Pinheiro Braathen is not just the first South American Winter Olympic medalist, but the first Winter Olympic medalist representing any Latin American country. Previously, none of the first 22 nations mentioned by Bad Bunny in the Super Bowl halftime show had won Winter medals.

I wonder how long it took for the first Brazilian to start making fun of Argentinians for actually having multiple ski slopes in the country and never producing an Olympic medalist. I’m guessing 11 minutes.

Pinheiro Braathen is Norwegian-Brazilian — he was born in Oslo to a Norwegian dad and a Brazilian mom, and after they divorced, he spent several years as a child in Campinas, a city an hour away from São Paulo. (So making the headline “ski-o de janeiro” was inaccurate but I did it anyway.) He grew up a little bit in both countries, obviously learning how to ski in Norway rather than Brazil, and began his career racing under the Norwegian flag.

However, he left the Norwegian ski team as part of a larger dispute over athletes’ publicity rights, and briefly retired from the sport in 2023 before coming back a few months later representing Brazil.

But he’s not like those guys in that video I just made about Winter Olympic athletes representing warm-weather countries they’re not even from. SHAMELESS PLUUUUUUUUG

Pinheiro Braathen passes any Brazilian credential tests you need — he’s become famous for doing the samba on the podium — although his girlfriend, Brazilian actress Isadora Cruz, told the Brazilian press that they had spent time this week practicing the lyrics of the national anthem. (He didn’t sing all the way through the song, but to be fair, I think he was just overcome with emotion.)

Brazil has had skiers in the Olympics before, but most, like Pinheiro Braathen, had unique life stories that largely took place outside of Brazil — 2006 closing ceremony flag-bearer Nikolai Hentsch was born in Switzerland; 2018/2022 competitor Michel Macedo moved to America at a young age; 2010/2014 competitor Maya Harrisson was adopted by Swiss parents.

Is Pinheiro Braathen going to spark a revolution in Brazilian skiing? Quite frankly, no. They don’t have mountains. They don’t have snow. For a Brazilian-born athlete to become an elite skier, they’d likely have to have massive financial resources allowing them to spend years at a time in countries with more alpine skiing resources.

But how many of us are skiers? How many of us are biathletes? How many of us have ever thrown our bodies 80 miles an hour down a bobsled track? And how many of us have celebrated our team winning a Winter Olympic medal?

Saturday, Brazil got the experience so many Americans have gotten for our entire lives — that sense of pride that someone wearing our flag won an event in a sport we’ve never played and don’t fully understand.

As long as it only snows in a handful of countries in the world, the Winter Olympics are always going to be weird and exclusive. By ditching the pipeline to be the One Millionth Norwegian Olympic medalist and instead becoming the first Brazilian one, Pinheiro Braathen made the Winter Games a little bit bigger, regardless of whether they start skiing down Sugarloaf Mountain.

Another win and another Olympic record for Jordan Stolz!

The dude is simply electric. In both of his races so far, Stolz has appeared to be on the ropes heading into the final stretch, only to fire into first place with an extra level his opponents didn’t have. You’ve gotta watch the 1,500.

Classic “incredible athlete who happens to be competing at the same time as the GOAT” scenario for de Boo. For the second straight race, he put up a time that would’ve broken the previous Olympic record…. and he wound up with two silvers because of Stolz.

Sweden was heavily expected to win gold here after winning gold and silver in the first three cross-country events of the Olympics. (Honestly, makes our girl Jessie Diggins sneaking up on the podium for bronze even more impressive.)

Then, tragedy. On the second leg, Ebba Anderson crashed twice, and on the second one, she fell head over heels and her ski shattered upon impact with the ground. After some failed attempts to re-attach the ski, she had to scoot around the course on one ski.

Then, comedy. The coach trying to bring Andersson a backup ski also fell, and the broadcast captured his tumble in dramatic slow-motion.

There were so many shots of Sweden’s fans and teammates facepalming:

Andersson said “it was mostly just crisis and panic running through my head,” which you can kinda tell rewatching the incident. Have you ever been scrambling in a hurry after realizing you’re late for something and you finally get out the door and you realize that you’re firmly grasping 2-3 items which you don’t need at all, like your toothbrush and a fork? That’s what Andersson looked like. For some reason she decided it was her responsibility to carry her broken ski around the rest of the course.

The incident cost Sweden well over a minute, as they tumbled from second to eighth place.

But guess what?

They won silver anyway.

