Winter Olympics 2014, Day 3: Sage Kotsenburg wins USA’s first gold

NBC’s primetime Sochi Olympics telecast on Saturday averaged 25.1 million viewers, according to a network release, down four percent from its coverage of the opening Saturday of the 2010 Vancouver games.

NBC, of course, would rather focus on the fact that Saturday’s viewership was an eight percent increase over the opening Saturday of the 2006 Torino Games. Sochi’s household ratings were also up three percent over Torino and held relatively even with Vancouver.

While Canada, Germany and the United States dominated the medal table during the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Norway has stormed out of the gates in the Sochi games to take an early lead in the medal count.

On Saturday, five different medal events took place with a total of 15 medals awarded. Norway walked away with four of those medals, including two golds in skiing. First, Ole Einar Bjoerndalen won gold in the men’s biathlon 10km sprint. Later on, Marit Bjoergen won gold in the women’s skiathlon.

If skis are your thing, and how could they not be, today was a good day; four of the day’s nine events were on skis, and to the surprise of virtually nobody, Scandinavia showed up big.

In women’s skiathlon (7.5 km classic, 7.5 km free), Marit Bjoergen of Norway eked out the gold medal with a time of 38 minutes, 33.6 seconds—just 1.8 ticks faster than silver medalist Charlotte Kalla of Sweden. Norway’s Heidi Weng came in third. Think about that: more than 38 minutes of insanely grueling endurance activity (see photo below), and the margin of victory comes down to less than two seconds.