Mikaela Shiffrin’s Winter Olympics drought continues after slalom slump in team event

• American wastes strong downhill leg from Johnson

• Slalom standout missed out on medals in 2022

• Raedler and Huber win gold for Austria

• Medal table | Live scores and schedule | Results

Mikaela Shiffrin extended her Olympic slump with a fourth-place finish in the new team combined event at the Milan Cortina Games on Tuesday after partner Breezy Johnson led the opening downhill leg.

Shiffrin, the most successful World Cup racer of all time with a record 108 victories –71 of them in slalom, also a record – has now gone seven straight Olympic races without a medal.

Published: February 10, 2026, 4:23 pm

ICE director refuses to commit to pausing operations for 2026 World Cup

• Acting director Todd Lyons called ICE ‘key’ to security

• 2026 World Cup takes place this summer in 11 US cities

The acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told a congressional committee on Tuesday that his agency is a “key part of the overall security apparatus for the World Cup” and refused to commit to pausing operations near games at this summer’s tournament.

The 2026 World Cup will be hosted this summer by the United States, Mexico, and Canada, with 78 of the 104 games taking place in the US. Various entities have estimated that up to 10 million people could visit the 11 US host cities for the quadrennial tournament. However, ICE’s role in Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown – including an extended and widespread operation in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul metropolitan area in which two people were killed by federal agents – has raised serious concerns among fans.

Published: February 10, 2026, 9:33 pm

Welcome to the Dark Side: Seattle’s brutal, Super Bowl-winning defense is here to stay

The Seahawks’ Legion of Boom terrorized opponents in the 2010s. Now a new unit has taken up the mantle – and delivered another title

Super Bowl LX was a two-score game with less than five minutes remaining. New England had the ball on the Seahawks’ 44-yard line and – after reaching the end zone in the fourth quarter, finally – that familiar sense of possibility. But that quickly vaporized when Devon Witherspoon knifed in on a corner blitz and jarred the ball loose from the Patriots quarterback, Drake Maye, mid-throw. Uchenna Nwosu snatched it in stride and rumbled 45 yards to the end zone, sealing Seattle’s 29‑13 victory.

That the league’s top defense was able to punctuate this moment, more than a decade in the making, with an interception as the Super Bowl XLIX hero Malcolm Butler looked on made the Seahawks’ revenge all the sweeter. “They lived up to the Dark Side today,” the Seattle head coach, Mike Macdonald, said of his defense. “It’s going to go down in the history books.”

Published: February 10, 2026, 10:00 am

Sesko rescues late point for Manchester United to deny West Ham precious win

Stop all the clippers, don’t cut off the barnet: Manchester United’s winning run is over. Frank Ilett, the man who pledged never to visit a barber again until United won five matches in a row, has been denied a viral haircut, but their resilience came to the fore after the West Ham were denied what would have been a deserved victory deep into added time.

A studded finish from fan favourite Tomas Soucek was cancelled out by a strike from Benjamin Sesko to leave this match honours even. United lacked energy and snap, West Ham thought they had the game in the bag as the clock ticked past 90 minutes. The Hammers remain in 18th place, five points behind Spurs in 16th.

Published: February 10, 2026, 10:20 pm

USA dominates short-handed Canada to close out women’s hockey group play

• Hannah Bilka scores twice in 5-0 shutout win

• Canada captain Marie-Philip Poulin out with injury

• US will face Italy in quarter-final on Friday

Hannah Bilka scored twice, and the United States’ youth and speed overwhelmed a Canadian women’s hockey team missing its captain in a 5-0 win at the Milan Cortina Games on Tuesday.

The lopsided victory in Milan clinched first place for the US in Group A entering the quarter-finals, and continued confirming why the Americans entered the tournament as favorites. Team USA swept all four preliminary-round games by a combined score of 20-1 and brought back memories of how a Canadian team in their prime rolled to winning gold at the 2022 Beijing Games.

