Roundup of Olympic gold medals from Sunday, Feb. 20
Roundup of Olympic gold medals from Sunday, Feb. 20
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Your support makes all the difference.A roundup of gold medals from Sunday, Feb. 20, at the Beijing Games:
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ALPINE SKIING
MIXED TEAM PARALLEL
The top-ranked Austrians won gold in the Winter Games’ second iteration of the mixed team parallel event, holding off Germany in the final.
Mikaela Shiffrin and the American mixed ski team missed out on a medal by 0.42 seconds, losing in the bronze matchup in the final Alpine ski event of the Beijing Olympics. Norway won the bronze.
The U.S. primarily used Shiffrin on the slower of the parallel courses, and she lost three of her four heats. Teammate River Radamus delivered the win the U.S. needed in the last heat to force a 2-2 tie, but he wasn’t fast enough to tilt the tiebreaker — combined times of the fastest man and woman — to the Americans’ favor.
Austria also tied in the final against the Germans, but Stefan Brennsteiner and Katharina Liensberger took their heats in a faster combined time than Lena Duerr and Alexander Schmid.
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BOBSLED
4-MAN
Francesco Friedrich and Germany have finished off an unforgettable show in sliding at the Beijing Olympics.
Friedrich won his second Olympic gold medal in Beijing and fourth of his career by driving to the win Sunday in the four-man event, the final sliding race of these games.
There were 10 sliding events in Beijing. Germany won gold in nine of them and took 16 medals overall. The rest of the world combined had 14 medals in sliding.
Johannes Lochner won silver for Germany on Sunday and Justin Kripps of Canada got the bronze. Hunter Church was 10th for the U.S. and Frank DelDuca tied for 13th.
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CROSS-COUNTRY SKIING
WOMEN'S 30KM MASS START
Therese Johaug of Norway won the women’s 30-kilometer mass start, her third gold at the Beijing Olympics.
Fighting fierce winds and brutal temperatures, she went out front early in the race and held on, finishing in 1 hour, 24 minutes and 54 seconds. Johaug also won the skiathlon and 10-kilometer classic race.
American Jessie Diggins kept a steady pace behind the Norwegian as gusts whipped across the tracks, battering the skiers. She crossed the finish line 1 minute and 43.3 seconds behind Johaug to win silver. She had already become the first American woman to win an individual cross-country medal when she took bronze in the sprint earlier in the Beijing Games.
Finland’s Kerttu Niskanen won bronze 2 minutes and 33.3 seconds back.
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CURLING
WOMEN'S
Eve Muirhead led Britain to the Olympic women’s curling gold medal — the first for the sport’s homeland since 2002 — with a record-setting 10-3 victory over Japan.
One day after the British men took silver, losing to Sweden in the final, the women picked up two points in the first end and controlled the scoreboard from there. They essentially clinched it in the seventh after Japanese skip Satsuki Fujisawa failed to keep her last stone in the scoring area.
Japan could only manage one point in the eighth. When Muirhead tallied two in the ninth, Fujisawa slid over to bump fists and concede. Another roar arose from the crowd, which included the men’s silver medalists.
The Swedish women won bronze on Saturday night, beating Switzerland.
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More AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports