Today at the Winter Olympics: Kamila Valieva leads, Team GB nightmare continues

Emerging from a cloud of controversy and recrimination, 15-year-old Kamila Valieva delivered her lowest score of the season but it was still more than enough to lead the women’s figure skating competition after the short programme at the Winter Olympics.

Valieva, cleared to compete by an ad-hoc committee of the Court of Arbitration for Sport despite a positive drugs test, stumbled on her opening triple axel but scored 82.16 to finish ahead of compatriot Anna Shcherbakova.

It leaves Valieva as the clear favourite to win the event when it concludes with the free skate on Thursday, but if she finishes in the top three no medals will be awarded with the podium put on hold until the full investigations into the Russian’s doping case has concluded.

Elsewhere, Brad Hall and Nick Gleeson crashed on their penultimate run of the two-man bobsleigh in Yanqing as Great Britain’s nightmare Games continued.

Hall’s sled overturned towards the end of the run and they slid over the finish line on their side, but both emerged apparently unscathed and later completed the final run and ended 11th overall.

There was better news for Britain’s curlers as the women’s team kept their medal hopes alive with an emphatic 10-4 win over Japan before the men’s team advanced to the semi-finals with a 7-6 victory over the previously unbeaten Swedish side.

Italy’s Sofia Goggia won a remarkable silver medal in the women’s downhill just three weeks after partially tearing a knee ligament in a crash in Cortina.

The reigning Olympic champion revealed she battled through the pain barrier to take second place, 0.16 seconds behind gold medallist Corinne Suter of Switzerland, with Goggia’s compatriot Nadia Delgado taking bronze.

“The path to come here after the