A Chinese pair’s gold completes a tumultuous two weeks for figure skating.

Sui Wenjing and Han Cong of China won the gold medal in pairs figure skating on Saturday at Capital Indoor Stadium in Beijing, capping two scandal-tinged, mistake-marred, tear-stained weeks for a signature Olympic sport with a nearly flawless performance.

Sui and Han, who had finished first in the short program on Friday, held off three Russian pairs in the free skate on Saturday. They had arrived at the Games eager for redemption: They had victory within their grasp at the 2018 Olympics, only to lose the gold medal by a mere 0.43 points.

They faced tough competition on Saturday from three Russian pairs. Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov had been second after the short program, trailing Sui and Han by a fraction of a point but ranking just ahead of Anastasia Mishina and Aleksandr Galliamov, the reigning world champions. Aleksandra Boikova and Dmitrii Kozlovskii entered the free skate in fourth place.

Performing one after another to close the night’s program, the three Russian pairs took turns posting the high score. Each time a pair took the lead, though, the next pair took the ice and leapfrogged them with a better score. Tarasova and Morozov were the last to pull the trick, their score in the free skate just five-hundredths of a point better than the one posted by Mishina and Galliamov.

Sui and Han, though, promptly came out and beat them all, setting a world record with a total of 239.88 points to edge Tarasova and Morozov by a razor-thin margin, 63-hundredths of a point. Performing to Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” Sui and Han glided effortlessly from one end of the rink to the other, executing a series of throws, jumps and lifts that delighted the small crowd of Chinese fans allowed into the arena.

When their scores were posted, Sui and Han both burst into tears as they were engulfed by a team of coaches and staff members waving a large Chinese flag.

China’s gold was its ninth of the Games, nearly doubling the country’s previous Winter Games high of five.

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