Alpine skiing
Defending champion Janica Kostelic, who missed the downhill because of illness, positioned herself for a gold medal showdown with rival Anja Paerson in the Olympic Alpine combined event — only to say she might be too sick to start Saturday’s downhill portion.

American Lindsey Kildow endured another painful fall, though this time she was able to walk away.

Skiing on a flood-lit slope, Kostelic had the second-fastest time over two runs. Paerson, the two-time defending World Cup champion from Sweden, was fourth.

The combined includes two parts: Two evening slalom legs and one downhill run.

In the downhill Kostelic and Paerson are far better than the current leader, slalom specialist Marlies Schild of Austria, who finished at 1:21.22. Kostelic was .46 seconds behind Schild, Paerson .84 back.

Following an hour-plus delay, organizers had to postpone the downhill one day after the first skier down was caught by a wind gust on a jump and skidded on her back.

Flipping the order of an Olympic combined to the slalom before the downhill happened once before, in the men’s event at the storm-tossed 1998 Nagano Games.

Cross-country skiing
Andrus Veerpalu defended his Olympic 15km classical title to give Estonia its third gold medal of the Turin Games — all in cross-country.

Veerpalu finished in 38 minutes, 1.3 seconds to beat silver medalist Lukas Bauer of the Czech Republic by 14.5 seconds. Germany’s Tobias Angerer won his first individual Olympic medal by taking the bronze, 19.2 seconds back in a race skied in fresh snow.

Veerpalu’s countrywoman Kristina Smigun has won two golds at these games.

Ski jumping
Austria’s Thomas Morgenstern had superior style to edge Finland’s Janne Ahonen in qualifying for Saturday’s large hill ski jumping event.

Morgenstern and Ahonen both had jumps of 136 meters on the large hill, but Morgenstern’s better form earned him 136.8 points to Ahonen’s 136.3.

Austria’s Andreas Kofler was third with 133.8 points after a leap of 133.5 meters.

Curling
The U.S. men are rolling in the first round of the Olympics.

The Americans (4-2) beat Switzerland (3-3) and moved into a second-place tie in the curling round-robin tournament.

Canada and Finland are also 4-2. Britain (5-1) took sole possession of first place with a win over Sweden (3-4).

Italy and Norway are 3-3, and Germany is 1-4. New Zealand (0-6) remained winless.

In women's action, the U.S. women’s curling team lost in extra ends to Russia, ending any real chance of reaching the medal round.

In other games, Sweden (5-1) beat Switzerland (4-2) and Canada (4-2) beat Britain (3-2) in nine ends. Norway (4-2) beat Italy (1-4) in 11 ends, or innings.

Denmark (2-3) and Japan (1-3) were idle.

The Americans (1-5) fell behind 6-2, but rallied.

Down 7-4 in the ninth, Cassie Johnson cleared out the house to retain the hammer for the 10th and final end of regulation. And when the Russians (2-3) couldn’t knock an American rock out of the scoring zone with their last throw, Johnson just needed to knock one yellow stone away and leave hers on target to get the three points needed to force an extra end.

With the 73-minute game clock down to just 8 seconds, she converted the shot and went to overtime.

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