France earns first ever Winter Games sweep
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E-mail Shanghai Daily, February 21, 2014
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France's second-placed Arnaud Bovolenta, Brady Leman of Canada, winner Jean Frederic Chapuis of France and his teammate Jonathan Midol, who finished third, compete in the men's freestyle skiing skicross final at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics in Rosa Khutor yesterday. |
For the first time in Olympic history, France has swept the medals at a Winter Games event.
Jean Frederic Chapuis won the gold medal in skicross yesterday to lead the French 1-2-3 finish at the Sochi Olympics. Arnaud Bovolenta won silver and Jonathan Midol captured bronze.
Perennial Winter Games power Norway won the Nordic combined team competition — and its Games-leading 10th gold medal. The Norwegians finished third in the ski jump but cross-country specialist Magnus Moan made up the difference in the first leg of the 20-kilometer pursuit race.
Germany, which had the lead after the ski jump, took silver and Austria got the bronze.
Politics continued to intrude on the sports. Bogdana Matsotska, an Alpine skier from Ukraine, withdrew from the games over the handling of the deadly anti-government protests back home.
On Day 14 at the Sochi Olympics, three other sports were awarding medals: women's ice hockey, women's curling and figure skating.
In the skicross, Midol lost his balance after the final jump, tumbled and then skidded across the line for bronze. The three Frenchmen posed together on the medals podium: Chapuis in his Olympic-issue green bib, Bovalenta in blue, Midol in yellow. They all put hands on their own tricolor — the French flag — and held it aloft.
In the Nordic combined, Joergen Graabak, who won gold on Tuesday in the individual large hill event, skied the final leg for Norway and outsprinted German rival Fabian Riessle over the final 100 meters to give Norway the victory by 0.3 seconds. Two-time defending champion Austria took the bronze, 3.4 seconds behind.
Later, South Korea's Kim Yu-na was bidding to become just the third woman to win back-to-back Olympic figure skating titles.
Kim, 23, opened up a narrow 0.28 point lead over Russian teenager Adelina Sotnikova in Wednesday's short program as she attempted to join fellow double winners, Norway's Sonja Henie and Germany's Katarina Witt, in the record books.
Fifteen-year-old Julia Lipnitskaia, carrying the burden of Russian hopes after the quarterfinal exit of the country's ice hockey team, found the pressure too much and was down in fifth place after falling.
