Small margins decided gold medals at the Milan Cortina Olympics as Eileen Gu had to settle for another silver in defense of her big air ski freestyle title, and Elana Meyers Taylor of the U.S. finally won bobsled gold in her fifth Olympics.

Gu came to Italy to fight for gold medals in three freestyle ski events. She has two silvers and still has her best event, the halfpipe, to go.

After a long delay because of heavy snow, it was Canada’s Megan Oldham who soared to victory with a combined score of 180.75 to Gu’s 179.

It was still a remarkable performance from Gu, the San Francisco-born skier for China who hadn’t competed in big air in the four years since winning gold at the 2022 Olympics.

Wait over for Meyers Taylor

The 41-year-old American won that long-awaited gold medal by just four hundredths of a second in women’s monobob when the last competitor, Germany’s Laura Nolte, made a small-but-costly mistake on her final run.

Meyers Taylor’s sixth career medal extends her record as the most decorated Black athlete at the Winter Olympics. She’s also the oldest American woman to win gold at the Winter Games.

Rivals vie for women’s hockey gold

The U.S. and Canada will play for the gold medal Thursday after the U.S. routed Sweden, 5-0, and Canada struggled past Switzerland, 2-1, in Monday’s semifinal games.

U.S. goaltender Aerin Frankel preserved a shutout streak that now stands at 331 minutes. The U.S. team is unbeaten and has allowed just one goal all tournament as it seeks a first gold medal since 2018.

Captain Marie-Philip Poulin broke the all-time Olympic scoring record with two goals in an unusually narrow win for Canada.

World record for Japan

Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara needed something special after placing fifth in the pairs figure skating short program. They delivered.

Miura and Kihara produced a world record score in the free skate to win Japan’s first pairs gold.

Georgia got its first medal in any Winter Olympic sport with Anastasiia Metelkina and Luka Berulava in second. Short-program leaders Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin of Germany dropped to the bronze-medal position.

Other notes

• Xandra Velzeboer won her second gold medal of the Olympics in the women’s 1,000-meter short track speedskating to match her Dutch teammate, Jens van ‘t Wout, with two gold medals for the games. Italy’s Arianna Fontana was chasing what would have been her 14th career Olympic medal but placed fourth.

• Austria won the first Olympic gold in men’s super team ski jumping. The Austrians were leading when the competition was cut short due to heavy snow and wind.

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