SNOWBOARDING: It was one of those Olympic-style pauses. Two minutes. Three minutes. To the four women sitting on the bench at the bottom of the halfpipe, it felt even longer.

In the end, the cowgirl won the gold.

Kaitlyn Farrington, the 24-year-old from Idaho whose parents sold off their cattle to bankroll her career, sparked the second upset on the halfpipe in two nights. She smoothed out a near-flawless run Wednesday to edge Aussie Torah Bright and take down the American favorite, Kelly Clark.

"I'm sure they do not miss those cows today," Farrington said of her folks.

The running joke in her family comes when her parents tell her to "Cowgirl Up," and over a long day that included six runs - two each in qualifying, semifinals and finals - Farrington did just that.

The winning run earned a score of 91.75. It included one of the tougher combinations in the sport - a double-twisting jump with a near-blind landing, followed by a 2 1/2-spin jump. It closed with a twisting, head-over-heels flip at the bottom. Superb, though certainly beatable by three of the women still at the top for Run 2, all of whom had Olympic gold medals back at home.

Hannah Teter, the 2006 champion who wound up fourth, couldn't do it. Neither could Bright, who ended up .25 points from her second straight gold, but viewed this as nothing less than a victory considering she's competing in three events - slopestyle, halfpipe and, next, snowboardcross.

Then came Clark. She's been the most consistent, best-prepared rider over the past four years, a favorite to win another gold 12 years after she burst onto the scene with her first Olympic title in Salt Lake City.

But her evening went down in much the same manner as Shaun White's did 24 hours earlier.

Like White, Clark had a first run that included a nasty fall; her board careened off the lip of the pipe, bending hard when it hit, then sending her free-falling to her back, 20 feet below.

"I work hard in the offseason to be able to get up from that," Clark said.

She did. But, also like White, she had a second run that included a mistake on her signature trick. White couldn't land the four-rotation "YOLO" jump. Clark couldn't quite master a 1080-degree spin that only she attempts. Her spin really went about 1040 degrees, and she traveled too far down the halfpipe while doing it.

And so, the real drama came while the judges added things up, knowing they had three Olympic gold medalists sitting on that bench - and deciding if they should make it four.

Farrington, a natural-born dancer, sat there and shook her shoulders. Bright patted her good friend Clark on the thigh.

Teter, who also won silver in 2010 and would've completed a full set with a bronze, sort of knew where things were going to end up.

"I love it when they play it out like that," she said. "I was hoping they wouldn't give it to her. But whatever. She did a 1080. That's why they gave it to her."

The bronze, that is.

Clark insisted she wasn't disappointed. This bronze goes with the one she took in Vancouver under very similar circumstances - falling on the first run, making it through less than perfectly on the second.

"I had a less-than-ideal practice. I fell every run," she said, a nod to a frequently changing halfpipe that nobody really mastered. "Not just falls, but pretty epic falls. To come back, it was a huge accomplishment to get on the podium today."

Farrington had at least one thing in common with the men's winner, Iouri Podladtchikov: Neither rider made it straight to the final by finishing in the top three during the qualifying round. That meant both had to compete in semifinals. That gave them both two extra chances to feel the changing bumps on the halfpipe.

ALPINE SKIING: The gold market enjoyed big gains, getting an unexpected boost from the women's downhill.

Tina Maze of Slovenia and Dominique Gisin of Switzerland were declared co-gold medalists, the first time in Olympic Alpine history a race was won in a tie.

On a day that had little to do with winter - temperatures hit 63 degrees (17 C) - the two friends covered the 1.69-mile (2.7-kilometer) Rosa Khutor course in 1 minute, 41.57 seconds. A tearful Lara Gut of Switzerland won the bronze, 0.10 seconds back.

The favorites, Maria Hoefl-Riesch of Germany and Julia Mancuso of the U.S., were afterthoughts. Hoefl-Riesch, eyeing a record-equaling fourth Olympic Alpine gold, finished 13th while Mancuso was eighth.

FIGURE SKATING: Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov maintained Russia's long tradition in pairs, winning gold in their home Olympics. Teammates Ksenia Stolbova and Fedor Klimov took silver. Russia or the Soviet Union had won gold in 12 straight Olympics in the event before the streak ended four years ago.

SPEEDSKATING: The Dutch ruled at the oval again, with Stefan Groothuis taking the gold in the 1,000 meters and upsetting two-time Olympic champion Shani Davis of the U.S. Groothuis won in 1 minute, 8.39 seconds and was followed by Denny Morrison of Canada and 500 champion Michel Mulder of the Netherlands. The Dutch have won 10 of 15 medals through the first five events. Davis was eighth, denied in his bid to become the first man to win the same speedskating event at three straight Olympics.

MEN'S HOCKEY: Sweden showed off its deep offensive talent in its Olympic opener, getting two goals from Erik Karlsson and one from Henrik Zetterberg in a 4-2 win over the Czech Republic. Switzerland also won, but needed a late deflection to beat Latvia 1-0. The Swiss scored with 7.9 seconds left, and Simon Moser was credited with the goal that appeared to carom off a Latvian player in front of the net.

NORDIC COMBINED: Eric Frenzel, who served two years in the German army, won the individual normal hill. He led after ski jumping and powered home on the cross-country course. Frenzel, the runaway World Cup leader, was followed by Akito Watabe of Japan and Magnus Krog of Norway.