Blue day

It's been an up-and-down start to the day for the US, but mostly it's a downer as we start counting down to the Closing Ceremony on Sunday.

The US showed a bit of surprise in cross country skiing this morning as Kikkan Randall in the women's sprint and Andy Newell (Shaftsbury, Vt.) and Chris Cook in the men's sprint advanced to the quarterfinals.

It's a fun event to watch, and a sport the US has never done that well in, save for Bill Koch.

You thought for a minute, that maybe a surprise medal was possible. But the dreams ended quickly in the later races as they were all eliminated. In the sprint format, a group of six racers go at once over a short course and the top two advance until you have the final field.

About the same time, Tyler Jewell of Sudbury, was going in the men's parallel giant slalom race of snowboarding. It isn't the strongest event for the US and Jewell had only one top 10 this year. He made it out of qualifying but lost his race by one-hundredth of a second and was eliminated in the first round.

He's still a great story, of how he even got here. Amalie Benjamin was on scene with the family (13 in all) and will have all the details in Thursday's Globe.

As for the alpine skiers, it was a bad first run for the US women in the slalom. They've got an afternoon run but a medal is pretty much out of the question. Kristina Koznick, trying to compete after hurting a knee in training, already has pulled out.

For what's coming up, we can look ahead to the US-Finland men's hockey game but pucks guru Kevin Paul Dupont doesn't have much hope for a US victory. Even if the Americans won, they would face Canada or Russia in the semis, so it would be a long stretch for a gold.

I guess we can start prepping for Sasha Cohen's night on Thursday but she skipped practice today and John Powers wouldn't be surprised if she skated a bit tense come the long program.