Milan Cortina 2026: Team USA’s historic day at the Olympics

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🚨 Headlines

🇺🇸 Team USA’s historic day: For the first time ever at the Winter Olympics, Team USA won five medals in five different sports on the same day, capturing three silvers (curling, freeskiing, cross-country skiing) and two bronzes (luge, alpine skiing).

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🏈 SB ratings down slightly: This year’s Super Bowl averaged 124.9 million viewers, which was down from last year’s record number (127.7 million). But it did set a new high for peak viewership, with 137.8 million tuning in during the second quarter.

⚾️ Verlander comes home: Justin Verlander is returning to the Tigers on a one-year, $13 million deal, coming back for his 21st season to the team that drafted him all the way back in 2004.

🏀 All-Star replacements: Raptors forward Brandon Ingram (for Stephen Curry) and Rockets center Alperen Şengün (for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander) have been named as injury replacements for this weekend’s All-Star Game in Los Angeles.

⛳️ Woods to FSU: Rising high school senior Charlie Woods, son of Tiger, has committed to play golf at Florida State. The 17-year-old from The Benjamin School in Palm Beach, Florida, is the ninth-ranked golfer in the Class of 2027.

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🇺🇸 Snapshots: Yesterday in Milan

Tesero — Ben Ogden captured a historic silver in Tuesday’s sprint classic, becoming the first American man in 50 years to win an Olympic medal in cross country skiing. Bill Koch, a 1976 silver medalist, was the only other one to do so. And in a bit of kismet, Ogden grew up in the Bill Koch Youth Ski League and has skied with Koch, a fellow Vermonter.

As for the winner? That would be Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, who’s won two golds at these Games and seven in his career, just one shy of the record. With four events left, the 29-year-old is almost certain to leave Milan as the winningest Winter Olympian ever. Look at this speed!

Cortina d’Ampezzo — Mikaela Shiffrin’s Olympic struggles continued at the team combined, where she and Breezy Johnson finished one spot off the podium after an uncharacteristically poor slalom in which she placed 15th (of the 18 finishers). Americans Jackie Wiles and Paula Moltzan took bronze behind duos from Austria and Germany.

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Olympic yips? It’s hard to comprehend what we’re witnessing with Shiffrin, who remains an all-time great in her prime but just can’t seem to perform at the Olympics. She went 0-for-6 in Beijing and is now 0-for-1 in Milan, despite dominating the World Cup circuit in between. Shiffrin has two events left in Milan (slalom, giant slalom) to end her Olympic drought.

Milan — The U.S. wasn’t supposed to dominate Canada the way they did their other opponents, but they put the hammer down anyway in a 5-0 rout to clinch the No. 1 seed in the knockouts. Next up? Italy in the quarterfinals.

O no, Canada: The five-time gold medalists (in just seven tournaments) entered this game with a 37-3 record in the Olympics and had never been shutout. The Americans are just on another level at the moment… and have now won seven straight games against their rivals to the north.

Cortina d’Ampezzo — Ashley Farquharson rallied to claim bronze in singles luge, joining Erin Hamlin in 2014 as the only American women to medal in a sport that continues to be dominated by one country: Germany.

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Second to none: No country has won a higher percentage of the Winter Olympics medals in any one sport than Germany has in luge, with 89 of 163 all-time (55%). They’re even more dominant in women’s singles, having won 36 of 51 medals (71%) and 13 of 17 golds, including this year’s.

More highlights: Defending slopestyle gold medalist Alex Hall was dethroned but still took silver; curling duo Korey Dropkin and Cory Thiesse lost a heartbreaker to Sweden to take silver; Ilia Malinin landed another backflip in the short program and will enter Friday’s free skate final in first place.

We’ll be spotlighting America’s best athletes throughout the Games. Follow Team USA’s progress on their homepage, and for in-depth Olympics coverage, go to ours.

🥇 Medal table: Day 5

28 of 116 events completed. Full table.

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🏀 Big Number: 10 teams

Since 2002, all but one* NCAA men’s basketball champion ranked among the top 25 teams nationally in both offensive and defensive efficiency, per KenPom.

This year’s list: With just under five weeks until Selection Sunday, only 10 teams currently fit that criteria:

Notably absent: Miami (Ohio), the nation’s only remaining undefeated team, is nowhere near joining that group, with the 63rd-ranked offense and 146th-ranked defense.

*Odd man out: 2014 UConn was the only team to buck the trend. They finished the season with the 10th-best defense but just the 39th-best offense.

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🏈 NFL power rankings

The Super Bowl champion Seahawks sit atop our way-too-early 2026 power rankings as the offseason gets underway.

Looking ahead: Is Seattle on the brink of a dynasty? They have a strong roster with a fantastic coach, not many pending free agents, and the fifth-most projected cap space in the league. But they also just lost their offensive coordinator, and it’s never easy to climb back up the mountain.

📚 Good reads

🏀 Kelly Iko: Why the surging Hornets could be here to stay

The Hornets, who were a bleak 11-22 at the beginning of 2026, have turned the page rather quickly, winning 14 of 21 games since then. But it’s what they’ve been able to accomplish in the past couple weeks that is truly remarkable. Since Jan. 22, Charlotte is second in the league in point differential, scoring 121 points per 100 possessions, and is allowing just 108.8 points per 100 possessions — giving them the league’s No. 2 unit at both ends of the floor.

⚽️ Steven Goff: Meet Noahkai Banks, the teenage Bundesliga starter making his case for Mauricio Pochettino’s World Cup roster

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With the World Cup just four months away, much of coach Mauricio Pochettino’s U.S. roster has fallen into place. There is, however, an intriguing candidate without any senior international matches on his portfolio — a Hawaiian-born, German American teenager standing 6-foot-4 and starting at center back in the Bundesliga.

🥊 Sean Wheelock: The night Andre the Giant fought the real-life Rocky Balboa: Was it real or was it all show? An investigation

In a new Uncrowned series, combat sports television commentator, historian, officials trainer and regulator Sean Wheelock takes an in-depth and analytical look at infamous matches from MMA, boxing, pro wrestling, bare-knuckle, and the long and confused history of mixed-match fighting to determine whether controversial bouts were Shoots (legitimate competition) or Works (predetermined results).

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📺 Watchlist: Wednesday, Feb. 11

⛸️ Speed Skating, Men’s 1000m

American phenom Jordan Stolz, the world record holder in the 1000m, headlines the field for today’s speed skating final (12:30pm ET, NBC) as the 21-year-old Wisconsin native begins his quest for Olympic history.

4-for-4? This is the first of four events Stolz will compete in, and he’s favored in all of them. If he leaves Milan with four golds, he’d be second only to fellow American speed skater Eric Heiden, who won a record five golds at the 1980 Lake Placid Games.

🏒 Men’s Hockey

The first Olympic hockey tournament since 2014 to feature NHL players gets underway today, with Slovakia vs. Finland in the opener (10:40am, USA) and Italy vs. Sweden later in the day (3:10pm, Peacock).

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NHL representation: 147 NHL players are in Milan, including at least one from all 32 teams. The U.S., Canada and Sweden all have full 25-man rosters of NHL players and Finland is right behind them with 24. The rest: Czechia (11), Switzerland (10), Germany (7), Slovakia (7), Latvia (6), Denmark (6), France (1) and Italy (0).

⛸️ Figure Skating, Free Dance

The ice dance champions will be crowned today in Milan (1:15pm, USA), where three-time defending world champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates go for their second gold of these Games after helping the U.S. win the team event on Sunday.

Where it stands: Chock and Bates finished Monday’s rhythm dance segment in second place, just 0.46 points behind France’s Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron. They’ll need to make up that gap in today’s longer free dance routine.

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🎯 Biathlon, Women’s 15km Individual

Did you know: Biathlon is the only Winter Olympics sport in which the U.S. has never won a medal? Four American women will try to change that today (8:15am, Peacock), led by Michigan Tech grad Deedra Irwin, who finished seventh in Beijing.

How it works: Racers take five laps around a 3km cross-country skiing track, stopping four times to shoot targets with a rifle. The shooting sections, which alternate between standing and prone, each include five targets. Every missed target incurs a one-minute penalty.

🥇 Medal events

• ⛷️ Nordic Combined: Men’s Normal Hill (7:45am, Peacock)

• 🎿 Freeskiing: Women’s Moguls Final (8:15am, USA)

• 🛷 Luge: Men’s and Women’s Doubles (11am, USA)

Daily schedule.

More to watch:

• 🏀 NCAAW: No. 2 UCLA at No. 13 Michigan State (8pm, Peacock) … The Bruins’ 17-game winning streak is the third-longest in the nation behind UConn (41) and NDSU (20).

• 🏀 NBA: Knicks at 76ers (7:30pm, ESPN); Spurs at Warriors (10pm, ESPN) … Elite scorers Tyrese Maxey (28.8 ppg) and Jalen Brunson (27.4 ppg) go head-to-head in Philly.

• ⚽️ EPL: Manchester City vs. Fulham (2:30pm, Peacock) … City (15-5-5) are six points behind league-leading Arsenal (17-5-3) with one-third of the season left to play.

• 🏀 Unrivaled: 1-on-1 Tournament (7pm, truTV) … Kelsey Mitchell, Paige Bueckers, Allisha Gray and Breanna Stewart are the top seeds in the 32-player mid-season event.

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Got plans tonight? Gametime is the best place to score last-minute tickets to the events happening in your city. Get tickets now!

⚾️ MLB trivia

Justin Verlander is returning to the Tigers, where he was famously part of a 2014 pitching staff that had five past or future Cy Young winners.

Question: Who were the other four?

Hint: Their first initials are M, D, R, R.

Answer at the bottom.

⚾️ Yahoo Fantasy: Play ball

Yahoo Fantasy Baseball is back, and playing is easier and more fun than ever. Get your crew together and launch a league today.

New features:

• Upgraded Commissioner Tools: Everything you need to manage your draft and your league is now all in the app, all in one place.

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Create or join a league.

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Trivia answer: Max Scherzer, David Price, Rick Porcello, Robbie Ray

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