The 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing came to a close on Sunday. And while the focus for the athletes shifts to the rest of the season, it’s worth revisiting what was a successful Games for many of the competitors with ties to Park City.
Freeskiing
Colby Stevenson, Marin Hamill and Alex Hall were part of a freestyle skiing team for the U.S. that brought home eight medals, the most of any country.
Stevenson won his first Olympic medal with a second-place finish in the men’s big air event. His first-ever podium finish in the discipline couldn’t have come at a better time. His silver medal also comes a few months shy of the six-year anniversary of a car accident that nearly ended his career.
Hall, who entered the Games as the reigning X Games gold medalist in big air, finished eighth in the event, but he saved his best skiing for slopestyle. Hall won the gold medal in the event with his first-run score of 90.01. Four years after finishing 16th in slopestyle as a teenager, he proved himself to be one of the best skiers in the world.
Hamill missed the big air finals after finishing 14th in qualifying. Her bid for a medal in slopestyle, meanwhile, ended after suffering an injury in a crash in qualifying. Hamill ended the qualifying round in seventh but couldn’t compete in the finals.
Moguls
Park City was represented in men’s moguls by teenagers Nick Page and Cole McDonald as well as three-time Olympian Bradley Wilson. Page led the four-man American contingent with a fifth-place finish, while McDonald came in 14th. Wilson, who announced that this season would be his last, missed out on the finals with a 25th-place finish.
“It all came down to this moment here, going up the lift, taking this run and seeing what happens, which was really cool,” Page said about his last run. “I definitely knew that’s where I wanted to be, so I kind of pictured myself in that scenario, so it was really cool to actually get there and see all that work pay off.”
Speedskating
Casey Dawson’s mad scramble to make it to Beijing in time to compete following his bout with COVID-19 weeks before the Games has been well documented, but he did his best to make it all worth it.
Dawson featured heavily for the U.S. squad in the team pursuit, which the Americans set a world record in before the Games. While the U.S. didn’t replicate that performance in Beijing, Dawson won’t come back to Park City empty-handed. After falling to the Russian Olympic Committee in the semifinals, the American team knocked off the Netherlands in the third-place race to secure the bronze medal.
Cross-country skiing
Rosie Brennan raced in all six cross-country events in Beijing and, despite finishing in the top six four times, could not secure her first-ever Olympic medal.
Brennan’s latest close call came on Saturday in the women’s 30-kilometer event, the final cross-country skiing event of the Games. She finished sixth and 5.4 seconds away from a medal. That came after a fourth-place finish in the sprint event, a fifth-place finish in the team sprint, and another sixth-place result in the 4×5-kilometer relay.
“I felt really good, but it was a frustrating race,” Brennan said about the 30-kilometer event in a U.S. Ski & Snowboard release. “I really wanted to bridge up that top group, but nobody was really interested in working with me, which is always hard. I really just had to do it on my own, and that was hard and I really paid the price at the end, and that was hard to swallow.”
Luge
Ashley Farquharson made her Olympic debut in Beijing and finished as the highest-ranking American slider in the women’s singles luge event.
Farquharson rebounded from a rough first run to post top-eight times in the next three runs to finish in 12th place overall. She also participated in the team relay as the women’s singles leg for the U.S. and had the fourth-fastest time among the female sliders in that event. The U.S. finished seventh.
Nordic combined
Jared Shumate and Stephen Schumann made the trip to Beijing on the Nordic combined team. Shumate was the second-best American in the normal hill/10-kilometer event in 19th, while Schumann finished 25th.
Shumate went on to finish as the highest-ranking American in the large hill/10-kilometer in 17th place as well as helping the U.S. come in sixth in the team event.
Aerials
Ashley Caldwell, Justin Schoenefeld and Christopher Lillis toppled host and favorite China in the mixed team aerials event to win gold. Caldwell, a four-time Olympian, earned her first Olympic medal, and Lillis earned the highest score of the finals with a 135 to help the Americans top the podium.