Francesco Friedrich set course for his fourth Olympic bobsleigh gold on Saturday.
Before the decisive races on Sunday, he is three hundredths of a second ahead of his German teammate Johannes Lochner.
Friedrich's brakeman Thorsten Margis becomes the German flag bearer at the closing ceremony.
Freestyle skier Nico Porteous gives New Zealand its second gold medal in Winter Olympics history - and the first by a male athlete.
wind chaos
: The mixed team event for alpine ski racers is in danger of being cancelled.
Due to strong winds, the competition was initially postponed several times and finally removed from the agenda altogether.
It is now planned that the race on Sunday (2:00 a.m. CET in the FAZ live ticker for the Olympics, in ARD and on Eurosport) will be rescheduled.
However, it is unclear whether the wind will have calmed down by then and whether the weather conditions will allow a start.
It would be the last chance for the German alpine squad to win a medal and avoid the second zero in a row at the Winter Games.
The best results of the Alpines of the German Ski Association (DSV) at the games in China so far have been the fourth places of Lena Dürr in the slalom and Kira Weidle in the downhill.
In 2018 in Pyeongchang they had already received nothing.
Cross-country skiing shortened
: Due to strong winds and extreme cold, the traditional Olympic cross-country skiing race has been shortened over 50 kilometers.
At the Winter Games in China, the athletes should only run 30 kilometers this Saturday, the organizers announced about an hour before the planned start.
Instead of 2 p.m. local time (7 a.m. CET in the FAZ live ticker for the Olympics, on ARD and on Eurosport), the competition is now scheduled to start at 3 p.m. local time (8 a.m. CET).
From the German team, Friedrich Moch, Lucas Bögl, Florian Notz and Jonas Dobler have been nominated for the race in Zhangjiakou.
Temperatures there were around minus ten degrees, but felt much colder in the wind.
double leadership
: Francesco Friedrich is on course for his fourth Olympic bobsleigh gold.
With the fastest time in the second run, the double Olympic champion from Pyeongchang took the lead in the four-man bobsleigh rankings in Yanqing.
Before races three and four on Sunday (from 2.30 a.m. CET in the FAZ live ticker about the Olympics, on ARD and on Eurosport), the 31-year-old is three hundredths of a second ahead of Johannes Lochner.
In the first round, the man from Berchtesgaden had improved the track record previously set by two-man bobsleigh Olympic champion Friedrich and screwed the record to 58.13 seconds.
In the second run, Friedrich was 19 hundredths of a second faster than his German competitor.
Christoph Hafer, who only started the race with start number twelve, is fourth and within reach of the medals.
supporting role
: Bobsleigh pusher Thorsten Margis leads the remaining German Olympic team as flag bearer at the closing ceremony in Beijing.
This was announced by the German Olympic Sports Confederation.
The 32-year-old from Halle/Saale is part of pilot Francesco Friedrich's two-man and four-man bobsleigh.
Friedrich and Margis had already won the gold medal in two-man bobsleigh in Beijing.
"It's an incredible honor.
I'm now the first brakeman in Germany who's allowed to touch a flag, whether it's at the opening or closing ceremony," said the 32-year-old.
Margis' teammate Friedrich had the flag together with speed skater Claudia Pechstein, who competed in the women's mass start on Saturday (10 a.m. CET in the FAZ live ticker for the Olympics,
men's premiere
: Freestyle skier Nico Porteous has given New Zealand its second gold medal in Winter Olympics history.
The 20-year-old triumphed in Zhangjiakou's gigantic halfpipe ahead of longtime American dominator David Wise, who triumphed in Sochi in 2014 and Pyeongchang in 2018.
Bronze went to Alex Ferreira, also from the USA.
Porteous, who finished third at the games four years ago, becomes the first New Zealand freestyle skier to win two Olympic medals.
The competition was marked by strong winds, which led to many falls.
Porteous also managed only one flawless run – but he got 93.00 points for it.
At the start of the games, snowboarder Zoi Sadowski-Synnott won New Zealand's historic first winter gold in the slopestyle discipline.
Corona
: No new corona infections occurred at the Winter Olympics in Beijing.
The organizers reported on Saturday that no infected people were found on Friday either among those arriving or among Olympic participants in the isolated Olympic “bubble”.
67,000 tests were carried out.
As early as Thursday, only one arrival at Beijing Airport had tested positive.
A total of 436 infections have been identified since arrival at the Winter Games began on January 23.
Minimum age
: In the course of the Olympic doping scandal surrounding Kamila Valiyeva, the federal base manager Daniel Wende joined the demands for a minimum age in figure skating.
"The athletes would then actually be more responsible for what happens to them," he told the news magazine "Der Spiegel" (Saturday).
"This puppy protection in supposed doping cases like now will no longer exist.
On the other hand, you could get away from the higher-faster-farther principle with little girls.” The only 15-year-old Russian Olympic gold favorite Valiyeva was after the fuss about a positive doping test before the Beijing Games and the fight for her start finished fourth after mistakes in the freestyle.