Nordic combined sprint
Felix Gottwald used a powerful sprint to rally to victory in the Nordic combined sprint Tuesday, giving Austria its record eighth gold medal of the Turin Games — a bright spot for a country caught in the middle of a doping scandal.

American Todd Lodwick was ninth and teammate Johnny Spillane was 10th.

Gottwald earned his second gold medal of these Olympics by making up a deficit of nearly a minute from the morning’s jumping portion of the event.

Gottwald’s winning time of 18 minutes, 29 seconds was 5.4 seconds ahead of silver medalist Magnus Moan of Norway. Germany’s Georg Hettich took the bronze after having the best jump earlier in the day.

Gottwald, a member of Austria’s winning foursome in the large hill team event, won his sixth Olympic medal.

Women's freestyle aerials
Emily Cook’s inspiring comeback story ended a day earlier than she’d hoped after another disappointing outing for the American freestyle team on the Olympic aerials course.

Both Cook and Jana Lindsey, the only other American entered, failed to qualify for Wednesday night’s finals. That left Jeret “Speedy” Peterson as the only one of six U.S. aerialists, men or women, to advance to the finals. The men’s medal round is Thursday.

Cook qualified for the 2002 Olympics, only to break both feet about a month before the games. Doctors said she’d never walk normally again, but she set out to prove them wrong and make another run at the Olympics.

She made it to Turin, but her first Olympic jump was a near disaster. She bent forward on the landing, nearly did the splits, then tumbled forward toward the bottom of the hill. She was ranked 22nd of 23 jumpers after the first round and even with a solid second jump, she only improved to 19th.

Lindsey finished 16th, four spots out of the last qualifying spot.

Aussie Jacqui Cooper set a world record with her qualifying score of 213.36 to cap off a comeback story every bit as amazing as Cook’s.

The 33-year-old Aussie had qualified for the 2002 Olympics, but broke her left kneecap and tore cartilage in a practice accident days before the qualifying round. In 1998 at the Nagano Games, Cooper crashed in the qualifying round and didn’t make the finals.

She was considered a long shot this time around, but debunked that theory, throwing and landing a triple-twisting jump on her first run — the toughest jump anyone tried all night.

That helped her break the record held by her teammate, Alisa Camplin, who scored a 207.31 at World Championships in 2003.

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