The Swedes are disappointed that they won’t make history and pull off the sweep, but they shouldn’t be. Everybody on this team has now won multiple medals at these Olympics. And the fact that they overcame such a massive mishap to still beat basically everybody is actually even more proof of their dominance.

OK hold up: Credit card fraud scandal aside, why is France so good at biathlon? They have five all-time cross-country ski medals and seven biathlon medals at these Olympics alone. And biathlon is mainly cross-country skiing! I’m baffled.

I was nervous for Flock, who who led after three heats in 2018 but bombed her final run and finished in fourth. But she actually extended her lead on her fourth and final run to finally win gold.

Well-deserved for Anthony, who was dominant for years in moguls and missed out on a medal the other day after taking a single bad turn in the final round.

She’s the first Australian with multiple Winter Olympic gold medals. Australia now up to three gold medals at the Winter Olympics.

On the one hand, cool that we have an event to make up for that mess-up. On the other … the three medalists from the regular moguls all made the semifinals and Kauf and Lemley both got their second Olympic medals of these games. I remain unconvinced this event is sufficiently different from Regular Moguls that we need to have both in the Olympics.

Another gold for van ‘t Wout, and the Netherlands has now won all three individual short-track races of the Olympics.

I’ve now received two explanations that I like for why the Netherlands has gotten worse at long-track skating and better at short-track skating at the same time:

One is that the skaters are cyclists now. Women’s cycling has become a sport that pays decently, the physical attributes required are pretty similar to speed skating, and Dutch women dominate the pro scene. Demi Vollering, the 2023 Tour de France winner, was a speed skater at the start of her career who transitioned to cycling.

But perhaps the more compelling one is the impact of climate change. The Dutch obsession with speed skating stems from the annual tradition of skating on the nation’s many canals when they freeze over in winter, and that doesn’t happen anymore. It hasn’t been cold enough for them to hold the famous Elfstedentocht competition across the canals of Friesland since 1997. (More like didn’tfreezeland, amirite?) So the skaters who grew up skating in long straight lines on frozen canals are instead training indoors on ice rinks that more resemble the short track.

The men’s ski jumping at the Olympics is over, and it’s official: The Norwegian dudes who won world championships by sewing crotch parachutes onto their suits sucked.

Johann André Forfang, who won gold in this event in 2018 and fourth in last year’s large hill world championship before being disqualified, finished 9th on the normal hill and 12th in this event;

Marius Lindvik, who won gold in this event in 2022 and took silver in last year’s large hill world championship before being disqualified for the crotch parachute, finished 12th in the normal hill and didn’t even qualify for the final round of this event, eliminated after finishing 32nd in the first jump.

So we have official proof: the Norwegians were just crotch parachute merchants.

Prevc dominates as expected — and apparently there’s a good reason why I inaccurately projected him to win the normal hill… nobody ever jumps on the normal hill anymore! Only one of the 20 World Cup events so far this season was on a “normal hill,” and Prevc’s 11 wins this season were all on the large hill.

SO WHY DO THEY STILL CALL IT THE NORMAL HILL?!?!?!?!?!

🍆👍Our long international Olympic sex nightmare is over. Early reports indicated the Olympic village ran out of condoms after just three days, as the organizers had only provided 4 condoms per athlete (as opposed to the Paris games, which opted for a 30-to-1 ratio.) But reinforcements are on their way. A spokesperson said the condoms were “temporarily depleted due to higher-than-anticipated demand” and that “additional supplies are being delivered and will be distributed … They will be continuously replenished until the end of the Games to ensure continued availability”

📉📈 As a famous fan of tiebreakers, I loved the end of the men’s hockey game between Sweden and Slovakia. The Swedes won 5-3 … but a last-minute goal by Slovakia gave them the advantage on goal differential and sent them through to the quarterfinals. You’ve never seen players happier after a loss. (Sweden’s not eliminated, but they’ll have to play an extra game in the playoff round.)

🥌👈 Canada’s women’s team was accused of the same double-touching violation that sparked Friday’s curling beef. Canada’s Rachel Homan also said she’d "never done it in her life”, aaaaaaand there was also video evidence that she did it. This time, however, officials stepped in and removed the rock. Homan is the back-to-back World Champion, but she’s lost three games in a row and might miss the playoffs.

🧱🛑 New favorite performance of the Olympics: Switzerland’s Andrea Brändli saving all 40 shots she faced in a 1-0 quarterfinal win over Finland. The Swiss only had 14 shots, but will move on to play against Canada in the semis, where. Brändli might need to make 100 saves on 100 shots in that one.

