All the top action from Day 8 of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing on Saturday.
US golden oldies snatch victory in cross mixed team event
IMAGE: Gold medallists Nick Baumgartner and Lindsey Jacobellis of the United States celebrate during the flower ceremony. Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters
Lindsey Jacobellis won her second gold of the Beijing Games after she and team-mate Nick Baumgartner, with a combined age of 76, won the inaugural snowboard cross mixed team gold for the United States on Saturday.
Jacobellis, 36, and Baumgartner, 40, were the oldest team to compete at Saturday’s mixed team event, but defeated their younger rivals in a nail-biting final.
Jacobellis, who won the United States its first gold at the Beijing Olympics earlier this week for the women’s snowboard cross, came out swinging in the final run, but was quickly overtaken by Pyeongchang gold medallist Michela Moioli of Italy.
Moioli and Jacobellis were neck-and-neck while the other two racers, for Canada and Italy, fell behind and later crashed on top of each other.
Jacobellis kept hot on Moioli’s heels and the American edged out the Italian at the last moment, winning by 0.2 seconds.
Canada eventually caught up to win bronze.
“Don’t count the old people out ever!” an elated Baumgartner told reporters after the final, adding that their years of training and competitions helped them win gold.
“For any athlete, getting pushed out by the younger generation is a feeling that really sucks, so for us to go out there and put our stamp of approval on it, (to show) that we’re not done yet, we just gotta work a little harder and we’re willing to put that work in, so it’s a good feeling.”
Jacobellis’ medal earlier this week was a victory that went some way to making up for a career-defining fall at the 2006 Turin Games.
“We’ve definitely been through a lot and we’ve seen each other’s ups and downs and struggles, so to be able to come together and work as a team and learn from each other … I thought we did great today,” she said.
Canadian Eliot Grondin, who was part of the team who took bronze, said it was impressive to see the American pair dominate the race.
“I’ve watched these people race since I was born,” he said. “Nick is 20 years older than me. Just to be able to share a big final with those guys … It’s insane.”
The mixed team event made its Olympics debut at the Beijing Games, but most boarders were already familiar with the course at the Genting Snow Park in Zhangjiakou as they had already raced individual competitions there earlier in the week.
Heavy snow began to fall in Zhangjiakou ahead of Saturday’s final, covering the course with a layer of powdery snow. Air temperatures fell to -11 degree Celsius (12.2°F) and visibility was lower than normal.
Australian Belle Brockhoff was earlier taken off the course by a stretcher after she clipped another boarder and fell during a frenetic quarter-final race.
Blistering Boe takes new biathlon gold, brother bags bronze
IMAGE: Silver medallist Quentin Fillon Maillet of France, gold medallist Johannes Thingnes Boe of Norway and bronze medallist Tarjei Boe of Norway celebrate. Photograph: Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters
Norway’s Johannes Thingnes Boe blazed to another Olympic gold medal in the men’s 10 km sprint event at the Beijing Olympics on Saturday while his brother Tarjei won bronze, their second medals of the Games after last week’s mixed relay win.
France’s Quentin Fillon Maillet came in second to add a silver medal to the gold he secured in the men’s individual race and a relay silver, on a night that the Boe brothers made their own.
“It is a fairy tale you could write, to be on the podium with Johannes,” said Tarjei. “It is big for me … there is a lot of joy but also relief … to share this together both as a team, and for the rest of our lives.”
Starting 16th, the younger Boe flew out of the traps and hit all five of his shots to open a lead of 20.1 seconds over his nearest competitor in perfect weather conditions as the sun began to slide down behind the mountains of Zhangjiakou to the west.
Each racer had two visits to the shooting range, one in the prone position and one standing, with each miss incurring a penalty loop of 150 metres before rejoining the course.
A miss with his second shot while standing sent Boe for a lap of the penalty loop, but it made little difference as his trademark powerful skiing increased his lead.
Boe crossed the line with a lead of 40.6 seconds, collapsing face first on the snow and sucking down huge gulps of air after his exertions as the long wait for the rest of the field to finish began.
Maillet shot clean from the standing position to get himself back in contention for the podium, but he couldn’t match Boe’s energy on the skis.
Sweden’s 2018 Olympic champion Sebastian Samuelsson finally found some form, skiing an electrifying final lap before finishing in fifth position, but the day belonged to the Boe brothers and in particular to Johannes, whose eventual winning margin was 32.1 seconds, with Tarjei eight seconds further back.
“It was an extremely good race, it was a perfectly planned race. I heard I was leading, so today knew it was the day. I had very good skis too,” said Johannes Boe, before adding his congratulations to his sibling.
“I am so pleased Tarjei is in third place,” a beaming Boe said.
Gold medal-winning knee grab controversy causes frustration
IMAGE: Max Parrot of Canada in action during training. Photograph: Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters
The men’s snowboarding slopestyle final at the Beijing Olympics seemed to have a picture-perfect ending when Max Parrot took gold following a comeback from cancer.
Parrot, who completed his last round of chemotherapy treatments for Hodgkin lymphoma in 2019, came out in front of China’s Su Yiming, who took silver, and fellow Canadian Mark McMorris in the bronze medal position.
