A strong response Tuesday has Team Peterson one win away from securing a spot in the Olympic medal round.

United States’ Tabitha Peterson in action during the women’s curling round robin session against Denmark, at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)

A day after falling to previously winless Italy, the Americans stepped back onto the ice and smashed Denmark, 10-3, to improve to 5-2 in women’s curling round robin action with two matches to play.

A win over either Great Britain on Wednesday or Switzerland on Thursday would clinch a spot in the top four of the round robin standings, moving the U.S. into Friday’s semifinals in Italy.

Even if the U.S. loses both matches, there’s a strong chance the Americans would still advance via tiebreakers. They’ve beaten the teams currently occupying the No. 4-6 spots in the standings heading into Wednesday’s action.

The Americans stole two points in the sixth end to take a commanding 6-2 lead. Denmark responded with a point in the seventh, but the U.S. used the hammer to score four in the eighth end to put the match out of reach and cause Denmark to concede.

Team Peterson — which features East Metro sisters Tabitha and Tara Peterson, as well as former Gopher Taylor Anderson-Heide and Duluth’s Cory Thiesse, the latter of whom won a silver in mixed doubles earlier in these Olympics — is seeking to become the first-ever U.S. women’s curling team to medal in the Olympics.

Standings through Tuesday’s matches

1: Sweden (6-1)

T-2: USA (5-2)

T-2: Switzerland (5-2)

T-4: South Korea (4-3)

T-4: Canada (4-3)

6: Denmark (3-4)

T-7: China (2-4)

T-7: Great Britain (2-4)

9: Italy (2-5)

10: Japan (1-6)

By DAVID A. LIEB, Associated Press

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Agrochemical maker Bayer and attorneys for cancer patients announced a proposed $7.25 billion settlement Tuesday to resolve thousands of U.S. lawsuits alleging the company failed to warn people that its popular weedkiller Roundup could cause cancer.

The proposed settlement comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is preparing to hear arguments on Bayer’s assertion that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of Roundup without a cancer warning should invalidate claims filed in state courts. That case would not be affected by the proposed settlement.

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But the settlement would eliminate some of the risk from an eventual and uncertain Supreme Court ruling — both for Bayer and for patients seeking damages.

Germany-based Bayer, which acquired Roundup maker Monsanto in 2018, disputes the assertion that the weedkiller’s key ingredient, glyphosate, can cause non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. But the company has warned that mounting legal costs are threatening its ability to continue selling the product in U.S. agricultural markets.

“Litigation uncertainly has plagued the company for years, and this settlement gives the company a road to closure,” Bayer CEO Bill Anderson said Tuesday.

The proposed settlement was filed in St. Louis Circuit Court in Missouri, home to Bayer’s North America crop science division and the state where many of the lawsuits have been brought. The settlement still needs the court’s approval.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The Ukrainian skeleton racer who was disqualified from the Milan Cortina Olympics was given a gift of more than $200,000 on Tuesday to help him keep competing and advocating for his country.

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Vladislav Heraskevych was barred from Olympic competition last week because he insisted on wearing a “helmet of memory” adorned with images of more than 20 Ukrainian athletes and coaches killed during the country’s war with Russia.

Ukrainian businessman Rinat Akhmetov — the owner of the Shakhtar Donetsk soccer club and the Azovstal steel works in Mariupol — gave the money to Heraskevych from his charity foundation. The amount is equal to what the country’s Olympic gold medalists would get.

“Vlad Heraskevych was denied the opportunity to compete for victory at the Olympic Games, yet he returns to Ukraine a true winner,” Akhmetov said in a statement. “The respect and pride he has earned among Ukrainians through his actions are the highest reward.

Ukraine’s Vladyslav Heraskevych arrives at the finish during a men’s skeleton training session at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

“At the same time, I want him to have enough energy and resources to continue his sporting career, as well as to fight for truth, freedom and the remembrance of those who gave their lives for Ukraine.”

The money is set to be paid to the 27-year-old Heraskevych’s charity foundation “to ensure the athlete and his coaching staff have the necessary resources to continue their sporting career and their advocacy for Ukraine on the international stage,” a statement on behalf of Akhmetov’s foundation said.

Ukrainian skeleton athlete Vladyslav Heraskevych speaks to the media amid an ongoing appeal hearing in Milan, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Stefanie Dazio)

Shakhtar Donetsk regularly plays in the Champions League despite being exiled from its home city and the $400 million Donbas Arena since 2014, when the Russian-backed conflict began in eastern Ukraine.

AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

By TIM REYNOLDS, AP Sports Writer

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — It was a couple of weeks before Christmas. Elana Meyers Taylor was in Norway, prepping for a World Cup bobsled weekend. Things were going horribly. Her body was hurting, she wondered if she was doing right by her two deaf children, and the racing results were, well, bad.

So, she texted her husband. The message: I’m done.

“This is just impossible,” the U.S. bobsledding great wrote. “It’s never going to work.”

Funny how an Olympic gold medal changes things. Barely two months after nearly quitting — her husband, former bobsledder Nic Taylor, flew to Norway after those texts to talk her out of it — Meyers Taylor won the women’s monobob gold medal at the Milan Cortina Games. And she was back on the ice Tuesday, prepping with Jadin O’Brien for the two-woman race that starts Friday.

“The only thing that has really changed is I’m sleep-deprived now,” Meyers Taylor said. “I’m an Olympic gold medalist with a lack of sleep.”

That’s a good problem to have.

At 41, she became the oldest woman to win an individual gold medal in Winter Games history. (Anette Norberg, then 43, was on the Swedish team that won curling gold at the 2010 Vancouver Games.) Meyers Taylor’s sixth career Olympic medal tied Bonnie Blair for the most by a U.S. woman in the Winter Games, and it also extended her record for most medals by a Black woman in the winter showcase.

“Oh, I don’t think I’m going to process this for a while,” Meyers Taylor said. “There were so many moments during this entire season, during this past four years, that we just thought it was impossible, or I thought it wasn’t possible. My team around me believed in me the entire time.”

Turns out, so did her husband’s team. Nic Taylor is now a performance coach and works with the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs. When a Spurs player — the couple won’t say who — learned Meyers Taylor was struggling, Nic Taylor was gifted a plane ticket and told go to Norway immediately.

Without that gift, who knows what would have happened.

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“As soon as I saw that E had won, I just started screaming, jumping, hugging anyone who was close. Almost passed out because I was excited,” said O’Brien, a bobsled rookie who was recruited to the team last fall by Meyers Taylor — and now is an Olympian. “Without a doubt, the coolest sports moment I’ve ever been part of.”

To put that praise in perspective — “the coolest sports moment” she’s ever been part of — consider that O’Brien won three NCAA indoor track championships in pentathlon at Notre Dame and was a 10-time All-American there.

“Yeah, that’s saying something,” O’Brien said. “It was beyond incredible.”

Meyers Taylor, just in case, spent part of Monday before the final two monobob runs teaching her two sons sign language for various terms — like gold medal, and Olympic champion. She insists that she didn’t think they would actually need to use them.

They’re going to get used a lot going forward. The boys — Nico, 5, and Noah, 3 — evidently knew what was happening. The coolest thing that happened in Day 1 as a gold medalist, Meyers Taylor said, was Noah putting on the gold medal.

“He knew. He started signing, ‘Noah, champion,’” Meyers Taylor said. “I didn’t get it on video because he wasn’t wearing pants, of course, because what toddler wants to wear pants?”

It’s somewhat understandable that Meyers Taylor didn’t think her kids would need to know terms like “gold medal.” Her results this season didn’t exactly make it seem likely.

She was 10th in the World Cup monobob standings; eight women won medals on the circuit this winter and she wasn’t one of them. Her average finish was 10th and her result at Cortina during a race on the Olympic track in November was 19th — a whopping 2.43 seconds behind the winning time.

And her Olympic history was simultaneously filled with heartbreak and accomplishment. At the 2014 Sochi Games, she led Kaillie Humphries Armbruster — then from Canada, now her U.S. teammate and the bronze medalist on Monday night — going into the final run of the two-woman race. She lost the final run by 0.21 seconds, enough to lose the gold medal by 0.10 seconds. Then at the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics, she lost the two-woman race by 0.07 seconds.

Monday’s race was even closer — the margin between Meyers Taylor and silver medalist Laura Nolte of Germany was just 0.04 seconds.

But this time, she got it done.

“That’s a moment I’ve been working for every four years and that’s why I came back is for that moment, to be on that start line and feel that again,” Meyers Taylor said. “That is a crazy addictive feeling and I don’t know where I’m going to get it from after I leave this sport.”

There’s the retirement talk again.

She and her husband want a third child. Meyers Taylor has said countless times that she feels lucky to have her kids on tour, but it’s a daunting task, even with a nanny there to assist. Traveling with three might be too much.

Besides, there’s nothing else to prove. She’s won everything the sport offers.

“I was determined to keep fighting, determined to just put down the best runs I could,” Meyers Taylor said. “And look what happened.”

AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics