China golden in short track
Darting through traffic, zipping around tight turns, avoiding potential disaster with every relay exchange, China eked out its first gold medal of the Beijing Games, winning the Olympic debut of mixed team relay in short track speedskating.
Asia is a hotbed of the sport known as roller derby on ice, although the typically raucous atmosphere Saturday night was greatly subdued by COVID-19 restrictions at the Olympic venues.
Still, the small number of Chinese allowed in the stands at Capitol Indoor Arena celebrated the host nation’s historic win, yelling behind masks and waving tiny flags.
Wu Dajing edged Pietro Sighel of Italy by .016 seconds — or half a skate blade — to claim gold. Hungary earned bronze.
Qu Chunyu, Fan Kexin and Ren Ziwei joined Wu for the victory.
“It was a huge relief,” Wu said. “Now we finally realized our dream on the first day.”
The results were delayed while the referee reviewed the race. Canada was penalized for pushing from behind and causing contact with Hungary late in the race.
AROUND THE GAMES
Ski jumping: Slovenia’s
Ursa Bogataj won gold in women’s ski jumping, floating 100 meters (328 feet) with 121 points on the final jump. Katharina Althaus of Germany won silver for the second straight Olympics and Bogataj’s fellow Slovenian
Nika Kriznar took bronze. Japan’s Sara Takanashi
had entered as one of the favorites, but finished fourth. Takanashi had won a record 61 World Cup events and earned bronze four years ago in South Korea.
Biathlon mixed relay:
Norway won gold in the biathlon mixed relay, beating France and the Russian team in the first biathlon event of the Games. Johannes Thingnes Boe of Norway, Quentin Fillon Maillet of France and
Eduard Latypov of the Russian team left the range close together after the last round of shooting and raced for position until the final stretch, when Boe sprinted for the win.
Speedskating: Irene Schouten gave the mighty Dutch a gold in the first speedskating event of the Games, breaking a 20year-old Olympic record in the women’s 3,000 meters. Skating in the last of 10 pairs, Schouten turned in a blazing final lap to post a winning time of 3 minutes, 56.93 seconds. That broke the previous Olympic mark of 3:57.70, set by Germany’s Claudia Pechstein at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games.
Skiathlon: Cross-country skier Therese Johaug
of Norway won the first gold medal of the Games in the women’s 15-kilometer skiathlon. Russian athlete Natalia Nepryaeva,
the current overall World Cup leader, pulled away from the group on the last climb to take the silver.
Men’s downhill: The third and final training session for men’s downhill skiing at has been canceled because of high winds. Organizers say they made the decision “in the best interest of safety.” The start of the second training session had to be delayed Friday because of wind.