BEAVER CREEK, Colo. (AP) — U.S. ski racing greats Ted Ligety and Picabo Street made yet another Olympic team.
On this occasion, as TV reporters.
Ligety and Street join the NBC broadcasting crew that will cover ski racing at the Milan Cortina Winter Games in February. The team also includes longtime NBC broadcaster Dan Hicks and analyst Steve Porino. Cara Banks and Heather Cox will serve as on-site reporters.
For Hicks, this will be his 15th play-by-play assignment at the Olympics. It marks his fourth time calling ski racing after switching over from speed skating.
“There’s nothing like the Olympics,” said Hicks, who's also called swimming at eight Summer Games. “It’s one of those few sporting events where you’re just guaranteed some sort of drama that you just never expected. It’s the greatest sporting spectacle in the world."
Ligety, a four-time Olympian, captured gold in the combined at the 2006 Turin Games and another in the giant slalom eight years later in Sochi. This will be his second Olympics with NBC. He will be based in Bormio for the men's races.
A three-time Olympian, Street won a gold medal in the super-G at the 1998 Nagano Olympics. She will cover the women's races in Cortina d’Ampezzo during her NBC Olympics debut.
Porino takes part in his 10th Olympics for NBC.
AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
FILE -Ski racer Ted Ligety attends a ceremony naming part of the Birds of Prey world cup ski course after him before a men's World Cup downhill ski race, Dec. 4, 2021, in Beaver Creek, Colo. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (AP) — Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, a Tokyo-born actor known for his roles in the film “Mortal Kombat” and TV series "The Man in the High Castle" has died. He was 75.
Tagawa died in Santa Barbara from complications due to a stroke, his manager, Margie Weiner, confirmed on Thursday.
“He died surrounded by his family, with love,” she said.
Tagawa's decades of film and TV roles truly got off the ground in 1987 when he appeared in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Oscar-winning film “The Last Emperor." Since then, he appeared in such films as “Pearl Harbor,” “Planet of the Apes” and “License to Kill."
Tagawa was born in Tokyo but was raised mostly in the U.S. South while his Hawaii-born father was assigned to U.S. mainland Army bases. He lived in Honolulu and on the Hawaiian island of Kauai for a while.
Tagawa played the Baron in “Memoirs of a Geisha,” a 2005 movie based on the bestselling novel chronicling a young girl’s rise from poverty in a Japanese fishing village to life in high society.
Some critics said the movie lacked authenticity, but Tagawa said it was unrealistic to expect a fictional work written and directed by Americans to fully reflect Japanese style and sensitivities.
“What did they expect? It wasn’t a documentary,″ Tagawa told The Associated Press in 2006. “Unless the Japanese did the movie, it’s all interpretation.″
Tagawa told the AP that he studied various martial acts but left because he wasn’t into fighting or competition.
Instead, he developed a system he called Ninjah Sportz, which incorporated martial arts as a training and healing tool. He worked with professional athletes like World Boxing Council light flyweight champion Brian Viloria and advised members of the University of Hawaii football team.
In 2008, Tagawa pleaded guilty in a Honolulu court to a petty misdemeanor charge of harassing a girlfriend. She had bruises to her legs, police said at the time.
His attorney said he took full responsibility for the case from the beginning and made no excuses.
FILE - Actor Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa pose on the red carpet at the opening ceremony of the 35th Moscow International Film Festival in Moscow, Russia, June 20, 2013. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko Jr, File)
FILE - Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa attends "The Man in the High Castle" photo call at the Amazon Summer TCA Tour at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Aug. 3, 2015, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)
FILE - Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa gestures after arriving at the world premiere of NBC's new police series "Hawaii" on Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, Hawaii, Aug. 29, 2004, in Honolulu, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Lucy Pemoni, File)
