By DAVE SKRETTA, Associated Press Sports Writer

MILAN (AP) — The International Skating Union says it stands by the judging of ice dance at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, where the scores from the French judge earlier this week played a big role in the French couple of Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron beating the American team of Madison Chock and Evan Bates.

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The judge, Jezabel Dabouis, favored Beaudry and Cizeron by nearly eight points over the three-time world champions in the free dance, a margin so large that if her score was removed from the equation entirely, Chock and Bates would have won gold.

“It is normal for there to be a range of scores given by different judge in any panel and a number of mechanism are used to mitigate these variations,” the ISU said, adding it has “full confidence in the scores given and remains completely committed to fairness.”

There is little recourse for the U.S. team if the global governing body is unwilling to investigate the scoring discrepancy.

This is not the first time Dabouis has turned in questionable scores for Beaudry and Cizeron. At the Grand Prix Final in December, when Chock and Bates beat them in their only other head-to-head matchup, the judge had the Americans narrowly beating them in the free dance despite two deductions, including an egregious fall. The French team wound up with a silver medal.

Dabouis also had a wide margin favoring the French couple in the Olympic rhythm dance, when they also beat the U.S. team.

“Any time the public is confused by results, it does a disservice to our sport,” said Chock, who along with Bates won a second straight team gold medal earlier in the Games. “I think it’s hard to retain fans when it’s difficult to understand what is happening on the ice.

“People need to understand what they’re cheering for and be able to feel confident in the sport that they’re supporting.”

The most famous judging controversy in Olympic figure skating also involved a French judge.

During the 2002 Salt Lake Games, Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze of Russia won gold over the Canadian pair Jamie Sale and David Pelletier. But allegations of vote-swapping and selling of votes by French judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne led to an investigation by the ISU and the International Olympic Committee, and she was ultimately found guilty of misconduct and suspended.

Sale and Pelletier ultimately were elevated to gold while the Russian pair was allowed to keep their medals.

Two years later, the ISU eliminated its 6.0 judging system due to its inherent subjectivity. The replacement system, which has been tweaked over the years but remains in place, features two scores added together: one where each element is graded off a base value to establish a technical score and another where judges provide a component score for overall skating skill and performance.

Many critics have called the system overly confusing and still too subjective, and more than 10,000 people had signed a Change.org petition by Friday asking the ISU and IOC to investigate the latest scoring controversy.

“We did speak to our coach, and we did talk to each other, and we know how we felt on center ice after we skated,” Bates said. “We felt like we delivered our absolute best performance that we could have. It was our Olympic moment. It felt like a winning skate to us and that’s what we’re going to hold on to.”

By DEREK GATOPOULOS and BRIAN MELLEY, Associated Press

TESERO, Italy (AP) — Friday the 13th will be remembered as a lucky day for Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo. Norway’s cross-country skiing star won an eighth gold medal at the Milan Cortina Olympics Friday, tying an all‑time Winter Games record. The 29‑year‑old claimed victory in the men’s 10 kilometer interval‑start race, for his third gold at the 2026 games.

Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, of Norway, competes in the cross country skiing men’s 10km interval start free at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

Will three races still ahead of him, Klaebo now shares the record with three other Norwegian athletes who have all retired: Marit Bjoergen and Bjoern Daehlie in cross-country skiing and Ole Einar Bjoerndalen in the biathlon. Klaebo again gained vital ground in the final hill and clocked 20 minutes, 36.2 seconds, showing rare signs of fatigue as he collapsed at the finish line of the race considered to be his toughest challenge.

He was 4.9 seconds head of Frances’s Mathis Desloges and 14 in front of his main challenger Einar Hedegart also of Norway who lost momentum on the last hill.

“It’s a special day,” Klaebo said. “This one means a lot for sure … I’m lost for words.”

The Norwegian said he was happy with his tactics, racing the first half of the course with a controlled pace, saving energy for a burst up the last hill and home stretch.

“It was really hard out there today so I’m very proud,” he said.

