High winds yesterday caused havoc at the Winter Games, as International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach dismissed allegations that North Korea tried to “hijack” the competition for political gain.
Angry snowboarders lashed out at organizers after the women’s slopestyle final was held in heavy gusts, causing nearly every competitor to take a tumble.
It came after the women’s giant slalom was postponed until Thursday because of the wind.
Photo: Reuters
While the skiing was postponed, the slopestyle went ahead with near-farcical results, as athlete after athlete hit the deck, including gold medal winner Jamie Anderson of the US.
“The weather was bad and too dangerous,” bronze medalist Enni Rukajarvi of Finland said.
The International Ski Federation said that conditions were “challenging,” but defended the decision to go ahead with the event.
Photo: EPA
Heavyweights Canada won their first gold of the Games in team figure skating, while the Olympic Athletes from Russia took silver to add to their earlier short-track bronze.
The Russians, with their teenage ice starlets Evgenia Medvedeva and Alina Zagitova, took their first silver of the Games after Canada in figure skating, while the US was third.
Three-time world champion Canadian Patrick Chan said determination was the added ingredient that had made the difference between Sochi silver and Korean gold.
“We had determination this time around. We saw the potential we had in Sochi and didn’t capitalize on it. This time we really want to nail it into the coffin and win this thing,” he said.
US quad boy wonder Nathan Chen will be working overtime in training after making mistakes in his short routine, while Mirai Nagasu made history by becoming the first US woman — and only the third woman overall — to land the fiendishly difficult triple axel jump at an Olympics.
Clearly overjoyed, the 24-year-old, who was skating at her second Olympics, pumped her fists and grinned as she skated off the ice.
“Maybe it’s the Japanese genetics, but lucky for me I’m American, so I’ll be the first US lady,” she said after her performance.
Japan’s figure skating superstar Yuzuru Hanyu took to the ice for his first training session — which lasted less than 15 minutes.
The defending champion, who has been recovering from ankle ligament damage, suffered a scary moment when he slipped and fell as he departed, before getting up with a wry smile.
In biathlon, Germany’s Laura Dahlmeier won the 10km pursuit for her second victory in Pyeongchang, before France’s Martin Fourcade took out the men’s 12.5km pursuit.
Following his upset eighth place in the sprint yesterday, Fourcade collected only one penalty point for shooting in blustery, freezing conditions and crossed the line with 12 seconds to spare over Sweden’s Sebastian Samuelsson.
Already France’s most decorated winter Olympian prior to the race, Fourcade brings his tally to five medals overall, including three golds.
With that tally of golds, he joins alpine skier Jean-Claude Killy with three Olympic titles, a French all-time record.
North Korea, with their high-level delegation and large, female cheering squad, have also been front and center in what has been seen as a propaganda coup for the isolated state.
However, Bach played down concerns that North Korea was manipulating the Games to suit its own agenda.
“This is about the role of sport to build bridges, to open doors and nothing more. It’s just a symbol for sport and it’s a symbol for the fact that when you go over these bridges, you can come to a positive result,” he said.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier