Team USA is on the board in Beijing.   
Julia Marino captured the first medal for the United States at these Winter Olympics on Sunday with a silver finish in the women’s snowboarding slopestyle event. 
Gold went to 20-year-old Zoi Sadowski-Synnott, who overtook Marino with an epic final run to capture the first-ever gold for New Zealand at the Winter Olympics. 
“It’s kind of exactly what this sport needed,” Marino said of Sunday’s finals. “We all kind of put down our best tricks linked together in a slope run, which isn’t easy to do at all. I just think it’s insanely huge for the progression of women’s snowboarding, because we’re just learning day by day what we’re capable of. And we’re capable of a lot.”
The youthful top three – Marino is the oldest at 24 and bronze finisher Tess Coady of Australia is 21 – marked an end to American star Jamie Anderson‘s time on the Olympic podium. But the 31-year-old who won gold in slopestyle in 2014 and 2018 hardly seemed shattered by this passing-of-the-torch moment after finishing ninth. 
“I feel so happy for Jules. She laced her run and I know she really needed this,” Anderson said. “I’m really happy for Zoi and Tess and just to see how far snowboarding has come for the girls. Even if I was a little bit of the inspiration for some of the younger girls, I feel so proud and so grateful.”
On the men’s side, three Americans advanced to Monday’s finals on the “really hard” course.    
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Here are some of the other notable things you missed Sunday in Beijing while you were sleeping: 
The United States is guaranteed a medal in the figure skating team competition. That’s good! But the chance at gold likely slipped out of Team USA’s hands after Karen Chen and Vincent Zhou submitted lackluster performances on Sunday. That’s less good. 
“It wasn’t terrible, there were some good things, there were some bad things,” Zhou said after his long program, which saw him hit only two of his five planned quadruple jumps. “It definitely wasn’t a lights-out skate obviously, but it wasn’t a disaster either. I’m better trained than that, than to let a disaster happen.”
When the competition ends Monday, the Americans will be left thinking about what might have been, Christine Brennan writes. 
“You can’t control the wind.”
Truer words have never been spoken. 
High winds – always a danger with Alpine skiing – postponed the men’s downhill race Sunday. It will now be held Monday. 
The competitors, though, seem happy with the move – especially given this is a fairly common occurrence in their sport. 
“We want the race to be fair. We want the best ski racer to be able to win on race day. I’m glad the organizing committee recognizes that,” American Ryan Cochran-Siegle said. 
“The wind is definitely a challenge, and I don’t think it’s going to completely go away,” he added. “But there will hopefully be a better opportunity than there was today. I can definitely respect the decision that was made.” 

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