YANQING: Johannes Ludwig sped to gold in the luge men’s singles, restoring Germany’s Olympic primacy in the sport, after a blistering series of runs that twice broke the track record at the Yanqing National Sliding Centre.

After setting the pace in the first two rounds on Saturday, Ludwig’s third run on Sunday set a record of 57.043 seconds, giving him a time of 3:48.735 overall.Austria’s Wolfgang Kindl was 0.160 seconds behind to claim silver, while Italy’s Dominik Fischnaller took bronze, 0.951 seconds off the pace on the serpentine track.

World Cup champion Ludwig, 35, took bronze at the Pyeongchang Olympics in an event where Germany have dominated.

Meanwhile, Jakara Anthony of Australia won gold in the women’s freestyle skiing moguls event, giving her country its first gold medal at the Winter Games in over a decade.

Anthony nabbed the top score on Sunday of 83.09 in the final run that featured a cork 720, a trick she said she only began performing this year. American Jaelin Kauf took silver, earning 80.28 points in her final run, while Anastasiia Smirnova of the Russian Olympic Committee won bronze.

In ski jumping, Japan’s Ryoyu Kobayashi kept his nerve to deliver a solid last leap of competition and win the normal hill title.

Manuel Fettner of Austria took silver and Poland’s Dawid Kubacki the bronze.Kobayashi’s victory gave Japan their first ski jump gold since Kazuyoshi Funaki triumphed in the large hill on home snow at Nagano 1998 and the first on the normal hill since Yukio Kasay’s success, also at home, in Sapporo 50 years ago to the day.

Sweden’s Nils van der Poel skated a blistering last lap to snatch the gold medal in the 5,000m speed skating, ending Dutchman Sven Kramer’s 12-year monopoly on the title.

The Swede trailed Dutchman Patrick Roest by more than a second throughout the race but stormed to victory in an Olympic record of six minutes 08.84 seconds. Roest took silver in 6.09.31 while Norwegian Hallgeir Engebraaten claimed bronze in 6.09.88.

Also on Sunday, Zoi Sadowski-Synnott of New Zealand won gold in the women’s slopestyle event, snagging the nation’s first-ever Winter Games gold medal.

Alexander Bolshunov, representing the ROC, won the men’s 2x15km skiathlon title. His ROC team-mate Denis Spitsov took silver and Finland’s Iivo Niskanen bronze.

Published in Dawn, February 7th, 2022