Day 12 of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics

Team USA was stunned by Slovakia 3-2 in the men's ice hockey quarterfinals at Beijing 2022 on Wednesday.

Slovakia, bidding for its first Olympic medal in the event, advanced to the last four after winning a nail-biting shootout in a dramatic conclusion to the game.

With the game tied 2-2 after overtime, Peter Cehlarik was the only man to convert his effort as Slovakia goalie Patrik Rybar stopped all five of Team USA's shots.

Though the US will be frustrated that they weren't able to see the game out, they remained proud of what the young team achieved — many of the athletes representing the US are still playing college ice hockey.

"Hockey is a game of inches," said Team USA's Steven Kampfer. "They (Slovakia) played well, they stuck to their identity, and when it comes to a shootout there isn't really that much you can do."

It came down to the wire, but in the end, South Korea's Choi Min-jeong held off her closest rivals to win gold in the women's 1500m speed skating final.

The defending champion — who had set a new Olympic record in the discipline in a semifinal earlier in the day — finished just milliseconds ahead of Italy's Arianna Fontana and the Netherlands' Suzanne Schulting.

Finishing with a time of 2:17.81, Choi won her third medal of Beijing 2022 and her third gold medal of her Olympic career.

It required a photo finish to separate Fontana and Schulting, but Fontana just about held on to silver, the 31-year-old's 11th Olympic medal.

Fontana, the most decorated short track speed skater in Olympic history, becomes Italy's most decorated Winter Olympian with her silver medal.

For Schulting, her bronze medal was the end of her quest for the women's speed skating gold medal hat-trick, after gold's in the women's 1000m and the women's 3000m relay.

Charles Hamelin's glittering career had a fairytale ending as the veteran speed skater helped Canada win gold in the men's short track speed skating 5,000m relay.

The 37-year-old, who is competing at his fifth Winter Games, said in the build up to these Olympics that he plans to retire after Beijing 2022.

This win gives Hamelin his fourth career Winter Olympics gold medal and sixth overall, having also won a silver and bronze.

Alongside Hamelin were Jordan Pierre-Gilles, Steven Dubois and Pascal Dion, who held off South Korea in second place.

There was a photo finish for bronze, with Italy pipping the Russian Olympic Committee on the line.

Qi Guangpu took home the gold medal for host country China in the men's freestyle aerials final, emulating the success of compatriot Xu Mengtao who won gold in the women's event.

The visibly emotional Guangpu was in a league of his own, posting a huge final score of 129.00 that wasn't even close to being challenged.

Ukraine's Oleksandr Abramenko, gold medalist four years ago in PyeongChang, took the silver with a score of 116.50.

The Russian Olympic Committee's Ilia Burov took home the bronze with a final jump of 114.93 to add to his bronze from PyeongChang.

Belgian Alpine skier Dries Van Den Broecke only thought of his brother and father when he crashed out of the men’s giant slalom event, thinking he may need medical help.

And help would not have been too far since his father and brother are two of the 12 foreign doctors on site at the National Alpine Skiing Centre, helping the local medical team ensure any on-course injuries are attended to as quickly as possible.  

Having his family close is of great comfort to the skier, who is also competing in the slalom on Wednesday. Van Den Broecke, who put Belgium on the Alpine map by taking slalom silver at the 2012 Youth Olympic Games, says he is not the star in the family.

“It’s not me as the star,” he said. “All the doctors here know them pretty well so when I pass by they go, ’Oh, you are from Belgium, you know Robin, you know Robin?’”

His brother, a trauma specialist, but also a former junior world championship skier, has already had to put his skills to use, working with Swiss skier Yannick CHABLOZ, who broke his forearm and shoulder blade during the downhill portion of the Alpine combined. 

Wouter, a member of the International Ski Federation (FIS) medical commission, is naturally a proud father. 

Finland comfortably eased past Switzerland 5-1 to reach the semifinals of the men's ice hockey competition.

They join the Russian Olympic Committee and Slovakia, who stunned the USA on penalties earlier on Wednesday, in the final four.