/🏒🏥 Switzerland’s Kevin Fiala suffered an injury that will end his NHL season. It’s a big injury for the tournament — Fiala had been a phenomenal performer in international play, powering Switzerland to multiple unexpected medals at the World Championships. But he’s also is second on the Los Angeles Kings in scoring and they were surely banking on him to be a critical part of their playoff push after the Olympics. It’s exactly this sort of thing that has made NHL owners so hesitant to let players play in the Olympics — just getting out ahead of this and saying IT’S STILL GOOD FOR THE SPORT OF HOCKEY THAT THEY LET NHL PLAYERS DO OLYMPIC HOCKEY EVEN IF THEY GET HURT SOMETIMES

If it’s anything like the women’s dual moguls, this is a chance for redemption for Canada’s Mikaël Kingsbury. Kingsbury tied for first place in the regular moguls but only got silver due to a tiebreak.

And as the best moguls guy in the world, Kingsbury is also the best dual moguls guy in the world. He’s the four-time World Champion including back-to-back-to-back-to-back wins.

Still not sure why we need moguls and dual moguls.

NEW OLYMPIC EVENT!

This is the first time women have jumped off the large hill at the Olympics. Once again, gender equality means weird sports for everybody.

Women weren’t allowed to do ski jumping at all at the Olympics until 2014, and when they finally got in, they weren’t allowed to do this specific event. Women still don’t compete in Nordic Combined, the sport which is half-cross country ski and half-ski jumping.

In 2005, international ski federation president Gian Franco Kasper said that ski jumping was “not appropriate for the ladies from a medical point of view,” and up until recent years there was a somewhat recurring claim that ski jumping would damage the uterus or literally cause it to fall out of women’s bodies.

It doesn’t, btw. Women started doing world championships in the large hill in 2021 and they don’t have to clear the hill of stray uteri every few minutes.

The favorite is, once again, Slovenia’s Nika Prevc, the silver medalist on the normal hill a few days ago. She’s even better on the large hill, though — she won the last World Championship by 15 points, which is a lot.

OK, quick explainer on how these pursuit races work: The starting times are the same as the finishing times from the sprint races that have been held over the past two days.

So in the men’s event, France’s Quentin Fillon Maillet, who won the gold medal by 14 seconds on Friday, will start 14 seconds before the silver medalist, who will then try to catch him.

And in the women’s event, Maren Kirkeeid, who won the gold medal in the sprint event by 3.8 seconds, will start 3.8 seconds before the silver medalist,

My personal take is that it’s a little messed up that two separate Olympic medal events are so closely linked — but apparently it doesn’t matter as much as I think it does. On the men’s side, the sprint gold medalist hasn’t doubled up with pursuit gold since 2002, despite the starting advantage.

Johannes Høsflot Klæbo goes for his fourth gold of the games!

This time, it’s a little bit out of his hands, as this is a team event. But…

… Norway has won the World Championship in this event four times in a row, and five of the top six finishers in the 10k race the other day were Norwegian. He’ll probably be fine.

I know, I said I’d stop saying stuff like that.

Mikaela Shiffrin is competing in this event and has won gold medals (2018) and world championships (2023) in the giant slalom … but I’m not expecting her to win. She hasn’t won any of her last 12 giant slalom races. If Shiffrin finishes off the podium here, we’re not freaking out about it the way we did about her poor slalom performance.

I’m picking Federica Brignone for double gold in her home Olympics — she’s a back-to-back medalist in this event and won the 2025 World Championship.

The American team of Mystique Ro and Austin Florian won last year’s World Championships in Lake Placid … but I think that might have been a “home course” thing. Neither finished in the top 10 of their individual races in Milan.

Although Sliding Sports Guy Ken Childs assures me the format of the mixed team event does give a bit of an edge to Team USA because they’re so good at starting.

Another nuts relay event where somebody at the bottom of the course finishes and somebody at the top starts. In case regular snowboard cross wasn’t chaotic enough.

Team USA won this event in 2022 with Nick Baumgartner and Lindsey Jacobellis, but didn’t have any competitors in the finals of the men’s and women’s events.

Erin Jackson is the defending gold medalist in this event ! My video from last week touches on the incredible circumstances that led to her winning gold after her

(That said, she’s had a down season in the 500m and I’d be pretty surprised with a medal.