Published: February 10, 2026, 10:32 pm

Norwegian biathlete wins Winter Olympics bronze and then tells TV interview of affair

• Sturla Holm Lægreid stuns viewers watching in Norway

• ‘Three months ago I made the mistake of my life’

The Norwegian Sturla Holm Lægreid broke down in tears after winning bronze in the men’s 20km biathlon, apologising for having an affair and saying: “It has been the worst week of my life.”

Johan-Olav Botn won gold, with the Frenchman Éric Perrot in second, but it was Lægreid who stunned television viewers in Norway after opening up to the broadcaster NRK about his private life over the past six months.

Published: February 10, 2026, 3:33 pm

Pride and unease: US Winter Olympians navigate politics, patriotism and Trump attacks

Some athletes at the Milano Cortina Games speaking out on the complications of representing the US abroad are facing hostility from home

Some US athletes at the Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina are speaking more openly than at any point since Donald Trump returned to the White House, describing a complicated mix of pride and discomfort about representing the country while political tensions at home and abroad spill into the Games.

The comments – and the fierce reaction they have triggered from political figures, online influencers and the president himself – have exposed a widening gap between how some athletes view their Olympic role and how parts of the political establishment believe they should use it.

Published: February 10, 2026, 10:00 am

Ukraine racer defies IOC ban by wearing ‘helmet of memory’ as anger grows

• Luger shares ‘remembrance is not a violation’ message

• Officials will allow racer to wear black armband instead

Ukrainian athletes have stepped up their defiance of International Olympic Committee rules banning them from protesting against the Russian invasion while in competition, amid growing anger over a decision to ban a “helmet of memory” for the ­country’s war dead.

On Tuesday evening the ­skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych revealed that he had continued to use the helmet, which shows athletes killed during the war, during his practice runs in Italy in defiance of the IOC.

Published: February 10, 2026, 6:53 pm

‘My needles are waiting’: Ben Ogden credits knitting habit after cross-country silver

• Vermont native ends US men’s 50-year medal drought

• Result continues strong showing at Milan-Cortina

• Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo wins seventh gold

Ben Ogden delivered the most significant result in US men’s cross-country skiing in decades on Tuesday afternoon, winning Olympic silver in the men’s sprint classic at the Milano Cortina Games to end a 50-year medal drought. And afterwards he credited the relaxation he finds in knitting.

The mustachioed 25-year-old finished in 3min 40.61sec after surging through the final with his trademark classical technique, less than a second behind Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, who secured the seventh Olympic gold medal of his career in 3:39.74. Klæbo’s teammate Oskar Opstad Vike took bronze after climbing from 20th in qualifying to the podium.

Published: February 10, 2026, 3:55 pm

Winter Olympics officials find fix for broken medals and promise repairs

• Downhill champion Breezy Johnson among the affected

• ‘A solution has been identified, and a fix put in place’

After days of embarrassing stories about Winter Olympic medals cracking, snapping, and even breaking in two after falling in the snow, organisers say they have finally fixed the problem.

Officials have also promised to repair any of the medals that were awarded in the opening three days of competition in Milano Cortina, after identifying on Monday that the issue stemmed from the medal’s cord, which is fitted with a breakaway mechanism required by law.

Published: February 10, 2026, 12:47 pm

Keion White becomes second 49ers player shot in San Francisco in 18 months

• Lineman shot in ankle hours after Super Bowl

• 27-year-old’s injuries are non-life threatening

Keion White, a defensive lineman for the San Francisco 49ers, has undergone surgery after he was shot in the ankle early on Monday morning.

The shooting happened in San Francisco hours after the end of the Super Bowl, which was played at Levi’s Stadium in nearby Santa Clara.

Published: February 10, 2026, 2:10 pm

Infantino dogged by threat of Russia and fear of Trump as he heads to sweet-talk Uefa

Fifa president will be under major scrutiny when he goes to Brussels to address the Uefa annual congress on Thursday

Assuming Gianni Infantino turns up on time, he is expected to make his customary address to Uefa’s annual congress on Thursday. The couple of hours spent in Brussels Expo Hall 3 will be largely procedural but the Fifa president’s messaging will be worth delegates’ attention. Even by the standards of relations between football’s major governing bodies, the past 12 months have been fractious. The fault lines hardly get narrower and there is certainly no reduction in the number of thorny issues simmering away.

At last year’s edition, in Belgrade, Infantino used the gathering of European football’s great and good to make a caveated case for Russia’s return to competitive action. If that was a rolling of the pitch, his comments on the matter in an interview last week amounted to letting the sprinklers loose. Infantino said the ban on Russian sides should be reassessed, at least for age-group teams, but there is little chance of his views gaining weight around Europe even if he elects to revisit the argument.

Published: February 10, 2026, 8:00 am

Winter Olympics: Eileen Gu expresses sympathy for Hess after Trump’s ‘loser’ attack

• Freeskier was ambivalent about representing US

• Fellow athletes defend friend after president’s attack

Chloe Kim and Eileen Gu have weighed in on Donald Trump’s attack on Hunter Hess after the freeskier said he was ambivalent about representing the US during the president’s immigration crackdown.

“I think in moments like these, it is really important for us to unite and kind of stand up for one another for all that’s going on,” said Kim, the two-time Olympic gold medalist whose parents are South Korean immigrants and who has faced racism throughout her career.

Published: February 9, 2026, 9:07 pm

Four players ejected after brawl breaks out during Hornets-Pistons game

• Police briefly enter court as tempers flare, benches clear

• Hornets coach Charles Lee later tossed for arguing call

A fight between the Detroit Pistons and Charlotte Hornets in the third quarter of Monday night’s game resulted in four player ejections.

Charlotte’s Moussa Diabate and Miles Bridges were tossed, along with Detroit’s Jalen Duren and Isaiah Stewart. Hornets coach Charles Lee was ejected in the fourth quarter after he had to be restrained from going after an official while arguing a call.

Published: February 10, 2026, 2:16 pm

Ramsey winner for Newcastle adds to Frank woes to leave Spurs fearing the drop

To his extensive list of problems at Tottenham, Thomas Frank can add another. The manager is dealing with a ghost from the club’s more successful recent past. There were 49 minutes on the clock when the South Stand choir took up the song. “He’s magic, you know. Mauricio Poch-e-ttino.” The message was clear. They want their former idol back. They cannot persist any longer with Frank.

The only wonder here was that Newcastle, who had arrived on the back of three successive Premier League defeats and with numerous issues of their own, were not out of sight at the interval. If they were bright in the first half, Spurs were impossibly awful. Frank’s injury list numbered 10 players and he lost another one – Wilson Odobert – in the 34th minute. The captain, Cristian Romero, is suspended, of course. Nobody wants to hear excuses.

Published: February 10, 2026, 9:47 pm

Okafor grabs comeback draw for Leeds as wasteful Chelsea’s bad habits return

Chelsea’s habit of squandering leads did not leave with Enzo Maresca. The lapses in concentration have piled up and there was another to add to the list after Stamford Bridge witnessed an inexplicable collapse against Leeds, who took another step towards staying up fighting back from 2-0 down to keep themselves six points above the bottom three.

The turnaround was not on the cards when Cole Palmer, who had earlier collected his first assist in the Premier League this season, extended Chelsea’s advantage by scoring from the spot for the third time in two games. By the end, though, Liam Rosenior was ­watching the prospect of an eighth win in 10 games slip away. The implosion was staggering. Lukas Nmecha and Noah Okafor had capitalised on dreadful defending to make it 2-2 and, while Chelsea rallied, their hopes of a late winner ended when Palmer produced a contender for miss of the season.

Published: February 10, 2026, 9:53 pm

Rayan and Adli stage Bournemouth fightback against 10-man Everton

Hill Dickinson Stadium is no place like home for Everton. Not yet, anyway. Sixth place and momentum in the push for European qualification was the tantalising prize for beating Bournemouth but, not for the first time at their plush new stadium, David Moyes’s team let it slip through their grasp.

Andoni Iraola’s visitors extended their unbeaten Premier League run to six games courtesy of second-half headers from Rayan, the 19-year-old Brazilian who could well be their latest gem, and Amine Adli. Bournemouth’s goals and a red card for the Everton defender Jake O’Brien arrived in an eight-minute spell in which the hosts imploded to leave themselves without a home win since 6 December. Moyes’s side have collected 17 points from their last eight away games but only eight from the last nine at home. Their quest for Europe is floundering on home soil.

Published: February 10, 2026, 9:48 pm

Scottish Premiership: Late winner for Hearts in tense Edinburgh derby

• Tomas Magnusson scores in 88th minute to seal win

• Jambos now have a six-point lead at the top of the table

Tomas Magnusson scored a late winner as the Scottish Premiership leaders Hearts defeated Hibernian 1-0 in a tense Edinburgh derby to tighten their grip on top spot.

Magnusson, on as a substitute, popped up with the game’s decisive moment in the 88th minute to spark jubilant scenes inside Tynecastle.

Published: February 10, 2026, 11:06 pm

Erling Haaland should not put pressure on himself to score, says Guardiola

• City manager blames fixture schedule for striker’s fatigue

• ‘Intelligent’ Abdukodir Khusanov also earns praise

Pep Guardiola has insisted Erling Haaland should not put too much pressure on himself to constantly score for Manchester City.

Haaland’s stoppage-time penalty against Liverpool on Sunday not only sealed a 2-1 victory for City but was also only his third goal in 10 appearances, with only one of these from open play. Afterwards, Haaland stated he must improve his output and refused to blame fatigue for his form. Guardiola, though, has praised the contribution of the 25-year-old, who has 28 goals in 36 appearances in all competitions for the club this season.

Published: February 10, 2026, 10:30 pm

Women’s Champions League playoffs to test WSL teams’ depth and new format’s value

Arsenal and Manchester United face familiar opponents in a revamped competition that has so far proven more competitive

The next phase of the new Women’s Champions League format gets under way on Wednesday and Thursday, when the four playoff first legs take place. Arsenal and Manchester United are among eight teams vying to join Barcelona, Lyon, Chelsea and Bayern Munich, who automatically qualified for the quarter-finals as the top four in the league phase.

As in the men’s competition, a switch from a group stage to the league format has been made. However, with the UWCL group stage having been introduced only for the 2021-22 season, there was scepticism about a change coming so soon, with the group stage viewed as a big step forward and in its relative infancy.

Published: February 10, 2026, 7:54 pm

West Ham United 1-1 Manchester United: Premier League – as it happened

Benjamin Šeško rescued a point for Manchester United deep into injury time to keep Michael Carrick’s unbeaten record intact

That version of Bubbles with the bouncy bassline ends, the whistle goes, and Manchester United get the ball rolling. A roar from all four corners.

The teams are out! West Ham United sport their famous claret and blue, while Manchester United wear their second-choice kit of “snowflake … with flashes of purple and lilac.” A rare old noise at the London Stadium ahead of a fixture that delivers, one way or another, more often than not. We’ll be off in a minute!

Published: February 10, 2026, 10:45 pm

Slot says missing out on Champions League is not acceptable but may not lead to the axe

• Manager says this season has been toughest of career

• Liverpool lack right-back options for Sunderland game

Arne Slot believes failure to qualify for the Champions League would be unacceptable for Liverpool this season but might not determine his future at the club.

The Premier League champions lie sixth, five points off fourth place, although fifth is likely to yield a Champions League spot. Liverpool, who spent almost £450m on players last summer, are heavily reliant on Champions League revenue for their self-sustaining business model but have won once in seven league games before Wednesday’s visit to Sunderland.

Published: February 10, 2026, 10:37 pm

Chelsea 2-2 Leeds, Tottenham 1-2 Newcastle, Everton 1-2 Bournemouth: football – as it happened

Newcastle left Tottenham in a relegation battle, while Chelsea threw away. two-goal lead against Leeds

I do still write Leroy Rosenior and need to correct myself.

