U.S. Men's hockey overtime win and the Olympic sport that produces the best athletes

0:28This is a special edition of Up First. on the ice as Team USA survives a sudden-death face-off against Sweden and skates onto the men's hockey semifinal. NPR's Becky Sullivan was there. Sweden turned the puck over a couple times, which led to these quick breaks for the Americans and, of course, set up that awesome game winner by Quinn Hughes, which was just, like, marvelous. The arena went nuts. It was so fun. Handle with care. You've probably seen the stories about Olympic medals breaking. What's causing this glitch in the glory? NPR's Juliana Kim finds out. For a long part of Olympic Games, medals weren't intended to be worn.

1:05They were actually just meant to be like in a nice box that you admire from afar, which I probably do because I break a lot of things. So he says that this is kind of an age old question of how to make medals wearable. Plus, which Olympic sport produces the best athletes? Yeah, you can go ahead and put your guess in the comments now. However, NPR's John Lambert has the right answer, and it's all backed by science. There's this metric that kind of captures aerobic capacity that scientists measure. It's called VO2max. VO2max. Yes. Everyone is talking about VO2max. I'm Ian Martinez, and this is Up First, Winter Games.

1:53This message comes from Allianz Travel Insurance. You've packed your bags, booked your flights, and you're all set for the beach resort vacation of your dreams. Then you see the nightmare weather forecast. You were hoping for hurricane cocktails, not an actual hurricane. Always make sure travel insurance is a part of your packing list. Trip cancellation benefits might be your silver lining when all you see is clouds. Learn more at AllianzTravelInsurance.com. U.S. speed skater Jordan Stoll's bid for a gold medal sweep all short as he takes the silver in the 1500 meters. He still has one more race to go.

2:31Heading into these games, Stoll's was being compared with speed skating legend Eric Heiden, the five-time gold medalist who swept the individual events at the 1980 Games in Lake Placid, a feat that has yet to be topped. Heiden has been watching Stoll's closely and sees some familiar traits. NPR's Ping Huang caught up with the Olympic legend. Now I really pay attention to Jordan and if I get the opportunity to be close somewhere where he is going to skate I will take the time out to watch him skate because it is really fun to watch that guy skate. You know it's so interesting for me being at these races and watching everybody skate because they're all so fast but what is it that's making Jordan just that much faster?

3:13I would say the biggest thing technically on the turns he's very good he's very powerful on the turns. He's very efficient with each one of his strokes. He is not going to have the fastest legs like a sprinter, but he is going to get the most out of each stroke. And then his physical strengths as the races get longer. If you watch him skate sometimes, you know, like a thousand meters or 1500 meters, he may not open up as quickly as some of the guys who are known as sprinters, but guaranteed the last lap, he might even be down by 20 meters with a lap to go. And I keep watching him come back. And a lot of it is just his power and strength over the, as the races get longer.

4:04At the press conference after Jordan won the thousand meter, he said that he was going to be hanging out with you after. Did you guys in fact to hang out. Jordan, if I get a chance to sit down with him and have dinner, we take advantage of that opportunity. What I say sometimes comes with a lot of influence and wisdom. I do not want to get in the way of what him and his coach are doing. So we try to keep the skating talk to a minimum and kind of catch up on what he's doing. It's fun because it's scary. It's almost like Eric Heiden reincarnated, you know? Say more about that. Oh, I grew up in Wisconsin.

4:42He grew up skating on a pond behind his family's house. I grew up skating on a lake behind my grandparents' house. I was in the Olympics for the first time at 17, and then my career took off. He was in the Olympics first time at 17. His career took off. He loved skating. I loved skating, the challenge. and you look at him and he doesn't get all that anxious or nervous about the competition. He just wants to get to the starting line and shoot the gun. It's like a racehorse and the sky's the limit. Do you think that he will have longevity in this sport? Like what advice would you give him given that you retired shortly after your career high?

5:24I think he's got a long career ahead of him. And I think if he just stays focused on what he's doing, doesn't change things all that much, I think we're going to see Jordan Stoltz. I wouldn't be surprised if he was not skating when we had the Olympics back in Salt Lake in 2034 and still be really competitive, if not one of the dominant guys. An emotional moment Wednesday for Michaela Schifrin. After winning gold in her last race this Olympics, she reflected on the run and what it meant to her. And this was a moment I have dreamed about.

6:05I've also been very scared of this moment.

6:11Everything in life that you do after you lose someone you love is like a new experience. It's like being born again. and I still have so many moments where I resist this. I don't want to be in life without my dad.

6:36And maybe today was the first time that I could actually accept this. like reality. And instead of thinking I would be going in this moment without him, to take the moment to be silent with him. Schifrin lost her father, Jeff, after a tragic accident at their home in 2022. And we have another Olympic engagement, this time for U.S. hockey captain Hillary Knight and fellow Team USA star speed skater Brittany Bowe. The two met at the Games in Beijing during the COVID-19 pandemic night, breaking the news on Instagram, writing, The Olympics brought us together. This one made us forever. Now think about it.

7:34The Olympics' iconic logo is five rings. And this Olympic Games, yeah, five athletes have gotten engaged. See, they liked it and they clearly put a ring on it. In men's hockey, it was an overtime thriller for Team USA. They survived a close one against Sweden 2-1 in sudden death to advance the semifinals against Slovakia. The U.S. is chasing its first gold medal since the Miracle on Ice game in 1980. NPR's Becky Sullivan was at the game. Becky, this was one they had to sweat out. Yes, I think they must have been pretty terrified. for, by my count, it was about five minutes between when Sweden tied it up with 90 seconds left in regulation and then three and a half minutes into overtime, the USA's Quinn Hughes scored the game winner.

8:22So a very scary five minutes in between that period where everybody thought, oh my goodness, this run might be over a lot sooner than any of these Americans had hoped. I mean, so Becky, was this game expected to be as close as it was? Yeah, I think a lot of people thought that this was going to be a tight one. Every single player on Sweden's roster is an NHL player. They're the only other team besides the U.S. and Canada for whom that's true at this Olympics. And so, yeah, I think it was expected to be close. Sweden, I think, coming into this tournament had been expected to go further, but they stumbled in the group stage, got upset by Slovakia, which led to them sort of dropping to this number seven seed.

8:57And then when the sort of group stage shook out and the U.S. got the two seed, it looked like, oh, shoot, that Sweden set up. That was something people saw coming from a little ways away. And so I think people had this one circled as a tough matchup, and it showed the moment they all got on the ice. You know, afterward, the U.S. winger, Matthew Kachuk, one of the biggest stars for the American team, said that, you know, a lot of people have this idea that when you get to really talented teams on the ice, that it's going to lead to a lot of offense, a ton of goals, like back and forth, up and down the ice.

9:26But he said actually usually it's the opposite, and that's exactly what we saw last night. Super tight game, no goals in that first period. It took the U.S. a while to get to score in that second period, that one goal. And then, of course, that led to this amazing, super tense third period. Sweden was just throwing everything they could at that goal to try to even it up, which, of course, they did with 90 seconds to go to set up that awesome overtime. You know, Becky, when I used to talk to sports fans every night doing sports talk radio, the hockey fans would be the ones that would always argue that their postseason was the best postseason of any postseason.

9:58And watching three out of the four quarterfinal games go into overtime, They're making a case. It was frigging awesome, eh? And the fun thing, actually, about the Olympic overtime format, too, is it's, like, totally manic, frenetic, because it's three-on-three. They go straight to three-on-three, sudden death, golden go overtime. And when you take all those players off the ice, normally, of course, hockey, you've got five skaters in a goalie. And so instead you're playing three-on-three, it just opens up the ice. So much more skating, so much more fun. Sweden turned the puck over a couple times, which led to these quick breaks for the Americans.

10:31And of course, set up that awesome game winner by Quinn Hughes, which was just like marvelous. The arena went nuts. It was so fun. Yeah. So that wasn't the only tight game because also Canada, Canada had to deal with a squeaker. Absolutely. Yeah. So they were playing Czechia and this one was more of a surprise. Canada is the top overall seed in this tournament and the favorite for the gold. Their team is incredible stacked top to bottom with stars, household names, whether that's Sidney Crosby or Connor McDavid or Macklin Celebrini. This team is amazing. And so when they came up against Czechia and Czechia gave them everything they got, including with about eight minutes to go in the third period, Czechia took the lead three to two, which was madness.

11:11And then Canada, you know, they just turned it on. You can't stop. They scored that goal to even it up with about three minutes to go in the third period and then, of course, got that overtime goal. But I'm thinking people in the Olympics maybe must be a little relieved because it did look like there were six men on the ice when Czechia scored that three to two go ahead goal in the third period. If you take a look at the replays, the photos, the screenshots, you know, it's like that one probably should have been caught, probably should have been stopped. And I think maybe everybody's breathing a little sigh of relief that Canada won ahead anyway.

11:46And we can all just forget about that. Yeah. And you know what? You mentioning all of those NHL names throughout this that we've been doing right now reminds everyone that this that this team, that Team USA and all the teams are all NHL players. And so the comparison, if someone wants to make one between Team USA now and Team USA in 1980 is not the same. Those guys were plucky college kids going up against the red Soviet army. Yeah, I mean, definitely. I like that. This has gone back and forth over the course of Olympic history with hockey and shell players have played sometimes. Sometimes they haven't.

12:18This is the first since 2014 since NHL players have gotten to participate. And not everybody in the tournament is an NHL player. In fact, coming up this semifinal game, the U.S. having to play Slovakia. Slovakia only has a handful of guys who are playing in the NHL, which in theory should give the U.S. a big advantage. Everybody on the U.S. roster is an NHL player. But you never know. Semifinals of the Olympics, I think anything can happen. And I think the games that we saw yesterday, three overtime games, the top two seeds taken to the brink, I think that shows you. Yeah. And the Kachuk brothers, too.

12:50They're also a big part of this Olympic Games. Definitely. I mean, there's a lot of stars on the American roster, but the Kachuk brothers are two of the most prominent. We're talking about Matthew Kachuk and Brady Kachuk. Back home, Matthew plays for the Florida Panthers and Brady plays for the Ottawa Senators. And they really rose to prominence last year, actually, in this tournament organized by the NHL called the Four Nations Faceoff, where we had the national teams of the U.S. and Canada, Sweden and Finland all play in this little round-robin tournament with a final. And this actually took place just a few weeks after President Trump came back into office.

13:21In his second inauguration, he started turning up the heat on the U.S.-Canada relationship, was talking about tariffs on Canada, making Canada the 51st state, that kind of thing. And then the Florida Panthers went to the White House to celebrate their 2024 Stanley Cup win. Matthew Kachuk warmly thanked the president for inviting them there. And then just a few days later was this sort of epic opening match between U.S. and Canada in Montreal, where you might remember, A, people were booing the national anthem, booing the Star-Spangled Banner. There were a bunch of fights on the ice in the first few seconds of the game, including Matthew Kachuk, Brady Kachuk, dropping the gloves.

13:54And it was a thrill to watch. The U.S. won that game. Ultimately, lost to Canada in the final and overtime, this, like, epic final match. Connor McDavid scored the game-winning goal, which is just, like, incredible star power from Canada. But obviously that whole experience gave the Americans and especially the Kachuks all the motivation they needed for a little revenge here. I'm going to guess that NBC probably wants USA Canada in the final. I think that's safe to say. Safe to say. Maybe not just NBC, but maybe broadcasters everywhere. Certainly the CBC too. I think there would be a ton of eyes on that game.

14:30So much star power in the game. I mean, it would be epic. This is definitely no shade at all on the other two semifinalists, Slovakia and Finland, who are great teams of their own. But I do think a U.S.-Canada matchup would just have a ton of drama and be a lot of fun. Well, so speaking of Team USA versus Team Canada, we're finally going to find out who the Olympic champion is going to be on the women's side. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That gold medal match is tonight here in Milan. That one's going to be super epic. I mean, since women's hockey came to the Olympics in 1998, there have been seven gold medals handed out, and Canada or the U.S.

