Winter Olympics LIVE: Olympic champion Mikaela Shiffrin’s shock exit as Russians win gold in figure skating

LIVE – Updated at 05:07

The Russian skating team kickstarted Monday with a gold in the women’s free skating, thanks to their 15-year-old star Kamila Valieva, who topped the scoreboard with 178.92 points.

Team USA secured a silver in the game, after Karen Chen out-scored China’s Zhu Yi, while Japan won the bronze.

In a shock exit, two-time Olympic champion Mikaela Shiffrin is out of giant slalom at Beijing Olympics.

Trying to become the first Alpine ski racer to win three Olympic golds for the United States, the 26-year-old lost an edge on the fifth gate of the first run of the women’s giant slalom and skied out. This is also the first time since January 2018 that she failed to finish a GS race.

A total of nine medal events are on today, including another debut for mixed event- this time one in ski jumping as men and women compete together.

Meanwhile, Team Great Britain qualified for the semi-finals of the curling mixed doubles despite losing 6-2 to Norway in the penultimate fixture of the round robin stage. In the end, though, it didn’t matter as results elsewhere confirmed Team GB’s place in the last four.

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Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai has denied she ever accused anyone of sexual assault, adding that she herself had deleted her social media post in November that had appeared to make such a claim.

The issue had gained global attention after three-time Olympian Peng appeared to allege on social media that Zhang Gaoli, a former Chinese vice president had sexually assaulted her in past.

In an interview with French newspaper L’Equipe at a hotel in Beijing, Peng denied she had made such allegations.

“In the text we could see in Europe, you accused someone of sexual assault. What did you really