China equals best record in Olympic golds, French pair crowned in ice dance

BEIJING, Feb. 14 (Xinhua) -- China has tied its best record number of Olympic gold medals after veteran Xu Mengtao won its fifth gold at Beijing 2022 in the womens aerials freestyle skiing, while French pair Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron emerged winners in figure skating ice dance on Monday. With five gold, three silver and two bronze medals after Day 10 action, China sits seventh on the medal standings. Ten medals are just one short of Chinas best performance in medal haul, set at Turin 2006 and Vancouver 2010. Competing in her fourth Olympics, Xu registered a match-best 108.61 points among six skiers in the final 2 for the hosts fifth gold medal at the Games. This is the first Olympic gold from the womens aerials for China. After Han Xiaopeng was crowned in the mens aerials at Turin 2006, China has been waiting for 16 years to win its second Olympic gold from the discipline. Im just super excited, said an elated Xu. This is the first gold medal by China in womens aerials and its just super cool. The 31-year-old was followed by Hanna Huskova from Belarus in 107.95 points. Megan Nick from the United States was third in 93.76 points. Another Chinese skier Kong Fanyu ranked sixth. With the gold, four-time world champions Papadakis and Cizeron made up for the regret four years ago in PyeongChang. The 2018 Olympic silver medalists demonstrated their dominance over the discipline with another new highest score, 136.15 points in the free dance, bringing their overall score to 226.98 for the championship. Papadakis and Cizeron set their personal best and world-record score with 90.83 points in Saturdays rhythm dance. We have been waiting for this, said Papadakis. We built upon the last Olympics. For years this was the only medal that we wanted, and the past four years were just about that moment. Current world champions Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov from the Russian Olympic Committee settled for the silver with a 131.66-point free dance and 220.51 points overall. American pair Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue took the bronze with a season-best free dance of 130.89 and 218.02 overall. Wang Shiyue and Liu Xinyu ranked 12th to set a new best result for Chinese ice dancers at a Winter Olympics. Chinas previous best result in ice dancing had stood for 30 years when Han Bing and Yang Hui finished 18th at Albertville 1992. Kaillie Humphries of the United States won the inaugural womens monobob gold, breaking Germanys stranglehold on the sliding sports. Prior to her gold, German racers had triumphed in all of the previous six events in Yanqing, four in luge and two in the skeleton. Humphries clocked a winning time of four minutes and 19.27 seconds over four runs to take the gold, followed by another American slider Elana Meyers Taylor, and Christine de Bruin from Canada. Austria beat Slovenia to take the ski jumping mens team gold with 942.7 points. Slovenia took the silver with 934.4 points, and the bronze went to PyeongChang silver medalist Germany with 922.9 points. Having claimed a historic gold in the womens freeski big air, Chinas Gu Ailing qualified for Tuesdays slopestyle finals with a score of 79.38 points, placing third among 12 qualifiers. After two runs which easily secured her a final spot, Gu took a Chinese pie out and started to enjoy it at the waiting area. Its delicious! Highly recommended! she said. Another Chinese prodigy, Su Yiming, also qualified for the snowboard mens big air finals on Tuesday with a score of 155.25 points. With 92.50 and 62.75 points from his first and second runs, Su placed fifth among 12 qualifiers. Tuesdays finals will be the last competition for the 17-year-olds first Olympic journey. Norway leads the medal tally with nine gold, five silver and seven bronze, followed by Germany and the United States. Nine gold medals are up for grabs on Tuesday. The Ad Hoc Division of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has declined to impose a provisional suspension on figure skater Kamila Valieva, a member of the title-winning Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) team. Valieva had been provisionally banned on February 8 when a sample taken in December last year returned a positive result for the banned substance trimetazidine. International Olympic Committee (IOC) said that there will be neither flower nor medal ceremony if Valieva finishes in the top three in the womens single skating which starts on Tuesday. There will also be no medal ceremony for the team event at Beijing 2022, where the 15-year-old skater helped the ROC win the gold last week. Medal ceremonies will be organized once the case of Valieva has been concluded, said the IOC.

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China equals best record in Olympic golds, French pair crowned in ice dance