Riesch grabs second gold medal

Maria Riesch defied snow and fog to claim her second gold of the Games by taking the slalom title on Whistler Mountain.

Riesch, who also won gold in the super combined, led after the first leg and her second run clinched victory with a combined time of one minute, 42.89 seconds.

Austrian Marlies Schild claimed the silver medal, 0.43 second adrift, and the bronze went to the Czech Republic's Sarka Zahrobska, who was 1.01 seconds back.

Riesch, competing at her first Olympics having been sidelined by injury in Turin four years ago, coped best with the testing conditions.

"I have problems with bad slopes and hard tracks and today it just worked," she said.

"You shouldn't let it (the weather) influence you too much. You just have to go. Just try to do your best and the conditions are the second thing."

Riesch's gold meant Germany had claimed three of the five women's alpine skiing golds on offer with 20-year-old Viktoria Rebensburg taking gold in the giant slalom.

Riesch added: "I did not dare to think about a second gold and now the German alpine team has three golds. It is crazy."

Downhill gold medallist Lindsey Vonn's chances ended when she straddled a gate early in her first run.

Defending champion Anja Paerson was 20th after the first run but failed to finish her second trip down in what she said was "probably" her last Olympic race.

USA's men brushed Finland aside with ease to book their spot in Sunday's men's ice hockey final, beating them 6-1 at Canada Hockey Place.

Ryan Malone fired the USA ahead two minutes and four seconds into the first period and never looked back.

Zach Parise, Erik Johnson, Patrick Kane (2) and Paul Stastny made it 6-0 by the end of the first period.

Antti Miettinen claimed a consolation goal for the Finns in the third period but the USA march on to a meeting with the winners of the second semi-final between Slovakia and gold medal favourites Canada, who suffered a shock preliminary round defeat against the Americans.

Norway's eighth gold of the Games came in biathlon's men's 4x7.5km relay at Whistler Olympic Park.

The Norwegian quartet of Halvard Hanevold, Emil Hegle Svendsen, Ole Einar Bjoerndalen and Tarjei Boe posted a winning time of one hour 21 minutes and 38.1 seconds.

Bjoerndalen brought home victory on the anchor leg to claim his sixth gold of his Olympic career and his 11th Olympic medal.

"My shooting was fantastic," he said. "I went fast and skied great. I'm really satisfied with my race. It was perfect."

Silver went to Austria with Russian claiming the bronze.

In the Ladies parallel giant slalom on Cypress Mountain gold went to Holland's Nicolien Sauerbreij, who beat Russian Ekaterina Ilyukhina by 0.02 seconds in the big final.

Ilyukhina took the silver while the bronze went to Austrian Marion Kreiner, who won the small final against Germany's Salina Joerg.

Reigning world champions China won the bronze medal in the women's curling competition, beating Switzerland 12-6 at the Vancouver Olympic Centre.

China, skipped by Wang Bingyu, wrapped up victory in the eighth end when the Swiss conceded the match.

China, beaten by defending Olympic champions Sweden, led 3-0 after the opening end and 5-1 after the third. The Swiss scored three points in the fourth to pull back to 5-4 and two from the sixth end to square the match at 6-6.

But the Chinese regained the initiative in the seventh end to lead 8-6 and then settled the match in the eighth when four scoring stones gave them an unassailable lead.