Pain is the name of Emily Cook’s Games

For veteran Emily Cook, the Olympics have been a case study of pain management.

The 30-year-old freestyler from Park City, Utah, has been dealing with the lingering pain of a bruised left heel, which has limited her practice time at Cypress Mountain.

She will test it on Saturday morning in qualifying for women’s aerials. The favorites in the competition include Nina Li of China, her countrywoman MengtaoXu and Lydia Lassila of Australia. Li was the silver medalist four years ago in Turin.

“It’s kind of the same,” Cook said Thursday after her training jumps. “It’s manageable. I’ve jumped in worse pain than this, to be honest.”

The injury has kept Cook out of the last two World Cup events.

-- Lisa Dillman

Four broken ribs

Slovenian cross-country skier Petra Majdic is out for the season with four broken ribs and a collapsed lung, injuries she sustained before her bronze-medal performance in the individual classical sprint.

Majdic crashed during training before Wednesday’s sprint, falling on a sharp curve and tumbling off the course, then sliding on her back down a three-meter slope and onto some rocks.

On Friday, the Slovenian team said it has filed a protest with Olympic organizers arguing there was not enough protection in place to prevent such accidents.

“We think that the course was not technically correct,” Slovenian team spokesman Branislav Dimitrovic said. “It was not protected in the right places.”

After her fall, Majdic insisted on competing, and she skied with her face twisted in pain and then crumpled to the snow after finishing. She was taken to a clinic but was cleared to compete. Dimitrovic said the fractures were missed in an ultrasound scan.

-- associated press

Lago goes home

American halfpipe bronze medalist Scotty Lago headed home from the Olympics after risque pictures of him taken at a party after he was awarded his medal showed up on the Internet site TMZ.com.

Lago apologized to officials at the U.S. Olympic Committee and the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Assn. and voluntarily decided to return home.

-- associated press

Ski jumping

The United States advanced two jumpers out of qualifying and into the final round of the large-hill competition. Nick Alexander had the 28th-best score (combination of distance and judges’ marks) and Peter Frenette was 30th. U.S. jumper Andres Johnson just missed by finishing 42nd. The top 40 jumpers advance.

Noriaki Kasai and Daiki Ito, both from Japan, had the highest qualification scores.

-- associated press

Cross country

Marit Bjoergen of Norway became the first double gold-medal winner of the Games when she won the 15-kilometer pursuit race. Bjoergen also won on Wednesday in the individual classic sprint.

Anna Haag of Sweden was second and Justyna Kowalczyk of Poland, the favorite, was third.

-- John Cherwa

Curling

Nothing can heat up curling like a skip controversy, and that’s what we’ve got. U.S. coach Phill Drobnick benched the men’s skip -- John Shuster -- and replaced him with alternate Chris Plys. It seemed like the right move, too, as the U.S. won its first match, 4-3, over France. It moved the U.S. men into ninth place in the 10-team completion with a 1-4 record.

On the women’s side, the U.S. also won its first game with a 6-4 last-end win over Russia.

-- John Cherwa