Austrian Anna Fenninger won the women’s Super-G at the Sochi Winter Games as she overcame warm weather to keep her country’s grip on the title.
The 24-year-old completed the course in 1 minute, 25.52 seconds, 0.55 seconds faster than Germany’s Maria Hoefl-Riesch, 29. Fenninger’s compatriot Nicole Hosp, 30, won the bronze after taking the silver in the super combined.
Fenninger is the fourth Austrian to win the event in the eight games since it was added in 1988, and takes over from 2010 Olympic champion Andrea Fischbacher, who failed to make the Austrian squad this year. The course, set by Austrian Alpine skiing coach Florian Winkler, featured tight turns that helped cause eight of the first 11 starters to fail to finish.
Photo AFP
“It’s such a difficult track, but I have to give praise to the coach who set the course because you have to be so tactical,” Fenninger said.
FIGURE SKATING
Japan celebrated Yuzuru Hanyu’s historic win in men’s figure skating at the break of dawn yesterday, rejoicing in the country’s first-ever gold medal in the Olympic event.
Photo: AFP
It was 4am in Japan when the 19-year-old native of Sendai beat out Patrick Chan of Canada to win the gold. With a rare snowfall blanketing the city, most Tokyoites stayed home to watch the moment live on television.
The last time Japan won gold at the Winter Olympics was eight years ago when Shizuka Arakawa took top honors in women’s figure skating in Turin.
Hanyu’s gold was a huge relief for Japan, a country that is constantly vying with its Asian rivals, China and South Korea, for supremacy at the winter games.
Photo: AFP
After favorite Sara Takanashi came up short in her bid for gold in women’s ski jumping, many Japanese were starting to worry that Sochi would be a repeat of Vancouver when the country failed to win a single gold medal.
Hanyu’s win brought Japan’s medal tally to one gold, two silver and one bronze as of press time.
China had two silvers to go with their two golds, while South Korea had a gold and a bronze.
Hanyu’s win also brought joy to the people of Sendai, a city hit hard by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Hanyu was practicing when the quake hit and was forced to run out of the arena while wearing his skates for fear the building would not withstand the record 9.0-magnitude tremor.
“I have received so much from the people in Sendai and the entire Tohoku region,” Hanyu was quoted as saying by the Sankei Sports newspaper. “I want to express my gratitude and appreciation for all the support from the people there.”
ALPINE SKIING
Switzerland’s Sandro Viletta won the men’s Olympic super-combined topping a shock podium that included neither favourites Ted Ligety of the US nor Frenchman Alexis Pinturault.
The 28-year-old, who had only one World Cup win and podium so far, won with a combined time of 2min 45.20sec, after one downhill and one slalom run.
Croatian veteran Ivica Kostelic was second at 0.34sec, bagging his fourth Olympic silver and third in the combined.
The result turned all predictions upside down as combined world champion Ligety and young gun Pinturault failed to even make the top 10 in the Valentine’s Day race.
ICE HOCKEY
Emma Eliasson scored with 4 minutes 15 seconds to play and Sweden beat defending bronze medalist Finland 4-2 in the Olympic women’s hockey quarter-finals yesterday — a reversal of the result from the third-place game four years ago.
Valentina Wallner made 29 saves for Sweden, who are to play the US in the semi-finals. Finland, the No. 3 seed in the world, drop to the classification bracket and can finish no better than fifth.
Two-time NCAA champion Noora Raty made 28 saves for Finland, but she could not see Eliasson’s slapshot from the blue line that held up as the game-winner.
The game was a rough one for women’s hockey, which does not allow the body-checking that would be familiar to fans of the NHL or the men’s international game. Finland’s Nina Tikkinen was cross-checked in front of the Sweden net, banging her head on the ice as she landed, and a skirmish at the other end led to four-minute roughing penalties for Finland’s Minttu Tuominen and Sweden’s Erika Grahm.
SLOVENIA 3, SLOVAKIA 1
Slovenia caused the first big upset of the men’s ice hockey tournament at the Sochi Olympics yesterday with a win over Slovakia.
After two scoreless periods, Slovenia came to life early in the third and then held off a Slovakia rally.
Rok Ticar scored on a backhand from the slot, Tomaz Razinger added another when he pounced on a loose puck from in close, and Anze Kopitar capped the scoring on a brilliant individual effort that saw him go untouched from the corner to the other side of the net before coolly slapping the puck home.
Slovakia, who suffered a 1-7 loss in their Sochi opener to the US that equaled their worst Olympics result, got on the board with 18 seconds left in the game, but by then it was too late.
SWEDEN 1, SWITZERLAND 0
The short-handed Swedes beat Switzerland 1-0 on Friday, hours after they announced Henrik Zetterberg will miss the rest of the Sochi Olympics.
The win came on Daniel Alfredsson’s goal with 7m 21s left and Henrik Lundqvist’s 26-save shutout.
“We are among those teams who can win this tournament anyway,” Sweden coach Par Marts said.
The Swedes (2-0) moved into a favorable position to earn a spot in the quarter-finals as the only undefeated team in Group C.
CANADA 6, AUSTRIA 0
After the final horn, Jeff Carter tried to give the game puck to Roberto Luongo in honor of the goalie’s latest Olympic shutout. Luongo handed it right back, claiming Carter’s hat-trick was a bigger deal.
Carter and Luongo realize Canada still has plenty of time to pick up more souvenirs in Sochi, and they have all got their eyes on something a bit shinier than a puck.
Carter scored three consecutive goals in the second period, Luongo made 23 saves, and Canada beat Austria on Friday to take a commanding position in preliminary-round play.
Shea Weber and Ryan Getzlaf each had a goal and an assist in the Canadians’ second win in two nights in Sochi. Their star-studded lineup rolled over undermanned Austria with 46 shots and relentless waves of offense, starting with Drew Doughty’s goal in the opening minutes before Carter’s natural hat-trick in an 11m 54s span.
FINLAND 6, NORWAY 1
Teemu Selanne became the oldest hockey player to score at the Olympics with the first of the Finns’ three goals in the opening period that helped them coast to a 6-1 win on Friday over Norway.
The Canadians, though, are going to be tough to beat.
“Those guys are super-dangerous,” the 43-year-old Selanne said. “Those guys have four All-Star lines. It’s going to be a big challenge. It’s going to fun.”
The Finns (2-0) have beaten a pair of overmatched teams by a combined score of 14-5.
Finland are set to be tested in the preliminary-round finale against the defending Olympic champion Canadians (2-0) today.
SKI JUMPING
Alla Tsuper shocked a top draw field to win the women’s aerials at the Sochi Olympics on Friday in her fifth Games.
The Belarussian had never before won a medal in four previous attempts and was ranked only 13th in the World Cup standings coming into the Olympics.
Yet the 34-year-old was the only athlete to land perfectly in the final four shoot out and she edged out world champion Xu Mengtao of China into silver with Australia’s reigning Olympic champion Lydia Lassila taking bronze.
Tsuper’s gold medal ensured this would be the most successful Winter Games in Belarus’s history.
It also meant that there were two mothers on the medal podium as Tsuper and Lassila, 32, have had children since the last Olympics.
SPEEDSKATING
The US speedskating team is dumping the suits that were touted as the fastest in the world.
Under Armour’s senior vice president of innovation, Kevin Haley, said that the US team has received permission from the International Skating Union to switch back to its previous suits, starting with the men’s 1,500m race yesterday.
The US came into the games confidently predicting that their new suits, developed with help from major defense contractor Lockheed Martin, would give them a technological edge.
Instead, the Americans have yet to finish higher than seventh in the first six events, leading some athletes to grumble that the new suits were actually a hindrance.
MEDALS TABLE
The top three nations on the medals table as of press time yesterday was: Germany 7 gold, 3 silver, 2 bronze; Switzerland 5, 1, 1; Canada 4, 5, 2.
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