2022 Beijing Winter Olympics: Winners and Losers of Week 1

While preliminary rounds in some events began earlier, a full week has elapsed since the opening ceremony officially kicked off the 2022 Beijing Games.

As we await the medal rounds to come, we're reviewing several of the most notable results so far. Among them, Team USA stars Chloe Kim and Nathan Chen have backed up their billing as gold-medal favorites. Mikaela Shiffrin, however, has opened the Winter Olympics with two disappointments.

That juxtaposition also ushers in a needed qualifier: These are elite, accomplished athletes. One competition, even at the Olympics, does not define a career or place anyone in a "loser" bucket forever. It's merely a reflection of one specific moment.

The list has a heavy Team USA emphasis and is focused on completed events at the Winter Olympics to date.

While they are different events, biathlon is cross-country skiing on steroids. That overlap is compounded by sharing a facility at the Winter Olympics, and Team USA has celebrated two historical finishes at Kuyangshu Nordic Center and Biathlon Center.

In the women's individual, Deedra Irwin finished seventh, the best individual result in Olympic history for an American biathlete. Irwin, who started competing in the sport only five years ago, had never finished higher than 55th in World Cup competition. It was truly an unexpected moment.

Cross-country skier Jessie Diggins, on the other hand, went to Beijing with relatively high expectations.

After winning the country's first-ever cross-country gold in the team sprint in Pyeongchang, Diggins became the first U.S. woman to win an individual medal. She landed bronze in the sprint.

Diggins continues to raise the bar for U.S. athletes in the sport, and Irwin has suddenly risen as the standard in hers, too.

Easy to say while at a computer, you know?

The Mikaela Shiffrin hype train went screaming into Beijing, and rightfully so. She'd earned gold medals at the last two Winter Olympics and is already one of the most prolific skiers in World Cup history.

Although she's expected to competed in all five events, two of her three best gold-medal opportunities were the slalom and giant slalom. Shiffrin, in an absolute stunning twist of fate, missed a gate on her opening run in both competitions.

The disappointment, very understandably, left her devastated.

"I had every intention to go full gas," Shiffrin said after skiing out for the second time. "This makes me second-guess, like, the last 15 years, everything I thought I knew about my own skiing, in slalom, and my own racing mentality."

Again, this is simply a reflection of two results—nothing more. They were, in her words, failures. But she's not done, either. Shiffrin ended ninth in Super-G and remains the gold-medal favorite in combined.

Be gone, Torino. Lindsey Jacobellis has a gold.

Sixteen years ago, she'd cruised away from the field and attempted to celebrate the second-to-last hill with a little style. Jacobellis fell, however, and a gold in snowboard cross turned to silver. She'd since finished fifth, seventh and fourth at the Olympics.

Gold or not, Jacobellis would've eventually retired as an undisputed icon. She's a five-time world champion in individual snowboard cross and earned gold at 10 Winter X Games.

But now, she's an Olympic champion.

France's Chloe Trespeuch pressured her to the very end, though Jacobellis led the entire time. And as she crossed the finish line, her Olympic story was no longer the cloud of what could've been in Torino; rather, it transformed into the joy of Beijing.

It must be awfully nice to hear this sentiment after your first of three attempts: "That's it, ladies and gentlemen. That run right there, that is guaranteed gold."

Chloe Kim left no room for doubt in women's halfpipe, putting up an untouchable 94.00 in the final. Spain's Queralt Castellet (90.25) and Japan's Sena Tomita (88.25) performed well, but they entered those runs knowing the unlikelihood of catching the U.S. star.

And as Kim secured her second straight gold in dominant fashion, American figure skater Nathan Chen won his first similarly.

During the short program, he posted a world-record score of 113.97. To seal the gold, Chen landed five quadruple jumps in an overpowering free skate and received a 218.63, nearly 17 points above Japan's Yuma Kagiyama, the silver medalist.

Kim and Chen entered as favorites. And their impeccable moments meant the competition basically had no chance to win.

You might want to find a chair for this one: Ryan Cochran-Siegle is the sixth Olympic athlete in his family.

He's the second medalist, too.

Back in 1972, Barbara Ann Cochran won gold in slalom at the Sapporo Games. Exactly 50 years later, her son earned a spot on the podium. Cochran-Siegle finished second to Austria's Matthias Mayer in the super-G, missing the gold by only 0.04 seconds.

"It's surreal," Cochran-Siegle said of joining his mother as an Olympic medalist. "I mean, I think it'd be hard to write a better story."

Cochran-Siegle, a two-time Olympian, also earned the top U.S. finish (14th) in the men's downhill.

What's an Olympics without some controversy?

Before the inaugural mixed team competition, five ski jumpers—all women, representing Germany, Austria, Japan and Norway—were disqualified for wearing loose-fitting suits. The most jarring part, though, is the suits had been cleared in earlier events.

"The [International Ski Federation] destroyed everything with this operation," Germany's Katharina Althaus said. "I think they have destroyed women's ski jumping. I don't know what they're trying to do."

Althaus had already won a silver in the individual competition, adding to her silver from Pyeongchang. "I have been checked so many times in 11 years of ski jumping," she said, "and I have never been disqualified once. I know my suit was compliant."

Slovenia won gold in the team event, one that's certain to be remembered for these debatable circumstances.

You want a dynasty? Look no further than luge, where you'll see Germany's black, red and gold flag adorning every podium.

Johannes Ludwig, the bronze medalist in Pyeongchang, won men's singles. Natalie Geisenberger took a third straight women's singles, and then Tobias Wendl and Tobias Arlt matched the streak in doubles. The quartet teamed up for a second straight relay gold, defeating Austria by a dramatic .080 seconds.

Beyond the gold-medal sweep, Germany added two silvers with Anna Berreiter and men's duo Toni Eggert and Sascha Benecken.

Germany has accounted for 11 of the 12 gold medals in luge since the 2014 Winter Olympics. Just an absolute powerhouse.

If you ignored our suggestion and looked beyond luge for a dynasty, you probably landed on Dutch speedskating.

Not since 1994 has the Netherlands' long-track contingent done anything but earn the most Winter Olympics medals. Most impressively, the Dutch won eight of the 12 golds in 2014, seven of the 14 in 2018 and have skated to four of the opening five in Beijing.

And they're rewriting history in 2022.

Ireen Wust (women's 1,500-meter), Kjeld Nuis (men's 1,500) and Irene Schouten (women's 3,000 and 5,000) each set Olympic records in their respective events.

Not to be outdone, Sweden's Nils van der Poel also broke an Olympic mark in the 5,000-meter race. In total, then, the first handful of events all included a new record.