3-5 Japan Great Britain had the hammer and Eve Muirhead at the chance to win the match for Great Britain with her final stone. She went for it, but her gamble didn’t come off as she knocked the Japan stone into the button. Japan take the bronze and their players hug each other , the tears flowing freely. Great Britain go home with nothing after going for the shot to win the bronze, but coming up short.

View image in fullscreen

Great Britain 3-4 Japan A match that’s cagier than London Zoo edges towards its conclusion. Japan take one in the ninth end to leave Great Britain trailing going into the final end. They need one to take the match to an extra end, or that still elusive two to snatch the bronze from Japan. Crucially, Great Britain have the hammer in the 10th end.

Great Britain 3-3 Japan: The tit-for-tat continues with Japan taking a point. Great Britain have the hammer going into the ninth end. They’ll probably be happy to blank this one and take the hammer into the 10th end. The match is entering its knockings and we’ve yet to see either team score more than a one.

View image in fullscreen

Great Britain 3-2 Japan: A wonderful final shot from Eve Muirhead leaves Satsuki Fujisawa with a tough task to knock her stone out of the house. The Japanese skip does exactly that to blank the end. Her team is behind but has the hammer in the eighth end. Fujisawa is beaming - they seem very happy with life, these Japanese curlers. If smiling was a winter Olympic sport, they’d be top of the podium.

Nana Takagi (Japan) takes speed skating gold: It’s gold for Japan in the women’s mass start final, with Nana Takagi finishing ahead of South Korea’s Kim Bo-Reum. Irene Schouten of the Netherlands has finished in third place.

View image in fullscreen

Great Britain 3-2 Japan: The sixth end finishes a blank, with Japan retaining the hammer for the seventh. Can they take a two?

Great Britain 3-2 Japan: This is attritional, tight, bad, very boring curling. If Jose Mourinho was a team skip, this is the kind of curling he would play. The teams continue to exchange ones, but Eve Muirhead can consider herself unlucky not to have bagged herself that elusive two in the fifth end. The players will now have a short break in this women’s curling bronze medal match.

Great Britain 2-2 Japan: This game has yet to spark into anything approaching life. Team GB had a stone in the button, but a good throw from Japan’s Satsuki nudged it out. The end finishes with four stones very close together, but Japan taking a point. Sample dialogue from the fourth end: “Line’s good, guys! Line’s good! It needs to curl! Line’s good! GO! GO! GO! GO! GO! GO! GO! GO! GO! GO! GO! It NEEDS TO CURL!!! HARD!!!”

Great Britain 2-1 Japan: Eve Muirhead attempts to blank the end with the last throw, but leaves her stone in the house while knocking out Japan’s. Muirhead is displeased, as she wanted to go for a two in the next end.

View image in fullscreen

Great Britain 1-1 Japan: It’s all square after two quiet ends, with Japan taking one in the second. It remains very quiet in the arena, which makes it easy to hear the conversations between the various participants.

Great Britain 1-0 Japan: In an eerily quiet and only half-full Gangneung Hockey Centre, Great Britain get off to a decent start. They’ve taken the lead with one of the 10 ends gone.

Play is underway in the women’s curling bronze medal match between Great Britain and Japan. Both teams are on the sheet and end one is in its infancy.

Russian bobsledder Nadezhda Sergeeva has admitted an anti-doping violation and has been disqualified from the Winter Olympics, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has said.

As the International Olympic Committee (IOC) were meeting to discuss Russia’s possible Olympic reinstatement, CAS said in a statement that Sergeeva had tested positive in an out-of-competition test for the banned heart condition product trimetazidine two days before her race. Sergeeva finished 12th with Anastasia Kocherzhova in the women’s bobsleigh competition in Pyeongchang on Wednesday.

“The athlete has admitted the anti-doping rule violation; she is disqualified from the women’s bobsleigh event,” it said. “The results obtained by the team at the same event are disqualified with all resulting consequences; the athlete is excluded from Pyeongchang 2018; her accreditation shall be withdrawn. These proceedings shall continue before the CAS between the IBSF (International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation) and the athlete after the end of the Games; the IOC is no longer a party to this procedure. - Reuters.

The Great Britain women’s curling team will do battle with Japan in the bronze medal match at 11.05am GMT. Eve Muirhead and her team were beaten in the semi-final by Sweden yesterday, but must rouse themselves for this third place play-off. While Billy Morgan’s bronze medal in the men’s Big Air means Britain have reached their medal target of five, as my colleague Sean Ingle pointed out yesterday, Team Muirhead need to beat Japan “to avoid searching questions about their £5.6m funding from UK Sport”. You can read Slalom Seanie’s report on that semi-final below ...