Over at the French camp, athletes and team officials celebrated as if they had one the race, linking arms and dancing on the snow after underdog Mathis Desloges won his second silver medal, competing at his first Olympics at Milan Cortina. “I trained incredibly hard for these races,” Desloges said. “I told people I was at this level — and now we are delivering.” The 23-year-old Frenchman, like many other top racers in the interval start, was mostly unaware of his position during the race.

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“I don’t really pay attention to what’s being shouted from the sidelines,” he said. “Honestly, I don’t listen to them. I just focus on my race. I know what I have to do and I give it everything.” On a blue-sky day in northern Italy, with the race track surrounded by the snow-capped Dolomite mountains, temperatures hovered around 5 degrees Celsius (41 Fahrenheit). A few racers chose to compete wearing only their race bibs.

Organizers had treated the course with salt Thursday to harden the surface but left it untouched Friday — a decision that favored Klaebo, who started early among the seeded skiers. Celebrations were led by Norwegian fans: national flags — red with a blue cross outlined in white — were draped over athletes and the railing on the spectators’ area. Klaebo’s grandfather, Kare Hoesflot, who helped launch his career traveled to northern Italy to watch the race, while messages of congratulations poured in from back home, where cross-country skiing is a prime time sport.

“Another show of strength from Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo. What a performance in a thriller of a race! Congratulations on gold number three in these Olympics!,” Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere wrote on social media. Finn Dahl, a retired marketing manager from Norway, watched Klaebo win, and credited his success to relentless hard work.

“He’s so dedicated. He sacrificed everything in terms of training, how he eats, how he sleeps and calms down after races,” he said.

“It’s fantastic … he’s up to eight now,” Dahl said. “I hope he’ll be the biggest winner ever.”

Another round of U.S.-brokered talks between envoys from Russia and Ukraine will take place next week in Geneva, days ahead of the fourth anniversary of the all-out Russian invasion of its neighbor, officials in Moscow and Kyiv said on Friday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, centre, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, centre left, attend their visit of drone producing company Quantum Frontline Industries near Munich, Germany, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (Sven Hoppe/dpa via AP)

The meeting will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s communications adviser, Dmytro Lytvyn, confirmed the new round of negotiations.

The talks take place against a backdrop of continued fighting along the roughly 1,250-kilometer (750-mile) front line, relentless Russian bombardment of civilian areas of Ukraine and the country’s power grid, and Kyiv’s almost daily long-range drone attacks on war-related assets on Russian soil.

Previous U.S.-led efforts to find consensus on ending the war, most recently two rounds of talks in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, have failed to resolve difficult issues, such as the future of Ukraine’s Donbas industrial heartland that is largely occupied by Russian forces.

Zelenskyy said last week that the United States has given Ukraine and Russia a June deadline to reach a deal. Previous deadlines given by U.S. President Donald Trump have passed largely without consequence.

Zelenskyy was in Munich, Germany, on Friday and visited the first joint Ukrainian-German company for the production of drones. Germany has been a major backer of Ukraine in the war.

He was also due to hold bilateral and multilateral meetings at the Munich Security Conference, an annual gathering of top international security figures.

The negotiators heading to Geneva have the tough task of finding compromises that are palatable to both Moscow and Kyiv.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin’s adviser Vladimir Medinsky, who headed Moscow’s team of negotiators in the first direct peace talks with Ukraine in Istanbul in March 2022, is returning to lead Moscow’s delegation.

The previous two rounds of trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi reportedly focused on military issues, such as a possible buffer zone and ceasefire monitoring. The return of Medinsky, who has pushed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s maximalist conditions for peace, could mark a shift toward political issues in the next round of talks.

Ukraine’s delegation will again be led by Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council chief.

The grim war of attrition is continuing while the two sides negotiate.

Overnight from Thursday to Friday, a Russian strike killed three brothers between 8 and 19 years of age in eastern Ukraine, authorities said. Their mother and grandmother survived but sustained multiple injuries, the Donetsk regional prosecutor’s office said.

In Odesa, one person was killed and six more injured in a Russian strike at the city’s port and energy infrastructure, officials said.

The Russian Defense Ministry said on Friday its air defenses shot down 58 Ukrainian drones over several Russian regions and annexed Crimea during the night.

Of those, 43 were brought down in the Volgograd region of southwestern Russia, where three people, including a 12-year-old boy, were injured by drone debris, according to the local governor. Ukraine has recently targeted the Volgograd oil refinery.

By MARCIA DUNN, Associated Press Aerospace Writer

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A new crew rocketed toward the International Space Station on Friday to replace the astronauts who returned to Earth early in NASA’s first medical evacuation.

SpaceX launched the replacements as soon as possible at NASA’s request, sending the U.S., French and Russian astronauts on an expected eight- to nine-month mission stretching until fall. The four should arrive at the orbiting lab on Saturday, filling the vacancies left by their evacuated colleagues last month and bringing the space station back to full staff.

“It turns out Friday the 13th is a very lucky day,” SpaceX Launch Control radioed once the astronauts reached orbit. “That was quite a ride,” replied the crew’s commander, Jessica Meir.

NASA had to put spacewalks on hold and deferred other duties while awaiting the arrival of Americans Meir and Jack Hathaway, France’s Sophie Adenot and Russia’s Andrei Fedyaev. They’ll join three other astronauts — one American and two Russians — who kept the space station running the past month.

Satisfied with medical procedures already in place, NASA ordered no extra checkups for the crew ahead of liftoff and no new diagnostic equipment was packed. An ultrasound machine already up there for research went into overdrive on Jan. 7 when used on the ailing crew member. NASA has not revealed the ill astronaut’s identity or health issue. All four returning astronauts went straight to the hospital after splashing down in the Pacific near San Diego.

It was the first time in 65 years of human spaceflight that NASA cut short a mission for medical reasons.

With missions becoming longer, NASA is constantly looking at upgrades to the space station’s medical gear, said deputy program manager Dina Contella. “But there are a lot of things that are just not practical and so that’s when you need to bring astronauts home from space,” she said earlier this week.

In preparation for moon and Mars trips where health care will be even more challenging, the new arrivals will test a filter designed to turn drinking water into emergency IV fluid, try out an ultrasound system that relies on artificial intelligence and augmented reality instead of experts on the ground, and perform ultrasound scans on their jugular veins in a blood clot study.

They also will demonstrate their moon-landing skills in a simulated test.

Adenot is only the second French woman to launch to space. She was 14 when Claudie Haignere flew to Russia’s space station Mir in 1996, inspiring her to become an astronaut. Haignere cheered her on from the Florida launch site, wishing her “Bon vol,” French for “Have a good flight,” and “Ad astra,” Latin for “To the stars.”

“I thought it would have been a quiet joy with pride for Sophie, but it was so hugely emotional to see her with a successful launch,” Haignere said.

Hathaway, like Adenot, is new to space, while Meir and Fedyaev are making their second station trip. Just before liftoff, Fedyaev led the crew in a cry of “Poyekhali” — Russian for “Let’s Go” — the word uttered at liftoff by the world’s first person in space, the Soviet Union’s Yuri Gagarin, in 1961.

On her first mission in 2019, Meir took part in the first all-female spacewalk. The other half of that spacewalk, Christina Koch, is among the four Artemis II astronauts waiting to fly around the moon as early as March. A ship-to-ship radio linkup is planned between the two crews.

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Meir wasn’t sure astronauts would return to the moon during her career. “Now we’re right here on the precipice of the Artemis II mission,” she said ahead of liftoff. “The fact that they will be in space at the same time as us … it’s so cool to be an astronaut now, it’s so exciting.”

SpaceX launched the latest crew from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Elon Musk’s company is preparing its neighboring Kennedy Space Center launch pad for the super-sized Starships, which NASA needs to land astronauts on the moon.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.