Sweden and Canada face off later this afternoon for the fourth semifinal berth.

After a tense finish in the women's event, there was no such drama in the final straight of the men's team sprint classic as Norway's Johannes Høsflot Klæbo powered away from the field to finish more than 15 meters clear of his nearest rival.

It's a remarkable fifth Winter Olympics gold medal for Klæbo -- his second of Beijing 2022 -- who, at just 25 years of age, is already considered one of the greatest cross-country sprint skiers of all time.

Teammate Erik Valnes was there to greet Klæbo as he crossed the finish line to clinch Norway's 13th gold of these Games.

Finland finished a distant second to take the silver medal, with the Russian Olympic Committee taking bronze.

Curling at Beijing 2022 has been almost a daily event, with men and women lacing up to slide their rocks around at the National Aquatics Centre.

And after a while, it's beginning to have an effect on some of the maneuvers athletes need to perform.

According to Team GB's Bruce Mouat, getting down low and stretching his legs is where he's most feeling it now after almost 12 consecutive days on the ice.

“I think it’s maybe lunging, you do that a lot when you’re sliding. You obviously got a wee bit of fatigue there," he said after his GB team beat the ROC 8-6 in the men's curling round robin on Wednesday.

“Body feels really good, mind as well. I’m in a really good head space. I feel like I’m playing really well."

But Mouat says he'd happily keep playing the sport he loves for as long as possible.

“I love curling so if I get to do that for a month straight, then I’ll do it for a month straight.”

The Winter Olympics are a global Games for athletes, but that's also true of the people working behind the scenes at Beijing 2022.

Canadians Mark Peter Messer and Matthew James Messer are the men responsible for ice making at the National Speed Skating Oval.

Both worked on the ice in PyeongChang in 2018, and four years later they've been intent on providing record-breaking surfaces.

But, Mark -- widely regarded as the finest ice-maker on the planet -- believes that the ice in the National Speed Skating Oval is even faster than the one they made in South Korea, as evidenced by the fact a number of Olympic speed skating records have already been broken in Beijing.

“We have been very successful with our records," he said during a press conference. "We have records in almost every distance. We’re getting very good feedback from the athletes and from the coaches that we have made a good surface for them to perform on."

A process that began almost immediately after the last Winter Olympics, they have been working with a small team from Canada alongside local ice-makers in China to ensure the ice is maintained after the games.

Then the Covid-19 pandemic struck.

“As the pandemic started to hit, we started doing longer trips but less work, because we would do quarantining before and quarantining when we got back to Canada, so it created some challenges there, for sure," said Mark.

"Some of the trips we would have done, we didn’t do because of the restrictions. So we did more work over Zoom calls and technology calls.

“We had some challenges, for sure. We did not have a lot of experience before the Games where we could learn. Usually, if you open a building, it takes you three or four or five years to really understand how everything works together.

“There are the effects of the air, the effects of the humidity, the lights, the people that come in. There are many factors that affect the quality of the ice and we did not have a big opportunity to learn that because with the pandemic that’s going on we did not have the opportunity to have the test events.

“We had some small test events, and we appreciated the people that came for those. We learned some small stuff, but most of the learning that we did we had to make as soon as the Olympic athletes came."

As well as making the fastest circuit possible, both men have been tasked with making the National Speed Skating Oval as environmentally friendly as they could.

“The CO2 refrigeration that we are using here is very efficient, much more user-friendly as far as the environment (is concerned), and it’s definitely the way that things should be proceeding in the future," said Mark.

"The HFC (hydroflourocarbons) refrigerants that are used in many of the older buildings will be slowly phased out and this will be the way that it happens in the next few years.

“We had to re-design a lot of the refrigeration so that we could incorporate the CO2 system into the building, which as I said before was a brilliant move. It’s been so successful having that system.

"That was something that took a little bit longer to design, but was well worth the effort.

“This technology is going to be used extensively moving forward. There’s a push to go to natural refrigeration, so C02, ammonia, are two of the main ones that of course we’ll get back to.”