Beijing Olympics photos: Team USA’s slopestyle win, hockey loss

Team Canada’s women curlers relegated team USA to a round robin against Japan in a thrilling 7-6 match on Day 12 at the Olympic Games in Beijing.

Slovakia’s male hockey team later upset the American men’s hockey team in a stunning 3-2 win after the U.S. blew a late lead.

The outcomes crushed any hope that the American women’s curling and men’s hockey teams would earn medals — the hockey team with its eliminating loss to Slovakia and the women’s curling team in a 10-7 loss to Japan in the round robin finale on Wednesday.

In the figure skating realm, the Bay Area’s Vincent Zhou emerged from quarantine after the Palo Alto native tested positive for COVID-19 as Kamila Valieva’s doping saga raised questions about the Olympics forgoing an age limit for competitors.

While Valieva’s age — 15-years-old — gives her extra rights as a “protected person” in a doping case, the International Olympic Committee’s Court of Arbitration for Sport decision to allow her to compete following a positive drug test presented a double standard to U.S. sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson.

Though Richardson was banned from competing at the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo for a positive marijuana test, the IOC rejected her counter narrative as a “superficial similarity.” Her ban was also enforced by the United States Anti-Doping Agency, while Valieva won an appeal to an equivalent Russian authority and her IOC case remains ongoing.

See these stories and more in our Day 12 gallery of the games.