By THE NEW YORK TIMESJAN. 7, 2014  Admit it: You were dying to watch that 17-day made-for-TV “Lindsey & Tiger” special otherwise known as the Sochi Winter Olympics. Just think of NBC’s full-sepia treatment as Lindsey Vonn zoomed past the finish line and into the arms of her ear-muffed boyfriend, Tiger Woods.  It was too good to be true. Vonn announced Tuesday that a knee injury would prevent her from competing in Sochi. Whom should we watch now? Here are some of the next-best attractions:  Shaun White: Halfpipe’s Pied Piper Adds Slopestyle  Lindsey Vonn’s primary co-star in the quadrennial reality show that is the Winter Olympics has long been a fearless redheaded acrobat on a snowboard.  Like Vonn, Shaun White has dominated his sport and shaped its culture. Like Vonn, he is an outlier, a searing celebrity amid the heartwarming anonymity of the Olympic field, whisked between photo shoots and glossy television features when not dressed in a superhero’s costume of dark goggles and sponsor logos. Like Vonn, anything short of a gold medal is considered disappointment.  With Vonn out of next month’s Sochi Games with a nagging knee injury, the lonely eyes of the American public — not one to pay much attention the other three years of the cycle — turn to White, more than ever.  Single-handedly, he turned snowboarding in the halfpipe into a must-see Olympic event by winning gold medals in 2006 and 2010. Now 27, older than almost all of his competitors, and with his famed red locks cut short, he will arrive in Sochi as the prohibitive favorite again.  But White has bigger ambitions in Russia. He wants to win a gold medal in the Olympic debut of slopestyle, where athletes glide down a course of rails and then fly off three large jumps to perform twisting, flipping stunts.  It used to be White’s preferred event. He accumulated victories in all the major slopestyle contests a decade ago, including a string of X Games titles. But when the International Olympic Committee added the halfpipe, bringing snowboarding into the mainstream, White devoted himself to becoming its champion and pied piper. It paid off in millions of ways, not the least of which is the iconic status that White enjoys, from his clothing line at Target to his stature as a red-carpet regular.  Few other snowboarders or freeskiers are even attempting to qualify for the Olympics in both the halfpipe and the slopestyle. While there are similarities in the skill set, the training and competition schedule can be overwhelming. But White is competitive, above everything else. To him, the only glory greater than Olympic gold is the audacity of two.  Slopestyle is more of a wild card. White, once dominant, is one of about five legitimate gold medal contenders, led by Canada’s Mark McMorris. The only certainty is that White will receive the biggest share of attention, win or lose. And that share just grew with the news about Vonn’s absence. JOHN BRANCH  Ted Ligety: Unrivaled in the Giant Slalom  The absence of Lindsey Vonn at the 2014 Sochi Olympics will be an opportunity for Americans to get to know other homegrown Alpine stars who in the last year have exhibited Vonn-esque dominance on the World Cup circuit.  Because many Americans pay attention to ski racing only in Olympic years, Ted Ligety of Park City, Utah, has piled up a bevy of championships quietly and remains largely under the radar. Last year, Ligety became the first man in 45 years to win three events at one world championships when he won the giant slalom, super-G and super-combined. He also won a gold medal in the combined at the 2006 Torino Olympics.  In his best event, the giant slalom, Ligety, 29, has been unrivaled lately, winning four World Cup giant slalom titles since 2008. Last year, he won six of eight giant slalom races, sometimes by staggering margins. He will be an overwhelming favorite to win the giant slalom gold medal at the Sochi Games and a medal contender in the super-G and the super-combined.  As Ligety was ruling the giant slalom, his 18-year-old teammate Mikaela Shiffrin was taking command in the women’s slalom. Shiffrin, of Eagle-Vail, Colo., last year became the youngest American skier to become a World Cup champion when she won the season-long slalom title. She also became the youngest American to win the slalom world championship. Last year and this winter, Shiffrin has won six slalom races and again leads the slalom standings. She will be the gold-medal favorite despite competing against veteran racers 10 or 12 years her elder.  This winter, Shiffrin has also had a second-place and a third-place to go with two other top-10 finishes in giant slalom, solidifying her status as a medal contender in that event as well.  And finally, there is Julia Mancuso, 29, who for almost the first time since childhood will be competing without Vonn as a close rival. The two grew up together in the close-knit ski community and were touted as budding worldwide stars. That forecast has been true if the measuring stick is big races as Mancuso has won three Olympic medals and five world championship medals.  But Mancuso, the forever laid-back Californian, has struggled this winter and is without a top-10 finish on the World Cup. Will her deserved reputation as a big-race competitor resurrect her again? BILL PENNINGTON  Kim Yu-na: South Korea’s Figure Skating Celebrity  While figure skating languishes in the United States, its popularity in South Korea is such that the star power of the Olympic champion Kim Yu-na led its recent national championships to sell out in 15 minutes.  