'Never give up': drama on day two at the Winter Olympics

Published on 11/02/2018 - 11:39

Several athletes turned misfortune into medals and there were one or two shocks on Day Two at Pyeongchang 2018.

Teenager Redmond Gerard wins the USA's first gold medal at the winter Games, while his snowboarding rival is also a medallist despite being laid up in hospital 11 months ago after a near-fatal crash.

Day two at Pyeongchang 2018 sees several competitors recover from early setbacks to earn success in South Korea - along with one or two shocks.

View our picture gallery here for a taste of the drama:

The main news

17-year-old snowboarder Redmond Gerard won the United States’ first gold medal in Pyeongchang, with a dramatic victory in the men’s slopestyle final. The teenager left it late – 10th out of 11 before the final run after failing in his first two, he produced a perfect move for the judges.
Canadians Max Parrot and Mark McMorris took silver and bronze. “Anything is possible”, tweeted the Olympics: less than a year ago McMorris suffered multiple injuries in a snowboarding crash.
They wore 7-6-5 on their respective bibs, but it was 1-2-3 for Norway as cross-country skiers Simen Hegstad Krueger, Martin Johnsrud Sundby and Hans Christer Holund grabbed all three medals in the 15km+15km skiathlon. Krueger’s gold came despite an early fall.
How many Olympic medals can Sven Kramer win? The Dutch speed skater now has four golds – and eight in total – winning the men’s 5,000m at a third successive Games.
There's a major shock in the luge: favourite Felix Loch from Germany blows it in the men's singles, to the delight of David Gleirscher who takes gold. The Austrian had never won a World Cup event.
A surprise too in the men's biathlon 10km sprint, with Arnd Peiffer ousting the favourites to win Germany's third gold medal.
France win their first gold of the Games, thanks to Perrine Laffont's triumph in the freestyle skiing women's moguls.
The USA came from behind to beat Finland 3-1 in the women's ice hockey. Canada later thrashed the Olympic Athletes from Russia (OAR) team 5-0.
The Olympics' flagship event, the men’s downhill, was postponed until Thursday because of high winds. Other events have been disrupted too and it's getting seriously cold in Pyeongchang.
Russian speed skater Semen Elistratov has dedicated his bronze medal in Saturday's 1500m short-track event to his banned compatriots, saying they'd been treated in a "hard and unfair way". Competing under the OAR banner, he now faces an IOC investigation for his comments.
Sunday sees medal events in the biathlon, cross-country skiing, freestyle skiing, the luge, snowboarding and speed skating.