Hosts’ Kazakhstan dominated the day’s action at the Asian Winter Games yesterday adding four gold medals to their impressive collection to stay on top with 17 golds and 46 medals overall.
South Korea failed to add to their gold haul, but remain in second place with 10 gold and 24 medals in total.
Meanwhile, Japan stayed in the race for the lead in the medal table with their skiers winning two golds to lift their country into third position with eight gold medals.
Photo: REUTERS
Japanese skier Masako Ishida recorded the first win of the day finishing first in the rain-hit women’s 5km classic style course with a time of 16 minutes 10.3 seconds.
The winner of the men’s 10km classic distance in nordic skiing, Keishin Yoshida of Japan, who won the 15km freestyle race on Wednesday, also had to battle with a soaked course and rain but he managed to adjust his skiing to the weather conditions better than his rivals to win his second gold medal of the games finishing ahead of two local skiers — Nikolay Chebotko and Alexey Poltoranin.
“I experienced problems with my skis at the very beginning so I had to force myself to speed up later though it was very hard to slide along the course fighting against the strong wind and melting snow,” Yoshida said.
The bandy match between hosts Kazakhstan, who are red hot favorites for the gold medals, and Kyrgyzstan was in danger as the snowfall and the fog, which descended from the surrounding mountains, seriously threatened the technical services at the Medeu ice rink.
After the officials decided to play the match in a three 30-minute periods format, the Kazakh team had few troubles against their opponents clinching a confident 21-0 win.
Unfavorable weather conditions also forced the organizers to postpone the men’s alpine skiing Super Combined event and the women’s 15km individual biathlon competition until today.
Kazakhstan’s Yulia Galysheva won her second gold medal of the Games beating compatriot Yulia Rodionova in the final of the freestyle parallel mogul discipline. Miki Ito of Japan won bronze.
Another Kazakh freestyler, Dmitriy Barmashov, added gold by winning the men’s parallel mogul. He beat Osamu Ueno of Japan in the final with another Japanese, Yugo Tsukita, in third.
In ski orienteering local favorite Olga Novikova won her third gold medal, finishing first in the women’s long distance 17 minutes ahead of second-placed compatriot Yevgenia Kuzmina, while South Korea’s Kim Ja-youn was third.
Mikhail Sorokin also completed a hat-trick winning all three distances in the men’s section of ski orienteering. Alexey Nemtsev was second, while Gerelt-Od Bayaraa of Mongolia won his second bronze medal.
ANFIELD BLUES: Kylian Mbappe arrived at Anfield on a run of 21 goals in 17 games, but he managed just three attempts in the match, none of them hitting the target Kylian Mbappe has been nearly unstoppable this season, but he hit a roadblock in their UEFA Champions League match at Anfield on Tuesday. For the second year running, the Real Madrid forward had a night to forget at Merseyside as Liverpool won 1-0. Mbappe looked a shadow of the player who has been tearing defenses apart all season. “We were lacking that threat in the final third,” said Madrid coach Xabi Alonso, without naming Mbappe individually. The FIFA World Cup winner for France rarely looked capable of finding a breakthrough against a Liverpool team who have been so defensively fragile for much of the
LOCAL SUCCESS: In the doubles, Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia defeated Italians Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini in straight sets Elena Rybakina on Monday punched her ticket to the WTA Finals last four with an impressive 3-6, 6-1, 6-0 victory over second seed Iga Swiatek in round-robin play in Riyadh. After cruising past Amanda Anisimova in her opener on Saturday, Rybakina claimed her second win of the week to guarantee herself top spot in the Serena Williams Group. Anisimova on Monday rallied back from a set and a break down to triumph 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 in her all-American battle with seventh seed Madison Keys, who has been eliminated from the competition. “Madi was playing so well, it was quite a battle out there,”
Erling Haaland on Sunday scored twice to propel Manchester City up to second in the English Premier League with a 3-1 win over AFC Bournemouth. The Cherries started the day in second thanks to the longest unbeaten run in the English top flight, but Andoni Iraola’s side were undone by the scintillating form of the Norwegian striker, who took his tally to 13 Premier League goals in 10 games. Haaland’s relentless streak is maintaining City’s title challenge as they reduced the gap to leaders Arsenal back to six points and edged one point ahead of Liverpool, who they face at the weekend. “Important
For almost 30 minutes, Vitomir Maricic did not take a breath. Face down in a pool, surrounded by anxious onlookers, the Croatian freediver fought spasming pain to redefine what doctors thought was possible. When he finally surfaced, he had smashed the previous Guinness World Record for the longest breath-hold underwater by nearly five minutes. However, even with the help of pure oxygen before the attempt, it had pushed him to the limit. “Everything was difficult, just overwhelming,” Maricic, 40, told reporters, reflecting on the record-breaking day on June 14. “When I dive, I completely disconnect from everything, as if I’m not even there.