Liam Rosenior looks chipper.

Published: February 10, 2026, 9:56 pm

Australian snowboarder Cam Bolton airlifted to hospital after breaking neck at Winter Olympics

• Veteran sustains serious injury during Winter Olympics training

• Athlete in good spirits says chef de mission Alisa Camplin

Australia’s Olympic team has been rocked with Cam Bolton airlifted to Milan after breaking his neck in training, ending the veteran snowboarder’s Winter Games campaign.

Competing at his fourth Olympics, the 35-year-old suffered a crash on Monday while training for the snowboard cross event but woke up with worsening pain in his neck the following day.

Published: February 10, 2026, 9:50 pm

Borthwick backs under-pressure Townsend before Calcutta Cup clash

• ‘People should spend more time supporting him’

• Itoje restored as England captain for Six Nations match

Steve Borthwick has called on Scotland supporters to lay off Gregor Townsend before the Calcutta Cup on Saturday, pointing out that his opposite number is his nation’s most successful coach of the professional era.

Townsend is under huge pressure after the defeat against Italy in Rome last weekend came after he bizarrely claimed a report he had agreed to take over at Newcastle Red Bulls after the 2027 World Cup was a ruse designed to distract his side before they welcome England to Murrayfield.

Published: February 10, 2026, 6:28 pm

EFL clubs to vote on expanding Championship playoffs to six clubs

• Vote next month after FA board approves radical plan

• New playoff format would begin as soon as next season

EFL clubs will next month vote on an expansion of the Championship playoffs to six teams after being given approval to pursue the radical change by the Football Association’s board.

The Guardian has learned that the 72 EFL clubs were on Tuesday invited to an extraordinary general meeting on 5 March, when the vote will take place on a new playoff format that would begin next season.

Published: February 10, 2026, 4:23 pm

Winter Olympics 2026 day four: Slovenia win ski jumping gold as Sweden’s Wranå siblings star – as it happened

• Medal table | Live scores and schedule | Results | Briefing

• Follow us over on Bluesky | Get in touch! Mail Geoff

Ooooh, Ariane Raedler of Austria, eighth in the individual event, nails 1:35.65, a time that would’ve been good enough for bronze; she takes the lead, giving Katharina Huber, her partner, a chance in the second portion.

Miradoli of France lays down a quicker time than she did coming 16th in the individual downhill, 1:37.37; I guess she’s used to the course now. Our big names, though, don’t come out for a while: Goggia, who took bronze in the individual event is ninth, Aicher who claimed silver, is doing the slalom portion, and Johnson is 14th with Srobova, Vlhova’s partner, going 28th and last.

Published: February 10, 2026, 8:44 pm

Prediction market Kalshi reached $1bn in trading volume during Super Bowl

Kalshi says ‘incredible weekend’ after $145m in bets on Bad Bunny’s opening song and guests during half-time show

Online prediction market Kalshi hit a daily record on Super Bowl Sunday, surpassing $1bn in trading volume, the company announced on Tuesday.

Kalshi’s CEO, Tarek Mansour, called it an “incredible weekend”, telling CNBC that “Kalshi was the biggest brand of the Super Bowl this year, without running a Super Bowl ad”.

Published: February 10, 2026, 6:28 pm

US figure skater Amber Glenn resolves Winter Olympics music dispute with Canadian artist

• Glenn and Seb McKinnon clear up ‘hiccup’ in process

• Skater to compete next in the women’s singles next week

The US figure skater Amber Glenn said Tuesday that she has resolved copyright concerns with the Canadian recording artist Seb McKinnon after the musician expressed surprise that one of his songs appeared in her Olympic free skate program, closing a brief dispute that underscored the growing complexity of music rights in figure skating.

McKinnon, who releases music under the name CLANN, posted on social media after Glenn performed to his track The Return during the Olympic team event, questioning whether the music had been cleared. He later congratulated Glenn on her team gold medal, and both sides have since described the episode as a misunderstanding rather than a conflict.

Published: February 10, 2026, 1:40 pm