15:00have won all of them. Canada has won five. The U.S. has won two. So there's a little room for the U.S. to make up. But over the last few years, the U.S. has really invested heavily in sort of developing young talent, giving young talent the opportunity to compete in these big international events, these big international games. And you've seen the U.S. make a ton of progress on Canada, especially over just the past year. They played a bunch of times in rivalry games, and the scores, you could see, kind of kept going up and up and up and up as the U.S. kept winning by more and more and more. That happened here at the Olympics.

15:32There was a preliminary game between the two of them that the U.S. won 5-0. Canada in that game was playing without their best player and captain. She'll be back tonight in this game. But, you know, I think this could be like a situation in which the U.S. not only wins this one, but sort of changes our understanding of who the real power in women's hockey is. Yeah, leading up to this game, Team USA has outscored their opponents 31-1 in Olympic play. That's just unbelievable. NPR's Becky Sullivan, thanks a lot. You're welcome, A. The Olympic medal. It's one of the most coveted awards you can get as an athlete.

16:07But at the Winter Games, medalists are celebrating cautiously, and that's because there's been a number of medals breaking off their ribbons. Here to talk more about the medal snafu is NPR's Juliana Kim. Juliana, what do you think of my bling? I mean, it's a look. It's a vibe I'm going for. I love it. I think you should do it every day moving forward. Why not, right? I mean, what do you think? How does it compare to the ones that are given out in Milan and Cortina? You know, I'd say that if yours aren't breaking, you might be giving the games a run for their money, right? As you mentioned earlier, there have been a number of athletes who have come forward saying that their medals are breaking off, specifically from the ribbon that's leading to dents because the medals are falling to the floor.

16:53And in one extreme case, the medal actually broke in half. This issue emerged pretty quickly after the Olympic Games started. You know, American skier Breezy Johnson, who we know as being the first to capture gold for Team USA at the Winter Games, she said that her medal broke pretty quickly after she received it. And at a press conference on Sunday, she warned fellow athletes, you know, be careful and specifically don't jump in them, which I think would be hard to do, right? Right. That would have been helpful advice for a certain German biathlete, Dristus Strello. He was celebrating with his teammates, and the exact moment when his medal fell off was actually caught on camera.

17:35And you can see kind of the awkward pause and the teammates looking nervously over to make sure everything was okay. American figure skater Alyssa Liu, this also happened to her. But she actually poked fun at the situation, you know, in a video posted on Instagram. She proudly showed off her gold medal as one would with the words, my medal don't need the ribbon, right? Yeah, how deflating. I mean, you spend your whole life going toward this goal to win an Olympic medal. And then all of a sudden you got to worry about it breaking. I mean, any leads on what's causing them to break? I mean, this year's medal issues appear to have stemmed from a clip that attaches to the ribbon.

18:18Reuters reported that the clip is actually a safety measure to prevent the athletes from getting strangled by the ribbon, which, you know, is arguably an important function. I asked Doug McIndoo about this. He's a numismatist. Try saying that three times. That's someone who specializes in coins and medals. And his guess is that there was a manufacturing glitch between the clip and the medal. And because cast medals, when they're molded and hardened, they tend to shrink. and how much they shrink is kind of unpredictable. Another interesting tidbit that he told me, though, was that for a long part of Olympic Games, medals weren't intended to be worn.

18:59They were actually just meant to be like in a nice box that you admire from afar, which I probably do because I break a lot of things. So he says that this is kind of an age-old question of how to make medals wearable. Collectors and designers also don't love when there's a hole in the metal. So they've, you know, had to come up with innovative ways to attach the ribbon. So all of that to say, as you can see, it is not easy designing Olympic awards. Yeah, apparently not. But is it fixable? It seems so. You know, the Olympic Organizing Committee has been looking into this issue for a few days now, and they said a solution has been identified, even though they didn't mention specifically what the issue was.

19:48They're saying that they're going to recheck all of the medals to make sure that this issue is avoided in the future. And they said that the National Mint of Italy, who crafts these awards, are going to repair the faulty ones. A few days ago, American skier Breezy Johnson, who I mentioned earlier, said she actually got a replacement medal. She told Reuters that this was a little bit different from the one that she got before. Like this one doesn't have the engravings on it. And that she actually prefers her original medal and that she wonders if she could get that one back. I would want my original medal.

