updated 8:54 p.m. ET Feb. 17, 2006

TURIN, Italy - Day 7 produced 24 emotional hours for residents of the Olympic Village in Turin. Here are some of the highlights, or lowlights depending on your nation of origin.

Hockey
The U.S. women’s hockey players gathered in a circle at center ice, raised their sticks and waved them to their fans in one sweeping arc over their heads.

It was a routine repeated game after game in these Olympics and before, but this time was different. You could see it in their eyes, red with tears and looking at anything but the giant group hug being staged by the exuberant, wiggling heap of yellow jerseys behind them.

The Americans had been beaten, and for the first time since women’s hockey went international in 1990, by someone besides Canada. The North American monopoly had been broken.

Sweden won in a shootout in the Olympic semifinals and will play Canada, a winner over Finland in the other semifinal, for the gold medal on Monday.

Slide show   Emotional Moments Feb. 26: See photos of athletes' highs and lows from Sunday.

Kim Martin stopped everything the Americans shot at her in the final 48:56 of regulation and overtime, finishing with 37 saves, and then turned away all four American attempts in a shootout.

Maria Rooth had both regulation scores in a 3½-minute span and the clinching shootout goal.

Russia beat Switzerland and Germany topped Italy in the placement round.

Snowboardcross

Lindsey Jacobellis of the United States celebrates her silver medal in snowboardcross, but not until she answered questions about the flamboyant move that caused her to stumble and lose the gold.

An Olympic celebration turned into a mountain-sized embarrassment for Lindsey Jacobellis.

Coasting to what should have been an easy victory, the American made a grab of her board on the second-to-last jump. It caused her to fall and while she scrambled to her feet, Switzerland’s Tanja Frieden sped past and became the first women’s champion in the strange and wild sport of Olympic snowboardcross.

Jacobellis won silver but should have had the gold. She was well, well ahead of Frieden, and the other two women in the four-rider final had fallen long before.

Dominique Maltais of Canada won the bronze.

Skeleton
Duff Gibson of Canada blazed to a gold medal in skeleton and teammate Jeff Pain slid to silver.

Gregor Staehli of Switzerland won the bronze.

The 39-year-old Gibson is the oldest individual gold medalist in Winter Olympics history. Norway’s Magnar Solberg was 35 when he won gold at the 1972 Sapporo Games in the 20km biathlon.

The troubled U.S. team, which came into the games red-faced thanks to a pile of pre-Turin embarrassment, is leaving with zero medals after winning three at the Salt Lake City Games in 2002.

The U.S. lost its coach to a sexual harassment scandal, qualified only one woman and had its top slider go down for using a hair-restoration product on the banned substances list. Then, American sliders Eric Bernotas (6th), Kevin Ellis (17th) and Chris Soule (25th) were non-factors in the 27-man field.

Figure skating
This was exactly why Italy’s favorite ice dancers came out of retirement.

Slide show   Pictures of the Day Check out Sunday's best Olympic images.

Barbara Fusar Poli and Maurizio Margaglio, back after three years off, wowed the crowd and the judges in the Olympic compulsory dance. With Italian flags waving throughout the packed arena, the 2002 bronze medalists waltzed their way back to the top — at least for now.

Their performance outdistanced American medal hopefuls Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto, who were a surprisingly low sixth heading into Sunday’s original dance. The free dance is Monday night.

Belbin and Agosto were just 1.42 points out of first place, hardly insurmountable at this point.

Second were world champions Tatiana Navka and Roman Kostomarov of Russia.

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