Vancouver (AFP) – Bobby Ryan and David Backes scored unassisted goals as the United States beat Switzerland 3-1 in the opening game of one of the most anticipated hockey tournament’s in Olympic history.

Ryan Malone also scored and goaltender Ryan Miller made 14 saves for the US who have won the gold twice at the Olympic Games and both times at home (Squaw Valley 1960 and Lake Placid 1980).

“This was a good beginning,” said US coach Ron Wilson. “We are going to get better every game. This is a fairly quiet group, but quietly confident.”

Malone scored the US’s second goal of the middle period jamming home a rebound during a mad scramble in front of Swiss goalie Jonas Hiller. Another Ryan, defenceman Ryan Suter, assisted on the play.

“We got so many Ryans it is confusing,” said Wilson. “I say ‘Ryan’ and five guys turn around. I am going to have to figure out what their nicknames are.”

There are no less than six players with the name Ryan on the US roster.

It some ways Tuesday’s men’s hockey tournament opener must have felt like a home game for Team USA in front of the sold out crowd of more than 16,706 at the Canada Hockey Place arena.

The US border is just an hour’s drive from Vancouver so many in the crowd wore the red, white and blue and chanted “USA, USA, USA”.

But the majority of the spectators were decked out in the red and white of the Canadian team which is scheduled to play the second match of the day against Norway. Russia faces off against Latvia in the evening game.

“We learned a lot about our linemates and what we have to do,” forward Bobby Ryan said. “We got some chemistry going. All the goals were the result of banging away.”

The Americans are one of the youngest teams in the tournament with 16 players under the age of 26.

And perhaps some of their young stars haven’t fully grasped the magnitude of the Olympic Games just yet. On Tuesday they didn’t appear to have skipped a beat in making the transition from their National Hockey League teams to their first Olympic Games.

“They are just good players,” said US captain Jamie Lagenbrunner. “They know how to relax themselves in big games and they are excited for it.”

Anaheim Ducks forward Bobby Ryan said while he may have appeared composed on the ice that wasn’t always the case.

“I was much more nervous than any game I have played in a long time. I was a lot more jittery than I imagined,” Ryan said.

Ryan opened the scoring with an unassisted goal with just over a minute left in the first period shooting from the slot and beating Hiller up high.

The US turned up the heat in the second period peppering the Hiller with 14 shots compared to just four for the Swiss.

Backes made it 2-0 five minutes into the second, picking up a loose puck in front of his own net and charging the full length of the ice.

Roman Wick scored the only goal for the Swiss in the third period.

“In the end their cold-blooded scoring opportunities were superior to ours today,” said Swiss coach Ralph Krueger.

Vancouver (AFP) – Lee Sang-Hwa won gold in the women’s 500 metres speedskating in a shock victory over hot favourite Jenny Wolf of Germany Tuesday, giving South Korea more success on the Olympic ice.

Lee, leading after her first run, notched a combined time of 76.09sec for her two races (38.24 and 37.85), just 0.05sec ahead of Wolf. China’s Wang Beixing took the bronze in 76.63sec.

The win for the 20-year-old, who has not won a single race in this year’s World Cup, comes after South Korea claimed their first ever Winter Olympic gold outside short-track on Monday through Mo Tae-Bum in the men’s 500m.

Lee was last to go in her second run at Richmond Olympic Oval paired with Wolf, the three-time reigning world champion and world record-holder, and did just enough to hold off the German.

Lee, who turns 21 this month, was fifth at the Turin Games and third at the worlds last year. She is currently third in the World Cup standings.

The South Korean, also entered for the 1,000m, said: “The feeling has not sunk in yet. I cannot believe I have won the medal. I am very emotional and I feel like I am going to cry.

“I want to share this medal with my coach, my family and all the Korean athletes that are in the Olympics.

“Jenny Wolf is a very fast skater. But I remained calm and did my best in this race.”

Wolf said she was disappointed to miss out on gold but was nevertheless proud.

“I wanted to win gold. It was a tough race,” she said.

“Winning an Olympic medal is something you dream (of) when you are a child,” she added.