20:24That's the one I earned. That's the one I want. I mean, that's just me. And I agree with Breezy on this one. But okay, it's still, even if it's maybe broken or damaged somehow, it's still an Olympic medal. So it's gotta be worth a lot of money. More than they have in past games for sure. And this is because there's been record prices for gold and silver. Part of the reason is because of President Trump's tariffs, which caused economic uncertainty in financial markets around the world. And that then, you know, is making Olympic medals worth more, too. But question A, how much do you think Olympic medals cost right now?

21:00Let me see. One billion dollars. That's a little bit higher than, you know what, precious metals expert Peter. Wrong again, A. Martinez. Yeah, wrong again. That's my whole life, Juliana, being wrong. Just by a little bit, you know. He says right now gold medals are going for about$2 ,300. That's because they only have about six grams of actual gold in them, or 0.2 ounces, and the rest is made with silver. Now, it's been over a century since gold medals were made of just full, pure gold. and if those were still around today that would be about 79 to 80 thousand dollars. All of that precious metals talks aside you know I think what really gives Olympic medals their value is that they're from the Olympics and that you have to earn them and each edition is so unique.

21:52I want to mention a little bit about this year's design you know if you haven't seen it it looks like two halves coming together. It's supposed to symbolize that behind every success It's not done alone. It's the result of both the athlete and their family, their coaches, their trainers, their support system. And I just love that message. Yeah, it's a nice one. You know how the Olympians, they take a bite out of their medals? How many of these do you think I can put in my mouth, Juliana? I'm scared to know the answer. We won't be able to find out. They're real, real happy. My neck is killing me.

22:29That's NPR's Juliana Kim. Juliana, thanks. Thank you. Watching the Olympics, summer or winter, you see all kinds of different athletes. Speed skaters, 100-meter sprinters, gymnasts. It's hard to say, though, what sport produces the best athletes since it's somewhat subjective. So we asked NPR's Jonathan Lambert to take a look at the science to help answer that question. Here now, that conversation. Welcome back, John. Good to be back. All right. So I want to turn this question to you. What sport do you think produces the best athlete? As much as I would love to say marathon running, I got to, for me, a sport where you're fighting for your life, like boxer or MMA fighter.

23:10Yeah. That's me. I mean, getting punched in the face and then still being able to. Yeah, that's a good argument. I want to disagree because science offers a somewhat objective answer to this question. Okay. And that's cross-country skiing. Cross-country skiing. Why that sport? So cross-country skiers have to work really hard. They're often skiing uphill, and they just need big aerobic engines to do that. Their heart and lungs have to work really hard. And the sport just produces, like, stellar athletes. And the science actually backs me up on this point. There's this metric that kind of captures aerobic capacity that scientists measure.

23:47It's called VO2max. VO2max. Yes. Everyone is talking about VO2max. And if you look at the lists of who has, what kind of athletes have the best VO2max, cross-country skiers consistently rank on top. Yeah, because when I watch these running videos, I watch a ton of like running influencers and they're always talking about VO2max. And I'm looking at myself, I'm like, I don't know. Am I doing this right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell us what VO2max is. So VO2max, the V stands for volume, O2 stands for oxygen. And it's basically a number that reflects how good your body is at using oxygen. So to back up, our cells need oxygen to produce energy.

24:20But for really short bursts of exercise, something like sprinting 100 meter dash all out, Your cells can do that without using oxygen, but they max out pretty quickly. And the longer you go, they need to be replenished with oxygen. And so for endurance sports, the more oxygen that you can take in and that your cells can use, the harder you can go. And so VO2 kind of essentially captures that. It captures how good you are at breathing in oxygen, transporting that oxygen to your lungs, to the arteries, to the capillaries, down to the cells and how good those cells are at taking that oxygen and converting it to energy.

24:58So the size of your engine inside, or the power that's... Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good way to think about it. Cross-country skiers, then do they have the highest volume of VO2 max that they produce? They do tend to have the highest VO2 maxes. And VO2 max isn't the end-all be-all. It's not as though the best cross-country skiers have the highest VO2 max. Strength and technique kind of dictate how much of that aerobic power you can translate into forward movement. So if you've got like a huge engine, but you're just kind of like flailing around out there, you're not going to be able to go very fast.