Going for Gold

Cheer on these athletes with Texas ties at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics

Ashley Caldwell soars as a four-time Olympian.

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Texas isn't exactly a winter sports powerhouse, but there'll still be some star athletes at the 2022 Winter Olympics with big cheering sections back home in the Lone Star State.

The XXIV Olympic Winter Games (or "Beijing 2022") officially runs February 4-20, with some preliminary competitions starting as early as February 2. It will feature 15 sports and 109 medal events contested, including seven all-new events, like "women's monobob."

All coverage will be carried by NBC and its affiliate networks, websites, and apps, such as Peacock — and even with Beijing 14 hours ahead of Texas, watching much of the action live is possible. (Here's a primer on how to watch.)

Of the roughly 3,000 athletes competing, 222 will be wearing the red, white, and blue of Team USA. Here are the athletes with Texas ties — and when to cheer them on (local time) for gold.

Ashley Caldwell, 28
Sport: Freestyle skiing (Aerials)
Texas tie: While she calls Park City, Utah home, her parents reportedly live in Houston.
The road to Beijing: She's making her fourth Olympic appearance in the Aerials event.
Fun fact: Ashley started practicing gymnastics at age 4; after watching the freestyle competitions at the 2006 Olympics in Torino, her mother suggested she try combining her love of skiing with gymnastics, NBC says. She is the only woman to ever land a quadruple-twisting triple backflip in competition.
When to watch: Qualification rounds begin February 13.

Mariah Bell, 25
Sport: Figure skating
Texas tie: Her parents live in the Dallas area, and her sister is a skating coach in North Richland Hills.
The road to Beijing: She just won the U.S. National Championships in Nashville last month. This is her first Olympics.
Fun fact: Mariah says her earliest memory of figure skating is watching Tara Lipinski win gold in the 1998 Nagano Olympics. During the early months of the pandemic, when ice rinks were shuttered, she lived with her family in an RV and stayed fit with outdoor activities, such as paddleboard and swimming.
When to watch: As of press time, the women's selections for team event haven't been announced, but she could be picked for the free skate February 6. The women's singles competition gets under way February 15.

Ashley Cain-Gribble, 26 and Timothy LeDuc, 31
Sport: Pairs figure skating
Texas tie: Ashley was born in Carollton, and she and Timothy (who hails from Cedar Rapids, Iowa) train with their coaches — Ashley's parents, Darlene and Peter Cain — in Euless.
The road to Beijing: The pair just won their second U.S. national championship in Nashville last month, and this is their first Olympic Games.
Fun facts: Ashley's dad was an Australian pairs skater, and her mom was a Canadian ice dancer; she has an aunt and a cousin who were competitive skaters from Australia, as well. Timothy (they/them) have made headlines as the first openly nonbinary athlete to compete in an Olympic Winter Games.
When to watch: The figure skating "team event" starts at 7:55 pm Thursday, February 3 and includes the pairs short program; pairs "team event" free skate will be 7:30 pm Saturday, February 5. The pairs competition takes place February 18-19.

Sylvia Hoffman, 32
Sport: Bobsled
Texas tie: She is an Arlington native.
The road to Beijing: She is making her Olympics debut, competing with two-time Olympic champion Kaillie Humphries as a two-woman bobsled team.
Fun fact: Sylvia played basketball for Louisiana State University, then took up weightlifting and competed internationally, but her athletic dreams "really rocketed," NBC says, after participating in reality TV show Scouting Camp: Next Olympic Hopeful.
When to watch: The two-woman event kicks off February 18.

Katie Uhlaender, 37
Sport: Skeleton
Texas tie: She was raised in Central Texas and has family in the Austin, Waco, and Hill Country areas. Her dad, Ted Uhleander, was a Major League Baseball outfielder who played for Baylor University.
The road to Beijing: She is headed to a record-breaking fifth Olympics, becoming the only U.S. woman in any sliding sport to make that many Olympic appearances, says NBC5. She placed sixth at Torino 2006 and fourth at Sochi 2014.
Fun fact: She once worked on a ranch, tagging cattle. She also worked on the reality TV show Survivor, first testing the challenges, then as a camera assistant.
When to watch: The first women's skeleton event takes place February 10.

Ashley Caldwell soars as a four-time Olympian. Her parents reportedly live in Houston.

Getty Images

Ashley Caldwell soars as a four-time Olympian. Her parents reportedly live in Houston.

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Movie Review

Robert Pattinson plays infamous host who catches predators in Primetime

Photo courtesy of A24

Robert Pattinson in Primetime.

Robert Pattinson is among a select group of actors with multiple high-profile roles in 2026, having already starred in The Drama and The Odyssey, with Dune: Part Three yet to come. But the one that may earn him an Oscar nomination — if not win — is Primetime, in which he stars as Chris Hansen, the former host of the Dateline NBC show To Catch a Predator.

The film, directed by Lance Oppenheim and written by Ajon Singh, plops viewers right in the middle of the short-lived run (2004-2007) of the program, which aimed to expose men for trying to have sex with teenagers. Hansen is obsessed with making the show successful, which means enticing as many child predators as they can and recruiting young-looking adult actors to serve as decoys for sting operations.

Helping him in his pursuit is producer Andie Bender (Merrit Wever), who has her own ambitions; recruiter Xavier Von Erck (Matthew Maher), who perhaps enjoys trapping predators a bit too much; and decoys Dan Plumb (Skyler Gisondo) and Del (Phoebe Bridgers), who have to muster all the improv skills they can when the men show up. As the story proceeds, each participant weighs their own level of comfort with the controversial practices of the show as a whole.

Depending on the audience, the film can play as a serious drama, a comedy, a horror, or a combination of all three. It seems like Oppenheim wants to confront the audience with the uncomfortable feeling of not having anyone for whom to root. You certainly can’t feel bad for the predators, who actively engage with someone they believe to be a child. But the process of getting men on the show, as well as the treatment of the decoys, is itself unsavory and difficult to defend.

At the center is a protagonist whose persona is interesting as a character, but less appealing as an actual person. As Hansen pushes everyone around him to do all they can for the sake of the show, his hubris puts him right in line with your standard antihero. But the idea of a man obsessed with his job who all but ignores his family and cheats on his wife is ultimately not that compelling and plays like the cliché it is.

If the film was supposed to be an exposé on what Hansen and the show as a whole got wrong in the pursuit of justice, it fails to bring about any strong feelings on either side. The one area where it does succeed is in its depictions of the two decoys, and Oppenheim might have been better served by showcasing them more. The film does shift toward being more of a story about Dan than Hansen, but not enough to make a big impact.

Oppenheim has seemingly devised the film as an acting showcase, and in that regard it works well. Pattinson is all-in with his performance, going to great lengths to demonstrate Hansen’s passion for the show. He has many fantastic line readings, including a one-word utterance late in the film that brings the house down. Wever and Gisondo are just as good, and Bridgers — making her acting debut — steals several of the scenes she’s in.

The impact To Catch a Predator had on society despite the small number of episodes (20) it had is something worth exploring, as the documentary Predators did in 2025. But Primetime doesn’t get to the heart of the matter in a way that makes for necessary viewing, leaving it as a testament to the skills of its actors and not much else.

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Primetime opens in theaters on September 25.

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