Xu Mengtao grabs silver in freestyle skiing
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E-mail Cntv, February 15, 2014
Team China were all focused on the freestyle skiing aerials with three Chinese competitors in the running for a medal.
All three Chinese in the final have a genuine chance of victory. Li Nina, an experienced competitor, the reigning world cup champion and holder of an Olympic silver medal from Vancouver 2010; Cheng Shuang, both the World champion and world cup winner in 2011, and Xu Mengtao, one of the young guns, the world cup champion in 2013 and recent winner of the Sochi Olympic test event.
In the mountain hub at Rosa Khutar crowds were hard to come by even at the live site with front row seats and a huge screen of all Olympic disciplines on offer.
Up the mountain though, the party atmosphere was building and the crowds began arriving as a field of 23 skiiers was whittled down to just 12 finalists.
Jumping first, Alla Tsuper of Belarus stunned them all - at almost two decades older than some of her competitors the five time Olympian who has never been on the podium went straight to the lead and hung on.
Cheng Shuang was eliminated after the second jump leaving Li and Xu to fight it out in the final four.
The defending olympic champion, Lydia Lassila from Australia had two great jumps to sit in second position but failed to capitalise with her third jump and was bumped to bronze.
Xu Mengtao with a second jump scoring an incredibly high 101.8 got into medal contention and held on to finish with a silver while Li Nina was just off the podium in 4th.
"Actually, I am satisfied with my performances, from preliminaries to the final. I didn’t expect to get a silver, you know my training recently hasn’t been that good. But I do still feel a little regret. This is the fourth silver medal China has won at the Winter Olympics in aerials, and we have always wanted to get a gold medal, but sadly I did’t get the chance," Xu said.
China now has a second silver medal to go alongside the two golds.
