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Skaters complain about Chinese ice cream
6.16 pm: Two Olympic records were immediately broken on the first two days of racing, but many long track skaters still complain about difficult conditions in the National Speed Skating Oval in Beijing. “The ice is not as hard as, for example, in Thialf, it slides a little less,” says Jorrit Bergsma, who finished fifth in the Olympic five kilometers on Sunday. “It has been quite warm in the hall all week. You see a lot of people going on a pile. It’s just very heavy.”
Just like Bergsma, Antoinette de Jong also started talking about the circumstances of his own accord. “You don’t really know what it is,” said the 26-year-old Friezin, who set the eighth time on Saturday in the 3000 meters. “Sometimes it’s very hard, other times it’s super soft. I couldn’t do anything with it. That feels super frustrating, because you want to show what you can do during such an important match. It just doesn’t feel right.”
Olympic gold for German tobogganist Ludwig
3:27 p.m.: Rodelnatie Germany has the Olympic gold back. The 35-year-old Johannes Ludwig won the title at the Winter Games in Beijing. After four runs through the ice channel in Yanqing, he was 0.160 seconds ahead of Austrian Wolfgang Kindl, who took the silver. The Italian Dominik Fischnaller took the bronze. It was Germany’s first gold medal at these Games.
The German Felix Loch, the Olympic champion of Vancouver 2010 and Sochi 2014, just missed the medals. He finished fourth. The Austrian David Gleirscher, who won gold four years ago in Pyeongchang, was not involved this time. He was 15th.
Gold for Japanese favorite Kobayashi on small ramp
2:18 pm: Japanese ski jumper Ryoyu Kobayashi has lived up to his favorite role at the Beijing Winter Games. He captured the gold on the small redoubt. With distances of 104.5 and 99.5 meters he achieved the highest point total of 275.0 points. Kobayashi already won the Vierschansenstournee with force majeure earlier this winter.
The silver went to the Austrian Manuel Fettner, who with distances of 102.5 and 104 meters was hardly inferior to Kobayashi, but still received fewer points: 270.8. The bronze medal went to Pole Dawid Kubacki with 265.9 points (104 and 103 meters).
Three-time Olympic champion Kamil Stoch was third after the first jump and seemed a serious candidate for another Olympic medal, but after the second jump (97.5 meters) the Pole fell back and finished sixth.
The Swiss Simon Ammann could not play a significant role on his seventh Games. The 40-year-old, four-time Olympic champion ended up in 25th place after two jumps.
Defending champion Wüst at 1500 meters in 12th stage against Blondin
1.17 pm: Ireen Wüst will take on Ivanie Blondin during her last Olympic performance in the 1500 meters on Monday. The 35-year-old Dutch and the 31-year-old Canadian are classified in the twelfth of a total of fifteen rides.
Wüst won the 1500 meters at the 2010 and 2018 Games. In 2006 and 2014, she secured Olympic gold in the 3000 meters. With a win in the team pursuit in Sochi (2014), the Brabant player is currently on five Olympic titles. In Beijing, Wüst will later participate in the 1000 meters and the team pursuit.
Antoinette de Jong and Marijke Groenewoud are the other Orange participants in the 1500 meters. De Jong, who disappointed on Saturday with eighth place in the 3 kilometers, skates in the eleventh stage against Kazakh Nadezhda Morozova. Groenewoud is placed in the ninth pair with the Chinese rider Qi Yin.
The 1500 meters for women starts at 09.30 Dutch time in the National Speed Skating Oval in Beijing. TeamNL has won two medals in long track speed skating at these Games. Irene Schouten won the 3000 meters for women and Patrick Roest finished second in the 5 kilometers for men.
IOC tackles the situation in quarantine hotels after complaints
8.23 am: The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is working to improve conditions in the quarantine hotels at the Beijing Olympics, where participants who test positive for the corona virus are taken. Complaints had been received from the German team at the IOC.
“It is our duty and responsibility to ensure good conditions,” IOC Director Christophe Dubi said at the daily press briefing in Beijing. “We have to make sure that expectations are met.”
The Germans, who are dealing with a lot of corona infections within their Olympic team, had complained about the small rooms, the food and the lack of training opportunities. “The situation is unreasonable, this must be improved,” said mission chief Dirk Schimmelpfennig earlier in the week. The Germans announced on Sunday that the situation has improved thanks to intervention by the IOC. For example, the athletes can now order food that is on the menu in the Olympic village. Their order will then be delivered to the quarantine hotel.
Last year at the Tokyo Olympics, the Dutch team openly complained about the “bad conditions” in the quarantine hotel. Sports umbrella organization NOC*NSF then also called in the help of the IOC and the Dutch ambassador in Japan, which led to the necessary improvements. TeamNL is currently ‘corona-free’ at the Winter Games in China.
Olympic downhill for skiers canceled due to high winds
07.14 am: The downhill run for alpine skiers at the Beijing Olympics has been moved from Sunday to Monday. The organization had to postpone the first part of the alpine program because of the persistent high winds in Yanqing, located about 200 kilometers from Beijing. Initially, the start time had already been shifted three times.
Because the conditions did not improve, the descent was eventually canceled and moved to Monday. International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach had come to Yanqing on Sunday to see the descent, but the German turned out to have made the journey for nothing.
On Saturday, the last training session on the more than 3 kilometer long slope of Yanqing was already interrupted due to the strong wind, which kept changing direction. After three skiers came down, the organization decided to abort the training.
Four years ago, at the Pyeongchang Games in South Korea, the high winds often bothered skiers. Then the descent for the men was also postponed.
The giant slalom for women is also scheduled in Yanqing on Monday, with Dutch skier Adriana Jelinkova as one of the participants. The men’s descent takes place between the two runs of the giant slalom. It starts at 5 a.m. Dutch time.
Corona seems to be extinguishing at Games, ten new cases
07.12 am: The coronavirus seems to have peaked at the Olympics. Organizers reported only ten new positive cases on Sunday in the daily round of tests of 73,000 people the day before.
This brings the total number of positive cases at the Beijing Games to 363, counted from January 23. On that day, the first participants arrived in China.
China works with a so-called ‘super bubble’. That means anyone attending the Games will be isolated from the people of China. In recent weeks, new athletes have been flocking to Beijing. Now that the Games have started and hardly any people are entering the bubble, the system seems to be doing its job. Keeping a distance is not always possible within the bubble. The buses to the stadiums and venues are often packed. Everyone wears a mask.
All people in the ‘super bubble’ must be tested daily for the corona virus.
So far, no one has tested positive for the corona virus at TeamNL, which participates with 42 athletes in the Winter Games.
Olympic gold for New Zealand snowboard star on slopestyle
07.11 am: Zoi Sadowski-Synnott helped New Zealand win its first medal at the Beijing Olympics. The snowboard star was the best in slopestyle on Sunday. Sadowski-Synnott scored 92.88 points on her third and final run in the final.
The American Julia Marino was on course for gold until that moment, but she had to settle for second place with a highest score of 87.68 points. The bronze went to Australian Tess Coady (84.15).
The 20-year-old Sadowski-Synnott provided a first with her performance. New Zealand has never won gold at the Winter Games before.
Melissa Peperkamp was not allowed to participate in the final. The 17-year-old Dutch narrowly missed out on her Olympic debut on Saturday. In the qualifiers she recorded the thirteenth score. Only the best twelve snowboarders were allowed to come back for the final in Yanqing.