Winter Olympics: China's Eileen Gu wins big air gold; Nathan Chen leads men's short programme
Day 4 started full of promise, and boy has Eileen Gu lived up to it. The teenager has bagged China's third gold medal of the 2022 Beijing Games with a storming final run in the women's freeski big air contest.
In a battle to just secure silver, Gu pulled off a 1620 that scored a 94.50 knocking fierce rival Tess Ledeux off top spot. Gu then watched as Ledeux failed to match her run and took the first title of her Olympic career.
After Ren Ziwei and Li Wenlong took gold and silver in the short-track speedskating 1,000m last night, Lian Ziwen, Ning Zhongyan and Wang Haotian will try to match them in the men's 1,500m at 6.30pm. Elsewhere, following on from Su Yiming's sliver in the snowboard slopestyle, China's Bi Ye will compete in the parallel giant slalom today.
The other main event today is in the men's figure skating, where China’s Jin Boyang was top after posting a score of 90.98. That place has now gone to Shoma Uno of Japan who hit a personal best of 105.9. Japan’s “Ice Prince” Yuzuru Hanyu – the two-time Olympic champion – opened his bid for a third straight men's singles figure skating medal with a score of 95.15.
It was not the performance many were expecting. Hanyu appeared to catch his skate on the ice before bailing out on his first planned jump, a quadruple salchow, and scored well below his world record personal best of 111.82 for the segment.
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Winter Olympics: Eileen Gu wins gold in freeski big air, Nathan Chen leads men’s short programme. (2022, February 8). South China Morning Post. https://www.scmp.com/sport/china/article/3166173/winter-olympics-chinas-eileen-gu-goes-big-air-gold-hanyu-boyang-chen