Bronze medallist Wang said: “This my first time standing on an Olympic podium. I am very glad.”

When asked about fulfilling the dream of winning a medal for China, she said: “For sure I am going to continue to pursue this.”

South Korea came into the Games with a pedigree in short-track skating but looking for their first gold outside that event.

Wolf, who missed out a medal in Turin in 2006, has dominated the sport since, winning the past four World Cups and leading the standings this year but she could not find the extra few hundredths of a second needed to realise her Olympic dream.

Underlining Asia’s strength in speed skating, six of the top ten were from the continent including Japan’s Sayuri Yoshyii in fifth place and the Chinese pair of Zhang Shuang and Jin Peiyu in eight and ninth positions.

With the head of the Winter Games helping carry the coffin to the hearse Nodar Kumaritashvili, the Georgian luger killed in a horrific crash in Vancouver on Friday, began his long, final journey home yesterday.

The body of the 21-year-old was flown to Germany after a candlelit memorial service during which members of the Georgian Olympic delegation filed past to touch their fallen team-mate.

Kumaritashvili’s body is to arrive in Bakuriani tomorrow, a small ski resort of about 1,500 people that has been plunged into mourning. It is to be met by Patriarch Ilia II, Georgia’s spiritual leader. “For every family in the village it’s a tragedy,” said Ramaz Goglidze, a senior Georgian Olympic official. “Even people who never met him cry all day. Everyone.”

Three Georgian athletes, including the figure skater Otar Japaridze, attended the memorial, filing past the open brown coffin. Kumaritashvili’s uncle and coach, Felix, broke down in tears.

John Furlong, Vancouver’s organising committee head, was one of 10 people who carried the coffin out of the building and placed it in the back of the grey hearse. “There were no speeches,” said the European Olympic Committees president Patrick Hickey. “People had their own private moment, reflecting on the situation. Everyone was so unified standing around sharing in the sorrow.”

Kumaritashvili died hours before the opening ceremony, when he lost control of his sled during a training run on the lightning-fast track in Whistler and slammed into a unpadded track-side steel pole.

An official from the International Luge Federation said he had met with Russian organisers and is confident a slower track would be constructed for the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.

The track is “still going to be high speed, but it is going to be lower [shorter]“, the secretary general Svein Romstad told Associated Press.

In Vancouver, lugers are now starting lower down the course too and padding now covers the steel girders that remain exposed beyond a wooden wall erected at the curve where Kumaritashvili flew off his sled.

His death is still under investigation by the provincial coroner’s office. An autopsy was performed but the results will be provided to the family only, with a public report due in about two months.

After recommendations by medical and legal experts, the chief coroner of British Columbia will then decide whether to hold an inquest.

Kumaritashvili’s father told AP yesterday that his son worried the Whistler track – the fastest in the world – was too dangerous. “He told me: I will either win or die,” David Kumaritashvili said. “But that was youthful bravado, he couldn’t be seriously talking about death.”

For Maëlle Ricker, winning Olympic gold in front of a screaming Canadian crowd on the mountain 20 minutes from her childhood home was “like a crazy dream.”

For the uninitiated, her sport looked a little wild, too.

By the time the ladies snowboard cross competition was over yesterday, several women had burst through a mesh fence, two heavy favourites – including Canada’s Dominique Maltais – had crashed out of the finals, and one unfortunate Swiss rider limped off with a bloody lip.

Ms. Ricker’s winning run, which she led from start to finish, showed just how good Canadians are at hurtling themselves over jumps and banked curves at break-neck speed.

She added a gold to a cluster of medals snagged on Cypress Mountain in recent days, including her snowboard cross teammate Mike Robertson of Canmore, and a gold and silver from moguls skiers Jenn Heil and Alexandre Bilodeau. In ski cross, a cousin of snowboard cross in which four racers battle down a course trying to be first to the bottom, Canada is a powerhouse.

Aside from moguls, these relatively new Olympics sports – along with the halfpipe snowboard events that begin with the men’s competition today – have introduced a Nascar element to the Olympic Games that’s more familiar to an X Games enthusiast.

