Olympics Day 7 Wrapup

In a week chock full of excitement in Vancouver, today added to the excitement. Norway finally came through and won both biathlon gold medals today after struggling to win a medal in the early events. The Americans surprisingly failed to take home a gold due to a crash by Lindsey Vonn in the slalom portion of the combined and Torah Bright winning the halfpipe event for Australia. Canada got their third gold medal today thanks to Christine Nesbitt in the 1000 meter speed skating race. Also, some of the smaller nations took home medals like Australia along with Belarus and Kazakhstan.
The biathlon finally went Norway's way and gave a gold to Tora Berger in the women's 15k individual start and Emil Hegle Svendsen in the men's 20k individual start. Also adding to the medal count was legend Ole Einar Bjoerndalen who took the bronze in the men's event.
The big story, at least for the small nations of Belarus and Kazakhstan, was that the other medalists gave their country a reason to party all night. Kazakhstan's Elena Khrustaleva won silver in the women's biathlon event and Belarus took two medals in biathlon thanks to Darya Domracheva with a bronze and Sergey Novikov who took home a silver.
In the women's super combined, Lindsey Vonn looked set for another gold after finishing first in the downhill but by crashing in the slalom, she left her medal hopes for today on the slopes. However, all was not lost for the USA because Julia Mancuso continued her great skiing form and won her second silver medal of the Vancouver games. Germany's Maria Riesch won the slalom portion of the event and it was enough to slide by Mancuso. Taking the bronze was Anja Paerson of Sweden.
In speed skating, Christine Nesbitt was all but a lock to win the women's 1000 meters and she did. Giving Canada its third gold of the games, Nesbitt bested two Dutch women, Annetter Gerritsen and Laurine van Riessen, who took silver and bronze to give the home crowd something worth cheering for.
A surprise occurred in the women's halfpipe event, Torah Bright of Australia beat out the strong American contingent of snowboarders. Gretchen Bleiler failed to complete her runs and Elena Hight did not make the podium but Hannah Teter and Kelly Clark did. Teter took the silver and Clark the bronze as the Americans added to their snowboarding collection of medals making it their fourth and fifth in the sport.
In figure skating, the race for gold in the men's event was within a point's reach for three skaters, Evgeni Plushenko, Evan Lysacek, and Daisuke Takahashi. Lysacek was the first to go in the last group in the free skate, he took the lead and after the last skater, Plushenko's scores were posted, Lysacek was still on top. Lysacek now has a gold to match his girlfriend Nastia Liukin's gold from Beijing. Pluschenko finished a whole point behind Lysacek to take silver and Takahashi was almost ten points behind the top two but still was able to take bronze.
Today's Gold Medalists:
Tora Berger (Biathlon- Norway)
Emil Hegle Svendsen (Biathlon- Norway)
Maria Riesch (Alpine Skiing- Germany)
Christine Nesbitt (Speed Skating- Canada)
Torah Bright (Snowboarding- Australia)
Evan Lysacek (Figure Skating- USA)
Medal Count after Thursday:
USA- 18
Germany- 11
Norway- 8
Canada, France- 7
Korea, Austria- 5
Switzerland, China, Russia, Italy- 4
Sweden, Netherlands, Japan- 3
Australia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, Belarus- 2
Estonia, Finland, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Croatia, Slovenia- 1