Maoershan Update: Biathlon & Snowboard

Biathlon: Russian and Ukrainian Pursuit

The Biathlon Pursuit event is easy to understand: you start in the same position as the one obtained after the sprint competition. This means that the winner of the 10km sprint men, the Russian Artem Gusev was the first to take the start 2 seconds before the Ukrainian Oleg Berezhnoy and 27 seconds before the Czech Jaroslav Soukup. In fact the race for the podium went only between those three biathletes. Despite 4 penalties loops, Gusev came together with Berezhnoy (1 penalty loop) for the last of 4 shootings. But the Russian missed the target four times and will never see the end winner Berezhnoy again. Gusev despite 8 missed shots was quite happy to clinch the silver medal after beating Soukup in the last sprint.

We knew that after the tight results of the sprint competition, the women pursuit was going to be panting. Three Polish girls were ahead before the last 5 standing shots but they could not resist to the pressure. Anna Kunaeva, the winner of the 15km, came from behind to win the gold before the surprising Chinese Yuan Yuan Liu and Weronika Novakowska from Poland.

An All-Chinese Medal Podium for Women’s Half Pipe

Snowboard Half Pipe: Asian Supremacy

Chinese media and public had climbed Maoershan Mountain to visit at noon the wonderful half pipe venue. All the eyes were aiming at the direction of the 18- year old Chinese star of the event, Jiayu Liu, who has won in the last 12 months a respectable amount of World Cup victories and who was crowned as the new World Champion in Korea less than one month ago. At present she’s second in the World Cup ranking.

First of the qualifications, Jiayu Liu won quite easily the event, her country fellow women Zhifeng Sun and Chen Xu completing a 100% Chinese podium. The only non-Chinese medal pretender, the Polish Paulina Ligocka unfortunately broke her arm during the warm-up. The crowd was delighted by the Chinese triumph and did not pay too much attention to the men’s competition although a few Chinese were among the favorites. But Xiaoye could not make better than the bronze medal behind the winner, the Japanese Kazuhiro Kokubo, and the Korean Ho Jun Kin. Kazuhiro Kokubo is one of the top half pipe riders. The Japanese was second in the 2007 World Championship and has already won the World Cup events in 2005. His last international results are not from the same level. No doubt that the Maoershan victory will give him a kick.