Beijing 2022 preview for 19 February: Key events not to miss at the Olympic Winter Games

Nine events (and two additional bronze medals) will be decided on the penultimate day of action at Beijing 2022, including the two-woman bobsleigh title (21:30-22:15*), men’s curling gold medal (rescheduled to 14:50), men's 50km mass start in cross-country skiing (14:00-16:45) and men’s freeski halfpipe gold medal (09:30-10:49).

The alpine skiing schedule closes with the second running of the mixed team parallel event (10:00-12:15), while there's also the bronze medal game in men's ice hockey (21:10), on a day full of major events, including:

Alexander Bolshunov of ROC, the 2020/21 World Cup distance and overall champion, goes into the men's 50km freestyle as one of the firm favourites.

The 2021 Tour de Ski winner took silver in the corresponding 50km event at PyeongChang 2018, skied using the classical method, as well as silver at the 2021 World Championships (classical) behind Norway's Emil Iversen and ahead of Simen Hegstad Krüger, who will likely produce the strongest challenges to Bolshunov.

Bolshunov has already claimed four Olympic medals at Beijing 2022: gold in the 15km + 15km skiathlon and men's relay, silver in the 15km classic and bronze in the team sprint. But there's no doubting he'll go for one more in the last cross-country event of these Olympic Winter Games.

The figure skating competitions come to an end with the pairs free skate (19:08-21:53), featuring China’s Sui Wenjing and Han Cong looking to propel themselves ahead of their ROC challengers.

After the short program, Sui and Han are currently top with a score of 84.41, followed by the three duos representing ROC. Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov are second (84.25), Anastasia Mishina and Alexandr Galliamov (82.76) are in third position and Alexs