SOCHI, Russia, Feb. 15 (UPI) -- Highlights from Saturday's action at the Winter Olympics:
-- A meeting of the United States and Russia in hockey is always worth a look and the game they played on Saturday was worth looking at again and again. The players and the crowd acted as if both the Stanley Cup and the Olympics were on the line, which they were not. At the end of a game filled with highlight-reel moments, T.J. Oshie of the St. Louis Blues scored his fourth shootout goal in six attempts to give the Americans a 3-2 win. It is not out of the question the teams could meet again before the Olympics have run their course.
-- Although the hockey game did not turn out as the host country had hoped, Russia did win two gold medals and three overall Saturday. That gives the Russians 15 medals, more than anybody else. The United States and the Netherlands have 14 each, Norway has 13 and both Germany and Canada have 12. With half the Olympics gone, it appears no single country will reach the record 37 medals won by the Americans in Vancouver four years ago.
-- One of Russia's two golds came from Victor Ahn, a short-track skater who was born and grew up in South Korea. He won four Olympic medals while still living in that country and he now has won two medals at these Games as a citizen of Russia. Alexander Tretiakov has always lived in Russia and he won the other gold for the home team in the skeleton.
-- The men's 1,500-meter speed skating race was so close the scoring system at first declared it a tie. Then it changed its mind. Zbigniew Brodka was declared the winner by .003 of a second over Koen Verweig of the Netherlands. It was the 13th medal out of 21 awarded in speed skating for the Dutch team. The Netherlands did finally win a medal somewhere other than in speed skating. It was a bronze in short-track speed skating.
-- Zhou Yang of China became the ninth athlete at the Sochi Games to successfully defend her Olympic title. She did so in the 1,500-meter short-track race. American Emily Scott was taken out of that race in a crash. Poland's Kamil Stoch will have two championships to defend at the next Olympics since he won his second gold medal of these games in the large hill ski jumping event.
-- Charlotte Kalla of Sweden began her anchor leg of the women's 4x5-kilometer cross-country relay 25.7 seconds behind. She had to make up a little more than five seconds for each kilometer of skiing, which is not as easy as it sounds when world-class athletes are involved. She passed skiers from Germany and Finland in the home stretch, however, and won the race by less than a second. Kalla became the first triple medalist of the 2014 Olympics.
-- Anna Fenninger of Austria won the super-giant slalom race to give her country its second gold and third overall medal in the alpine events. The Austrians are within one of equaling their entire alpine total from the 2010 Olympics.
