U.S. Men's hockey overtime win and the Olympic sport that produces the best athletes
Up First from NPR
NPR
4.6 • 59K Ratings
🗓️ 19 February 2026
⏱️ 32 minutes
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a special edition of Up First. We have our gold medal team in Italy, and they're here to talk about the big storylines. |
| 0:06.0 | You'll hear about the big names, such as Michaela Schifrin and Jordan Stoles, and all things Team USA. |
| 0:11.8 | I mean, Martinez, and you're listening to an audio sneak peek of a first winner games, a new video podcast from NPR during the Olympics. |
| 0:19.1 | New episodes will post throughout the games |
| 0:20.8 | at YouTube.com slash NPR. |
| 0:24.0 | Stay with us for a preview of the show. |
| 0:28.1 | The overtime thriller on the ice |
| 0:30.5 | as Team USA survives a sudden death face-off |
| 0:33.3 | against Sweden and skates on to the men's hockey semi-final. |
| 0:39.1 | NPR's Becky Sullivan was there. |
| 0:44.0 | Sweden turned the puck over a couple times, which led to these quick breaks for the Americans, |
| 0:48.2 | and of course set up that awesome game winner by Quinn Hughes, which was just like marvelous. |
| 0:53.1 | The arena went nuts. It was so fun. Handle with care. You've probably seen the stories about Olympic medals breaking. |
| 0:55.4 | What's causing this glitch in the glory? NPR's Juliana Kim finds out. |
| 1:00.2 | For a long part of Olympic Games, medals weren't intended to be worn. |
| 1:06.0 | They were actually just meant to be like in a nice box that you admire from afar, which I probably do because |
| 1:13.6 | I break a lot of things. So he says that this is kind of an age-old question of how to make |
| 1:19.5 | metals wearable. Plus which Olympic sport produces the best athletes? Yeah, you can go ahead and put |
| 1:25.3 | your guess in the comments now. However, NPR's |
| 1:28.5 | John Lambert has the right answer, and it's all backed by science. There's this metric for, |
| 1:34.3 | that kind of captures aerobic capacity that scientists measure. It's called V-O-2 Max. |
| 1:39.0 | V-O-2 Max. Yes. Everyone is talking about VOTU-2 Max. I'm Mier, Martinez, and this is up first winter games. |
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