Short track
Ohno led the Americans into the finals of the 5,000-meter relay and advanced in the 1,000 on Wednesday night, avoiding the sort of trouble that knocked him out of his first Olympic short track event.

Ohno and his teammates — Rusty Smith, J.P. Kepka and Alex Izykowski — beat China to the line to win their semifinal relay race. The top two teams were in comfortable positions after skaters from Japan and Italy collided with 21 laps to go, leaving them far behind.

Things didn’t go quite so well for Ohno’s girlfriend, Allison Baver. She finished third in the 500-meter semifinals and failed to make the medal race, settling for a spot in the consolation final.

Wang Meng gave China an expected gold medal in in that event, holding off Bulgaria’s Evgenia Radanova by about the length of a skate blade.

Luge
Mark Grimmette and Brian Martin crashed, ending their run for the gold in an unexpected tangle of arms, legs and tears.

Seeking the one medal that has eluded them, Grimmette and Martin wrecked on their first run, ending perhaps the final chase for the most decorated doubles luge team in U.S. history.

Austrian brothers Andreas and Wolfgang Linger won the gold in doubles, finishing the two-run event in 1 minute, 34.497 seconds. Germany’s Andre Florschuetz and Torsten Wustlich won the silver, and Italy got its second luge medal of the Turin Games as Gerhard Plankensteiner and Oswald Haselrieder took bronze.

Grimmette and Martin’s crash wasn’t the most serious of the day. The Ukrainian team of Oleg Zherebetskyy and Roman Yazvinskyy — the final duo of the first heat — smashed into an upper wall near the bottom and flipped, briefly sending the pair airborne.

The impact severed the front right runner of their sled, which had to be carried to the finish by one of their coaches. While Yazvinskyy’s head was immobilized and he was strapped to a backboard and loaded into an ambulance, Zherebetskyy collected himself on a barrier wall, his head in his hands.

Yazvinskyy was flown by helicopter to a hospital in Pinerolo with an unspecified head injury.

Men's curling
Italy shocked the United States and rocked the Olympic curling venue, earning a victory in the men’s opening round.

Italy is not a traditional curling power and is only in the tournament as host country.

But the Italians took an early 2-0 lead and broke a 4-4 tie with a point in the eighth end. They stole a point in the ninth despite having to give up the big advantage that comes with being last to throw.

American skip, or captain, Pete Fenson needed to knock one of his own rocks into the target zone and follow it in with another to even have a chance at forcing overtime. But as a hush came over the crowd, he could only put one rock into the target, and the U.S. conceded without Italy having to throw its last rock.

The United States dropped to 2-2 with Italy, Norway and Finland. Canada, Britain and Sweden are tied for first at 3-1, and Germany and Switzerland are 1-2. New Zealand (0-4) remained winless.

Women's curling
The U.S. women earned their first Olympic victory — they’ll need several more to dig out of the hole they fell into when they lost their first three games at the curling venue outside of Turin.

The Americans will probably need to win four — if not all — of the next five games to have a chance at the medal round. They are in last place in the round-robin; Norway is first at 3-1 with Canada, Britain, Sweden and Switzerland tied at 2-1.

Four teams make the medal round. Denmark fell to 1-2, tied with Italy, Japan and Russia.

Nordic combined
The Nordic combined will resume Thursday after the ski jumping portion was halted because of wind.

In a surprising move, officials decided to restart on Thursday in the second round of the jumping portion after earlier announcing both Wednesday’s rounds would be scrapped. That was bad news for reigning world champion Norway, a medal contender forced to pull out Tuesday because its athletes were ill. The Norwegians initially thought they might have a chance to get back on the start list.

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