China’s Sui, Han take lead in pairs

The Chinese pair of Sui Wenjing and Han Cong led Russian skaters Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov by less than a point after the short program on Wednesday.

Sui and Han scored a season-best 82.39 points to a breathtaking version of the Leonard Cohen song “Hallelujah.”

Tarasova and Morozov scored 81.68 points to a piano concerto by Rachmaninov to keep them in contention heading into Thursday’s free skate.

Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford of Canada were third with 76.82 points. That was less than a point ahead of German favorites Aliona Savchenkno and Bruno Massot.

“This is no longer normal,” Nuis said Tuesday after winning the 1,500 meters.

In second was another Dutchman, teammate Patrick Roest.

South Korea’s Kim Min-seok took bronze.

American skaters disappointed again with Joey Mantia finishing eighth and Shani Davis crossing in 19th, leaving the United States with another bad start in the Olympics after they were shut out in Sochi.

The result of the women’s 500 meters short-track speedskating came down to a photo finish.

So South Korea’s Choi Min-jeong and Italy’s Arianna Fontana waited. In the end, it was Fontana who was celebrating after earning her sixth career Olympic medal, equaling Wang Meng of China for most by a short-track skater.

The photo showed Fontana’s skate blade crossed barely in front of Choi’s. sprint finals from start to finish to become the youngest male Olympic cross-country skiing gold medalist in history.

Klaebo finished the finals in 3 minutes, 5.76 seconds.

The real battle in the men’s individual sprint came down to Italy’s Federico Pellegrino and Alexander Bolshunov of Russia. Pellegrino and Bolshunov raced to a photo finish, with the Italian getting the call for the silver medal. All three skiers won their first Olympic medals.

Stina Nilsson of Sweden won the women’s gold. Maiken Caspersen of Norway was second, and Russian skier Yulia Belorukova took bronze. opposed to three hours in standard curling, and there are only two players on each team instead of four, meaning both curlers must always be switched on.

The bronze went to a pair of athletes from Russia, who beat Norway.