In Sochi, Kim will attempt to become only the third woman to win consecutive gold medals in the sport, following Sonja Henie of Norway (1928, 1932, 1936) and Katarina Witt of the former East Germany (1984, 1988).  Four years ago, at the Vancouver Olympics, Kim prevailed with vaulting jumps, an engaging presence and ethereal grace. There was a debate within the sport whether she was simply a technical master or also a great artist.  “Technically, she’s the greatest of all time,” Ted Barton, a Canadian who helped devise the current points-based scoring system, said at the time. “If she skates a little longer and does this over the next three or four years, she will be the greatest skater of all time.”  Since Vancouver, though, Kim has seldom skated in Olympic-style events. Yet, she remains the favorite in Sochi over the reigning silver medalist Mao Asada of Japan. At the 2013 world championships, Kim won first place by more than 20 points despite not having competed on the Grand Prix circuit.  Kim missed six weeks of training in the fall with a foot injury and dropped out of two Grand Prix competitions. Yet, she made an encouraging return at a competition in Croatia, despite not having recovered her full strength.  Since winning a gold medal, Kim has gained immense celebrity in South Korea, endorsing everything from dairy products to air-conditioners. She campaigned for the city of Pyeongchang, which was named as host for the 2018 Winter Olympics. She has also become a good-will ambassador for Unicef and has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to aid victims of natural disasters. JERÉ LONGMAN  Alex Ovechkin: Russian Shoots for Hockey Gold  No athlete in Sochi is likely to command more attention — or face greater pressure — than Alex Ovechkin, the marquee player on a Russian hockey team entrusted with winning Olympic gold for the first time since a Unified Team triumphed at the 1992 Winter Games.  Ovechkin, 28, a forward with the Washington Capitals whose Olympic participation was confirmed when Russia’s roster was announced Tuesday, a few hours after Lindsey Vonn pulled out of the Games with a knee injury, is leading the N.H.L. in goals with 31. (As a bonus, Ovechkin and his fiancée, Maria Kirilenko, a top-20 tennis player, can help fill the sports supercouple void left by Vonn and Woods.)  Not everyone back home, where gold medal fever is an epidemic for which perhaps only Ovechkin holds the cure, is impressed. Sergei Fedorov, who is retired and working in the front office for the CSKA Moscow team in the K.H.L., last week noted that Ovechkin was in the midst of a scoring drought that would reach four games. “It’s O.K.,” Fedorov said with a smile. “He’s maybe thinking of the next step.”  How could he not? Fedorov said Russia “is buzzing” in anticipation of the Olympic hockey tournament. He added that the pressure the Russians can expect to feel will be greater than what Team Canada faced at the Vancouver Games in 2010, explaining, “Our fans are a little bit tougher, I think.” KAREN CROUSE  Brad Jacobs: A Rapid Rise in Curling  Brad Jacobs is out to shake up the curling establishment.  The Canadian men’s team is ranked first in the world and has long been a force in the sport. In only a couple of years, Jacobs, a 28-year-old skip from Ontario, has bested several of the top names in his own country, including victories at the 2013 Tim Hortons Brier championship and a silver medal win at last year’s world championships. At the Olympic curling trials in December, Jacobs defeated the 2010 Olympic gold medalist Kevin Martin, 5-4. And at the Brier in March, he solidified his status with a win over the two-time world champion skip Jeff Stoughton for the gold medal.  Jacobs, a whippersnapper in a sport where balding and beer guts can still make cameos at international competitions, said he was surprised by his rapid ascent in the sport with a team that formed only 14 months ago.  “It could be a changing of the guard,” he said in a phone interview Tuesday from his office in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, where he works as an account manager at RBC Royal Bank.  A curler since he was 10, Jacobs credits good chemistry and extra time in the gym with his team’s success. Joining him in Sochi will be two of his cousins, and all four team members are actively featured on the @TeamBradJacobs Twitter feed, which could be a potentially viral and endearing elixir to the politically tense Games.  “All the success we’ve had has been really quick,” Jacobs said. “I never really expected in my wildest dreams to be going to the Olympics.”  Now recognized on the streets of his hometown in a curling-crazed country, Jacobs said he wanted to change the image of the sport worldwide to one that is more youthful. And he knows that the Canadian team still faces threats from powerhouses like the Scotland-Britain team, Sweden and Norway.  “We embrace that we have some celebrity status in our hometown,” he said.  He added, “This is what you play for your whole life.” MARY PILON
Lindsey Vonn’s injury may mean athletes like the snowboarder Shaun White, the skier Ted Ligety, the figure skater Kim Yu-na and the curler Brad Jacobs will see more of the spotlight.