Olympics gold medal count: Norway leads

On the first day when Olympic medals were awarded, Norway led the gold medal count, and took home medals in the women's skiathlon, the men's biathlon, and slopestyle snowboarding.

|
Rich Clabaugh/The Christian Science Monitor
Top Olympic medal winners as of Sun. Feb. 9.

Forget the Sochi toilets and unfinished hotels. It's time to focus on the Olympic games.

The Sochi Olympics gold medal count began Saturday with Norway taking the lead with four of the first 98 medals to be awarded.

Norway brought home two gold medals, one in the women's skiathlon (cross-counry skiing) and one in the men's biathlon.

Norwegian biathlete Ole Einar Bjoerndalen became the oldest individual gold medalist at the Winter Olympics, winning the 10-kilometer sprint — his seventh career gold. And Marit Bjoergen,captured the women's 15-kilometer skiathlon for her fourth Olympic title.

Norway also captured a bronze medal in the women's cross-country race, and a silver in slopestyle snowboarding.

Canadian sisters Jusine and Chloe Dufour-Lapointe took the gold and silver in the freestyle moguls competition, edging out US favorite Hannah Kearney. But over on the slopestyle course, it was Canadian Mark McMorris who was disappointed to take home a bronze.

The Netherlands finished the day tied with Canada in the medal count. The Dutch got three medals by sweeping s the 5,000-meter speedskating competition.

Sven Kramer set an Olympic record in bring home the gold. Kramer has been bedeviled at the Olympics, notably in Vancouver when his coach pointed him to the wrong lane in the 10,000. But on this day he surged around the oval, winning in 6 minutes, 10.76 seconds and leading a Dutch sweep in which he was followed by Jan Blokhuijsen and Jorrit Bergsma.

The United States took two medals, a gold in the slopestyle snowboarding (a new Olympic event) and a bronze in women's freestyle moguls.

Sage Kotsenburg, who grew up in Park City, Utah, was the surprise medalist, upsetting the Canadian favorites of Max Parrot and Mark McMorris, who was nursing a broken rib.

American Hannah Kearney took home a bronze, but came up short in her bid to become the first woman to get back-to-back gold in 22-year history of Olympic moguls.

Austria took home a single medal Saturday, in the biathlon. Sweden finished second in the women's skiathlon. And the Czech Republic took home the bronze in the biathlon.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this article.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Olympics gold medal count: Norway leads
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Olympics/2014/0208/Olympics-gold-medal-count-Norway-leads
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe