5 favorite moments from Monday at the Sochi Olympics

Story highlights

After almost two decades together, U.S. figure skaters win gold

Bode Miller cried Sunday, but he was sympathetic on Monday over a controversial post-race interview

Steven Holcomb will bring back another historic bobsled medal

What's better? Three gold medals or being given the title "Hero of Belarus"?

CNN  — 

United States + favorite hasn’t necessarily =’d gold, but it sure did Monday. Also, Bode Miller is being quite the gentleman about how NBC treated him after his race, and even giant blowers couldn’t help keep the weather from causing a damper.

Still holding hands

Meryl Davis and Charlie White started as partners while still in elementary school. They lived 10 minutes apart. Their parents were good friends. They went to the same skating club.

That was 17 years ago. They are still a team. A gold-medal-winning ice dance team.

They were sure-bets to win, and they didn’t even come close to disappointing anyone in Sochi.

They dazzled the audience to convincingly defeat their rivals and training mates from Canada, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir.

The gold was the first in ice dance for the United States, which has seven first-place finishes in past men’s and women’s competitions at the Olympics. The 15 golds are the most of any nation.

“Not really sure how to express (how it feels to win),” White said. “It’s something that you dream about. It’s been an amazing journey.”

The journey included sharing a coach with Virtue and Moir as they trained together in Michigan.

“We have been pushing each other and learning from each other not just for the last four years, but since 2006,” Davis said. “We learned so much from Tessa and Scott, and the training on a daily basis is what’s been pushing us.”

Bode says it’s OK

If Bode Miller is upset with NBC over an interview that ended with him in tears, he’s being very diplomatic about it.

If you missed it, Miller won a bronze in the men’s super-G alpine skiing race Sunday. After the race, NBC reporter Christin Cooper asked him about his emotions and stuck with the questions after Miller teared up talking about his brother, Chelone, a snowboarder with his own Olympic aspirations who died last year at age 29.

Miller – who ended up unable to speak, doubled over and crying – said Monday he doesn’t blame her for asking the questions.

“Pushing is part of it, she wasn’t trying to cause pain,” he wrote on Twitter.

He also went on NBC, telling Matt Lauer that he has known Cooper, a two-time Olympian in alpine skiing, for a long time. He called her a sweetheart and said he felt bad she was catching heat from television critics and what seems to be 99.9% of the Internet.

“I don’t think she really anticipated what my reaction was going to be, and I think by the time she sort of realized, it was too late,” he said.

Miller still has the giant slalom race on Wednesday and the slalom on Saturday.

Another drought broken

If your team has a 62-year-old drought of some sort, the man to call is Steven Holcomb. He has ended two such streaks, but it would help if your problem involved a bobsled.

Holcomb is one of the best drivers on the planet when it comes to guiding a sled down a tube of ice.

In Vancouver, he and his team won the first U.S. bobsled gold since 1948 in four-man. On Monday he won a medal in two-man, the first podium finish for the Americans since 1952.

It almost didn’t happen. Holcomb told reporters at a news conference that he has a calf injury that affects his start, and he and his teammate considered withdrawing. But he figured that if he did strain something further, at least when he competes in four-man on Saturday, he’ll have two more teammates to help him push.

And he wished for continued success for Team USA sleds in the Olympics.

“To go away having broken those two droughts is a good feeling. To know we’re going to go down in the record books,” he said. “Hopefully it’s not another 62 years.”

Hard to shoot when you can’t see

Tuesday looks like it will be green with some purple and lavender and a hint of white.

We’re not talking about a figure-skating outfit; we’re looking at the weather forecast map. And it doesn’t look good.

CNN Senior Weather Producer Brandon Miller says Tuesday could be the first day of significant precipitation at the Winter Olympics, with the mountain venues looking at the possibility of rain mixed with sleet. There will be snow at higher elevations.

And the air could be thick with fog.

That means we might see a fourth postponement of the men’s mass start biathlon event, which was pushed back from Sunday to Monday and then to Tuesday after fog spoiled the conditions.

Snowboard cross was also knocked back a day. Not even giant blowers could send away the fog.

You gotta love International Olympic Committee officials. They always see things on the bright side.

“I believe the temperatures are dropping in the last day or so,” said IOC spokesman Mark Adams. “It seems to be that no event has been canceled so far compared with previous Games in Vancouver, Nagano and Sarajevo.”

The Hero of Belarus

All hail Darya Domracheva! I’m sorry. You don’t know her, do you? Well, you’re not from Belarus then.

She’s the leading gold medal winner at these Olympics (so far). In fact, she’s only the 10th woman to win three golds in one Winter Games. And she’s the winningest Olympian in her country’s history.

If you’re wondering, she’s won three biathlon events – the 10-kilometer pursuit, the 15-kilometer individual race and Monday’s 12.5-kilometer mass start. She finished a measly ninth in the sprint event.

She’s been named as a “Hero of Belarus” – that’ll look nice on a business card – by President Alexander Lukashenko.

“From the depth of our souls we congratulate you on the Motherland’s supreme award – the Hero of Belarus title,” he wrote, according to the English version of the country’s website.

She said she is really happy about that title, but she just wants to relax now.

“Maybe it sounds strange, but I don’t think I did something special,” she told reporters. “I did my race and my biathlon. The (medals) record sounds great and it is amazing, but right now I just feel tired. I wish I could just lie in bed.”