And the athletes involved are often as wild off the snow as they are on it.

Unlike figure skaters or lugers, these competitors wouldn’t stoop to wear spandex even on Halloween.

The biggest names, like halfpipe sensation Shaun White, are brands unto themselves, earning millions in video game, clothing, and Red Bull contracts by selling teenagers on how to be cool.

They use words like “whack” and have nicknames like “Animal.” At official press conferences, they hawk charity items like Sweetcheeks panties.

But if fist bumps or racing to Jay-Z tunes sound like a too-casual way compete as an Olympian, that notion should come to a crashing end by the time these Games are over.

These are fierce competitors with training regimens as rigid any downhill racer. And no-one is a better example of that dichotomy than 32-year-old Ms. Ricker.

Bubbly and tanned, she is a self-described “B.C. girl” and one of the pioneers of snowboard cross. She grew up in West Vancouver with her parents, Karl Ricker, now a retired geologist, and Nancy Ricker, now a retired biology professor from Capilano University.

She learned to snowboard fast by chasing her older brother, Jörli, down Whistler Mountain, where her family had a cabin.

In the 1990s, she became a pioneer of a the sport called boarder cross, where racers race four-at-a-time down snow trying to be the first one to reach the bottom – and often don’t. Ms. Ricker entered her first Olympics as a halfpipe rider in 1998.

She narrowly missed Salt Lake in 2002, and had had six knee surgeries before she went to the 2006 games in Turin, the year her sport made its Olympic debut. There, she crashed so hard in the final that she was air lifted off the course in a coma.

“Turin was such a motivator for me,” she said. “It just made me work that much harder. It really, really helped me to get to the podium today.”

She lives in Squamish, B.C., but trains at an elite gym with a work ethic that her training partner and teammate, Rob Fagan, as well as her coach, Tim Milne, say is punishing.

“Maëlle’s just had an incredible year,” Mr. Milne has said. “She trained her ass off in the gym. Nobody would ever understand the time she’s put in. Like, way beyond what snowboarding’s ever seen.”

Yesterday, after a long morning of qualification runs under heavy fog that saw crashes and mishaps from more than a dozen competitors, including Ms. Ricker’s long-time rival and Olympic silver medalist Lindsey Jacobellis of the United States – the sun broke through the clouds.

In the final heat, Ms. Ricker crouched in the start gate. “I was really thinking about what I had to do on my board, all the way down the course,” she said.

When she stood, she pumped her arms in the air, revving up a crowd that she wasn’t able to see from the top of the course, but could hear.

When she flew over the final jump, Canadians held their breath, knowing that earlier in the day riders had caught edges and fallen so close to the end.

“I almost had a heart attack,” Mr. Fagen said.

“It was really stressful in the qualifying, watching her fall in the first run. Going through the finals I didn’t get any sense of relief,” her brother, Jörli, said after the race.

Later, with the Canadian flag draped across her shoulders, Ms. Ricker had a different description of the race.

“It was so, so fun,” she said.

Vancouver (AFP) – Dany Heatley and Jarome Iginla scored two goals each as Canada beat Norway 8-0 in their opening game of the men’s Olympic hockey tournament on Tuesday.

Roberto Luongo recorded a shutout stopping all 15 shots he faced for Canada who have now won their opening game in (18) of (19) of Olympic tournaments.

After a scoreless first period, second seeded Canada scored two goals just two minutes apart early in the second period.

Iginla got things started with the first goal of the game two and a half minutes into the second on a slap shot from the high slot.

Heatley then deflected a Chris Pronger shot from the point past Norwegian goalie Pal Grotnes at 4:27 into the second to make it 2-0.

Iginla got his second in the third period by finishing off a nice two-on-one break with Rick Nash and Heatley fired a high slap shot to the top corner.

Iginla is one of four Canadians who played on the gold medal winning team in 2002 Salt Lake Olympics. The others are goalie Martin Brodeur, defenceman Scott Niedermayer and defenceman Pronger.

Canada continued its domination of Norway at the Olympic Games with Tuesday’s win. They have outscored Norway (37-3) in four matches, including a 10-0 thrashing at the 1992 Albertville Olympic Games.