However, as new video angles of the competition appeared, fans’ attitudes shifted.
Those shots showed that during Parrot’s winning run the Canadian grabbed his knee during a trick, not the board, and should have lost points for not completing a key component of the manoeuvre.
Supporters of Su and McMorris were outraged and berated the judges on social media and in private messages, according to media reports.
McMorris said it was a shame the knee grab was not caught earlier.
“Any other contest, if they would have seen it, that would have been a complete write-off of a run, like a 75-80,” said McMorris, who was hoping for a different medal after also winning bronze in Sochi and Pyeongchang.
“The fact the angle the judges had just was not that easy to make out if he touched his board or not, and by the time they went to slo mo it became super apparent that he didn’t grab and he grabbed his knees and no board purchase,” said McMorris.
A media representative for Parrot did not reply to an email request for a comment on the situation.
Comments on McMorris’ social media were a mixture of congratulations and anger about getting “robbed” by the judges.
On China’s Weibo, Su’s coach Yasuhiro Sato posted a message asking fans to refrain from criticizing the judges and that he and Su respect the flow of the game and the outcome.
In an interview with snowboarding publication Whitelines, Iztok Sumatic, Beijing Olympics head judge for snowboarding, admitted that judges missed the error. Sumatic said the trick looked clean from the camera angle they were given, the report said.
“Is it really the spirit that the Olympics want to convey to admit to having done something wrong without correcting the result?” one Weibo user wrote.
This has raised questions about the angles judges are shown during the competitions.
Japan’s Ayumu Hirano, who won gold in the men’s halfpipe nL8N2UM0AQ on Friday, also questioned the judging process for snowboarding.
In a news conference on Saturday, Hirano said there needed to be a “more robust system” to accurately assess the tricks.
Hirano and many of his fans had been disappointed when judges awarded an unexpectedly low score during his second run when the Japanese boarder landed a triple cork, which is considered one of the most challenging tricks in the sport.
“We want to have sound standards and I think we should look into exactly what the judges were looking at,” Hirano added.
“For the athletes, they’re putting their lives on the line, they’re giving it their all. So for the riders, I think some steps need to be taken to address this issue regarding the judges,” he said, adding that the matter should not be ignored.
The International Ski Federation did not respond to a request for comment.
McMorris for his part said he was happy for Parrot but found the situation frustrating for the snowboarding community that such a controversy happened in their biggest competition.
Russians storm to relay gold as Germany snag sensational silver
IMAGE: Victoria Carl of Germany and Tatiana Sorina of the Russian Olympic Committee in action. Photograph: Marko Djurica/Reuters
The Russian Olympic Committee delivered a dominant display to win the 4x5km relay on Saturday, with Germany fending off the superpowers of the sport to take a sensational silver – their first ever Olympic cross-country medal.
Sweden secured bronze, as individual sprint champion Jonna Sundling made up ground after a poor third leg by Frida Karlsson to beat Finland’s Krista Parmakoski in a sprint for third place.
The race will go down as one of the greatest Olympic days for Germany’s women on the cross-country trails, as they broke early along with the Russians and combined power and courage to hang on for a scarcely believable second place.
The four legs of the race were split, with the first two in the classic style and the second two freestyle, as each racer from the 18 teams completed two laps of the 2.5km track.
Norway’s hopes suffered an early blow as Tiril Weng fell following a collision with Latvian rival Patricija Eiduka, but her team managed to battle their way back into contention before falling away again late on.
The Russians took an early lead through Yulia Stupak, who led 12.9 seconds ahead of Sweden’s Dahlqvist after her first lap. However, she was reined in by the unlikely figure of Katherine Sauerbrey of Germany by the first exchange as the Germans showed they were not here just to make up the numbers.
Sauerbrey’s team mate Katharina Hennig made a surprise break midway through her second lap to leave Natalia Nepryaeva in her wake, building up a lead of 4.3 seconds at the second exchange, with the top seven teams all within 30 seconds of the leaders.
The chasing pack was whittled down to three during the third leg, with Swede Frida Karlsson, Finland’s Kerttu Niskanen and Norway’s Helene Marie Fossesholm tightly bunched together.
None of them seemed to be able to find a pace that would bring the gap down to less than 20 seconds however.
That left ROC’s Veronika Stepanova and Germany’s Sofie Krehl locked in battle on the final lap, with Stepanova spurting away to victory by 18.2 seconds ahead of Krehl to claim the Olympic crown, before Sundling sprinted down Parmakoski for the bronze.
“It is a special day,” said Stepanova. “It was really tough because we have a win in the World Cup and a lot of people say, ‘You must win, you must win.’ So I am like, ‘OK, we need a good result,’ and I do what I can do.”
While the Russians had to deal with starting as favourites, the Germans struggled to comprehend what they had achieved.
“I don’t have words for this. It’s unbelievable,” said Victoria Carl.
Hennig said: “It was like a thriller. I was so excited when the other girls were racing. It was an incredible feeling at the end.”
“It’s amazing. We are so happy. I can’t believe it at the moment,” said Sauerbrey, while Krehl added: “It’s a lot of emotion – maybe I need some time and then I can recognise what we have done.
“Of course it’s a surprise, but we all had really good races in the last few days.”
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