Ice in magazine fails to stop Fillon Maillet's flawless feat

BEIJING • Quentin Fillon Maillet of France produced a superb display of shooting yesterday, hitting all 20 shots in tough conditions, to clinch the gold in the 12.5km pursuit race, taking his biathlon medal tally at the Beijing Winter Olympics to four.

Norway's Tarjei Boe had a single miss as he took silver and Russia's Eduard Latypov got the bronze.

Maillet's second gold, following his victory in the individual race, to go alongside two silvers, left him feeling "proud".

"I never expected to have four medals in four races. My goal was to have one in relay and one in individual, but right now I have four and that's incredible," he said.

The 29-year-old's quest for gold almost came unstuck at the first shoot, when he found the path of his bullets blocked by ice in his magazine at a freezing National Biathlon Centre in Zhangjiakou.

With his fingers hindered by his larger, warmer gloves, he resorted to slamming the weapon with the heel of his hand before firing off a salvo of five perfect shots in terrible weather conditions.

At the Capital Indoor Stadium, Liu Shaoang won the short-track speed skating men's 500m gold to give Hungary their first individual title at a Winter Games.

The 23-year-old, who had already claimed bronze in the mixed team relay and the 1,000m, led a clean race from start to finish.

His time of 40.338sec beat Russian Konstantin Ivliev (40.431) after the other main favourites failed to make it to the final.

Canadian Steven Dubois (40.669) claimed the bronze, his second medal after finishing second in the 1,500m.

Hungary's only other gold at a Winter Olympics came in 2018, when they won the men's 5,000m relay in short-track speed skating.

Defending champion Wu Dajing was the hot favourite, but the Chinese was knocked out in the semi-finals after a race in which he was barely in the mix.

There were also two upsets in the quarter-finals as China's Ren Ziwei, the 1,000m champion here, and two-time Olympic medallist Liu Shaolin, Shaoang's brother, were knocked out.

Hwang Dae-heon, the 1,500m gold medallist, survived a close shave in the quarter-finals after a photo-finish decision, but the South Korean crashed out of his semi-final.

The Dutch landed their second title in the women's short-track events at Beijing 2022.

Led by three-time Olympic gold medallist Suzanne Schulting, the Netherlands yesterday sealed gold in the women's 3,000m relay with an Olympic record of 4min 3.409sec, ahead of runners-up South Korea (4:03.627) and China (4:03.863).

Schulting is fast becoming one of the biggest stories of the Games, having already notched a world-record mark in the 1,000m, which she won last Friday, and another Olympic record in the 500m heats before finishing second to Italy's Arianna Fontana.

In the giant slalom, Swiss Marco Odermatt won his first Olympic gold in 2:09.35, ahead of Zan Kranjec of Slovenia, who was 0.19sec behind, and France's Mathieu Faivre (2:10.69).

REUTERS, XINHUA