This is a huge win for the USA curling team: There’ll be a Cool Runnings or Dodgeball style plucky underdog movie made about these guys some day. Four-time Olympian John Shuster and his team of US curling rejects have prevailed in the most unlikely of circumstances. The former bartender came ninth at Sochi and was thrown off his country’s performance training programme (one he thought he’d be running) and so assembled a team of his own: Tyler George, John Landsteiner and Matt Hamilton, who gloried as a sort of self-styled Team Rejects before winning the 2015 national championships and coming fifth in the worlds. It was at this point that USA Curling saw the error of their ways and welcomed them back into the fold. It is the ultimate feel-good underdog story ...

View image in fullscreen

There are handshakes all around as the USA take a thoroughly deserved win the men’s curling. They beat Sweden 10-7 to take gold, with Switzerland taking the bronze. The American team’s No1 an will be pleased.

Men’s curling: Sweden pull two points back in the penultimate end to make it USA 10-7 Sweden with just one end to go. It being a gold medal match, the Swedish team opt not to concede the match, but nothing short of a miracle will get them out of jail here.

Incredible scenes at the curling! The USA have just taken five points (five!) from the eighth end. That is a massive score. The USA had the hammer, Nicklas Edin left a double and John Shuster, in his fourth Olympic games, made no mistake. USA lead 10-5 with two ends to go. There’s no chance of them losing from here ...

Lee Sang-ho became the first South Korean to win a snowboarding medal when he claimed silver in the parallel giant slalom. Despite never having won a World Cup event, the 22-year-old, who is ranked 10th in the world, was regarded as the host nation’s best medal hope in the freestyle skiing and snowboarding events, albeit a slim one.

With thousands of fans packing the stands at Phoenix Snow Park, many of them waving South Korean flags, Lee admitted he had felt the pressure. “Before I started competition I was quite nervous because this is my first Olympic Games and I also wanted a good result to return the gratitude and thanks that I owe to the people who have supported me,” he told reporters.

If Lee was nervous, he did not show it as he moved through the heats before edging past Slovenia’s Jan Kosir and reaching the final. With Lee guaranteed a medal, the home crowd went wild, spurring him on in the final against Switzerland’s Nevin Galmarini, who won by 0.43 seconds.

“It is great honour to be the first Korean medallist in snowboarding,” said Lee.
“I wish that with this medal then it could create an opportunity for the Korean government and people to support Alpine snowboarding so we can have more competitive snowboarders in the future.” - Reuters

View image in fullscreen

Curling: It’s all square with the score at 5-5 with three ends to go in the gold medal match between USA and Sweden. Swedish skip is not playing well and is looking fairly fed up with life, but he rescues a point for his side with the final throw of the end. There are three left and USA have the hammer in end eight.

Good day, everybody. Loud is the whooping and a hollering from the curling arena, where Sweden and America are contesting the men’s gold medal match. It’s 5-4 to the USA and we’re in End 7. In the sixth, Swedish skip Niklas Edin had a poor penultimate throw, looking gutted as he left an AMerican stone in the house. For the Americans, John Shuster scored two to put his side back in the lead.

View image in fullscreen

What’s happened

• Ester Ledecka has made history by winning gold in two sports - the Alpine super-G and the Parallel giant slalom. Arguably the story of the Games.
• Billy Morgan takes bronze in the men’s Big air to lift Britain’s medal tally to five - the highest in a single Winter Games in the country’s history. Sebastien Toutant of Canada takes gold.
• Switzerland’s Nevin Galmarini wins gold in the men’s Parallel giant slalom, pipping South Korea’s Lee Sangho.
• It’s been a good day for the Swiss all round - with gold in the Alpine team event too.
• Finland’s Iivo Niskanen puts in a marathon effort to win the 50km cross-country ski.
• Both of Britain’s four-man bobsleigh teams are out of medal contention after the initial runs.

What’s coming up

All times are local – Pyeongchang is GMT +9, EST +14, AEDT -2, but our fancy schedule will tell you the times wherever you are, should those timezones not apply.

• The men’s Curling clash for gold between Sweden and the US is taking place as we speak. It’s a tight one too.
• There’s more Curling medal action at 20:05 when the British women battle Japan for bronze. Billy Morgan’s bronze in the big air at least means the pressure is off the curlers to set the British medal tally record.
• There’s another battle for bronze at 21:10 when the Czech Republic and Canada duke it out in the men’s Ice hockey.
• At 20:00 the women kick off a couple of hours of Speed skating action for both sexes in the first semi-final of the night. The women’s final starts at 21:30 with the men’s final rounding out the night at 22:00.

That’s me done for the night. My colleague Barry Glendenning will see you through the rest of the action.