The Winter Olympics came to a crashing halt for Girdwood snowboarder Callan Chythlook-Sifsof on Tuesday, but for biathletes Jeremy Teela of Anchorage and Jay Hakkinen of Kasilof, it's clean-slate time.
As for Palmer's Kerry Weiland, she and the U.S. women's hockey team are rolling toward the semifinals and a possible medal.
The day at a glance:
• Teela dropped from ninth place to 24th place and Hakkinen slipped from 54th to 57th in the 12.5-kilometer men's biathlon pursuit race, with Teela's race marred by a mistake by race officials, who sent him onto the course too early;
• Chythlook-Sifsof crashed in both of her qualifying runs in women's snowboardcross and failed to advance beyond the preliminaries;
• And Weiland was part of a 13-0 rout of Russia in pool-play action, clinching a spot in Monday's semifinals.
Chythlook-Sifsof, the first Alaska Native to make an Olympic team, struggled on a day when thick fog delayed the snowboardcross competition on several occasions at Cypress Mountain, where real snow and winter weather is little more than a rumor.
The 21-year-old fell hard on her back on her first qualifying run and finished with the day's slowest qualifying time. On her second run, she fell again, gamely crawled back up one jump and tried to claw her way up another before abandoning the effort.
It was a hard-luck Olympic debut for a woman who has experienced her share of success on the international stage. Often a finalist or semifinalist at big events -- she made the finals at the Winter X Games earlier this month, though she went on to wipe out -- Chythlook-Sifsof finished well out of the top 16, meaning she didn't make it to the quarterfinals, where four racers go head to head. In qualifying, racers compete one at a time.
The snowboardcross started two hours late and the first qualifying run was halted several times because of rain and fog that made visibility practically non-existent. Rain has been a constant at Cypress Mountain, forcing officials to refund 20,000 tickets because a people were post-holing up to their thighs through soggy bales of straw in the viewing area at the bottom of the mountain.
A couple hours away at Whistler Olympic Park, the men's biathlon ran into trouble too, although not because of the weather.
Officials at the start line sent two racers -- including Teela -- out too early in the staggered-start pursuit format, in which racers start based on their ranking and time in Sunday's 10-kilometer sprint race.
The mistake wasn't discovered until the racers were on course. When the race ended, 22 seconds were added to the two racers' time, dropping Teela from 20th place to 24th place and Canada's Jean-Philippe Leguellec from fifth place to 11th place.
Teela, a three-time Olympian, conceded the mistake didn't cost him a medal, but he showed little sympathy for the race officials responsible.
"If I was in the top five and this happened, I'd still be up there throwing my equipment, and J.P. should be throwing it," said Teela, referring to Leguellec.
"He's 11th, but he had a strategy to race against the guys around him, and it would have been different if he would have known. I'm pretty bummed for myself, but I feel really bad for J.P. This is his home country, his home Olympics."
Teela missed four of the 20 targets, including two in the final stage. The first two misses were all his fault, he said. But he said once he saw an asterisk next to his name on the scoreboard -- meaning something was amiss with his race -- the confusion ultimately impacted his shooting.
"It didn't affect me right away, but it certainly did at the last shooting," Teela said. I've seen the star ... and that indicates that you broke a competition rule somewhere along the way. So while my misses in the first standing were just because I took too much risk, the ones at the last shooting were just a consequence of all that mess."
Hakkinen, racing in his fourth Olympics, escaped all the drama but struggled in the range, missing six shots.
Teela finished in a time of 35 minutes, 45.4 seconds, or 2:07 behind winner Bjorn Ferry of Sweden. Hakkinen finished in 40:33.2.
But Hakkinen's head was in a good place afterward, because he had few expectations coming into the race. He and teammate Lowell Bailey and Tim Burke all raced during a snow squall in Sunday's 10-K and finished deep in the standings, meaning they were way out of contention for even a top-15 finish in the pursuit.
"My race of course wasn't good and I'm not happy about it," he told reporters. "But honestly, I'm glad it is over since we already had a disadvantage because of the conditions in the sprint. I know I am in shape and I am looking forward to the (20-K), because it's down to zero again then.
"We will all have our chance again, and that's what I'm focusing on now."
Weiland, meanwhile, has one more pool-play game -- a Thursday contest against Finland -- before she and the rest of the American hockey players can start focusing on next week's semifinals. Three of the four semifinal teams will go home with medals.
The Americans scored an Olympic-record seven power-play goals Tuesday in the 13-0 win over Russia. Weiland, a defenseman who tallied an assist in a 12-1 win over China, didn't score a point but picked up an interference penalty with five seconds left in the game.
Find Beth Bragg online at adn.com/contact/bbragg or call 257-4335. Daily News wire services contributed to this report.
Photos: Alaskans at the Olympics
By BETH BRAGG
bbragg@adn.com