Canada, with its roster full of NHL superstars, were the heavy favourites heading into the game against Norway, which has just one NHL player Ole Kristian Tollefsen. Most of the Norwegians have full-time jobs outside of hockey.

Canadian goaltender Luongo weathered a five-on-three halfway through the second period when Norway had some its best scoring opportunities.

Luongo was playing in front of his home fans as he is the goalie for the NHL’s Vancouver Canucks.

Whistler (AFP) – German pin-up Magdalena Neuner will be chasing her third Olympic medal in Thursday’s 15km individual event as the Germany team look to underline their status as biathlon queens.

Neuner’s gold medal in Tuesday’s 10km pursuit was the Germany team’s 15th in Olympic Winter Games history and their 40th overall.

Germany has won at least one medal in the individual event every year since biathlon was added to the women’s Olympic program in 1992 and are expected to be amongst the medallists in the women’s 15km individual event.

Neuner, the defending World Cup 15km champion, will start as favourite alongside Sweden’s Helena Jonsson and Anna Carin Olofsson-Zidek who are first and second in the overall World Cup rankings.

There is plenty of experience amongst the rest of the Germans with Andrea Henkel, the gold medallist in 2002, looking to repeat her success from Salt Lake City.

And Kati Wilhem, a master sargeant in the German army, is the defending World champion in the event and looking for her fourth Olympic gold medal.

But they could all be beaten by Simone Hauswald, who has good memories of the course here having won the 15km event at the test event held at Whistler Olympic Park in March 2009.

Tora Berger of Norway will be one to watch as well as she is one of the most consistent competitors.

Only one non-European biathlete – Canada’s Myriam Bedard in 1994 at Lillehammer – has won a biathlon medal and that does not look like changing in Whistler.

The athletes start at 30 second intervals and between loops of a cross-country circuit, each racer will stop four times to take five shots at a target 50 meters away, twice each in the prone and standing positions.

In the individual event, the penalty for a miss is one additional minute which is added to the biathletes time and the winner has the fastest overall time.

Vancouver (AFP) – Vancouver Games organisers Tuesday hit back at stinging criticism from international media – especially in Britain – over problems the press say are plaguing the Games.

The Olympics have been blighted by weather woes that have forced delays to key events and the cancellation of thousands of tickets for snowboard and freestyle skiing due to safety issues for spectators.

Friday’s opening ceremony was overshadowed by the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, which led to criticism of track safety.

Even the location of the Olympic flame in downtown Vancouver – behind a fence – has been a source of controversy.

But organisers said they are shocked by the ferocity of the criticism and believe it is not giving a true picture of the Games.

“Yes, it shocks me a lot because our assessment is that the competitions are excellent, the athletes are very satisfied,” said Renee Smith-Valade, spokeswoman for organising committee VANOC.

“We can’t do anything about the weather, all we can do is react properly to it.

“In our view, the reactions we are getting from spectators here and on television are that the Games are excellent, that Canadians are proud and that the Games are a great success.”

She said that challenges for the hosts of Winter Games were nothing new and that organisers of the 1988 Calgary Olympics were forced to postpone dozens of events because of warm weather.

“There’s no question we’ve seen some press in Britain that we would look at and wonder which city the reporter’s reporting from,” Smith-Valade said.

“It doesn’t feel like it’s here because we’re seeing people out on the streets celebrating.”

International Olympic Committee spokesman Mark Adams praised the Games, saying the IOC was “impressed and continue to be impressed by the level of organisation. It’s been a very well-organised Games”.

“What I read in the British papers bears absolutely no relation to what I’ve been seeing in these Games,” he added, saying that previous Games had also been hit with problems, with thousands of tickets cancelled at Nagano in 1998, for example.

West Vancouver, BC ― General admission standing room tickets have been cancelled for Olympic men’s and ladies’ snowboard halfpipe on February 17 and 18; ski cross on February 21 and 23; and snowboard parallel giant slalom on February 26 and 27 at Cypress Mountain. Tickets will be refunded, said the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC).