Golden skaters leading the way

Highlighted by Chinese skaters' triple-gold home campaign and freeskier Eileen Gu's record-tying halfpipe win, the past week has seen plenty of thrills and chills that sent winter sports fans cheering at Beijing 2022 venues.

As China's most decorated winter sports national program, the country's short-track speed skating team has finally lived up to its world elite status on the revamped 2024-25 World Tour by bagging three gold and two bronze medals on home ice at the third leg of the series in Beijing last week.

Skater Sun Long proved himself a perfect representative of the "Chinese Loongs", Team China's official tour moniker, by finishing first in Saturday's men's 500m final to claim the team's first gold medal this season. This followed the first two legs in Canada, where Chinese skaters collected a silver and two bronze medals.

Two more wins in the mixed 2,000m and men's 5,000m relays, both secured in dramatic fashion, on Sunday capped off Team China's home campaign on a high, reinforcing the squad's collective strength while sending the Capital Indoor Stadium into a celebratory frenzy.

"This is short-track speed skating. You never know what happens until the end of the race. We are really satisfied with our performance today," said Liu Shaoang, who emerged from a three-way tie with South Korea's Park Ji-won and Andrew Heo of the United States in the final lap to clinch the mixed relay win for China in two minutes and 39.115 seconds.

The men's 5,000m relay ended up a fiercer battle physically with three other squads — Canada, South Korea and the Netherlands — all crashing out of the track while jostling for positions, leaving the composed home team the sole finisher in the final to deliver a third gold in Beijing.

"I've always had strong confidence in my team. I knew we are going to get better and we are expecting to keep improving in the buildup to the 2026 Winter Olympics," China's head coach Zhang Jing said.

On the same weekend, and some 180 kilometers away from the short track, the Genting Snow Park in Zhangjiakou, Hebei province — another Beijing 2022 Olympic venue — also celebrated a golden feat of home athletes after Gu repeated her Olympic title run by winning the 2024-25 World Cup season's second stop in the halfpipe discipline.

Gu, who won two golds at Beijing 2022 in halfpipe and big air, overcame a fall in her first attempt in the three-run final as she scored a field-high 90 points in her second run to edge out her compatriot Li Fanghui and Svea Irving of the US to secure her second straight win on Saturday, following her season opener triumph in New Zealand.

It was Gu's 16th career World Cup title in freestyle skiing, putting her back into a tie for the lead with France's Tess Ledeux for most World Cup wins of all time.

"I'm really happy that when it counted I was able to gather all my resources and channel it to where it counts," Gu said of her comeback from her first-run fall.

The silver medal also marked 21-year-old Li's best performance on the World Cup circuit, bettering her back-to-back third-place finishes at the same venue in 2018 and 2019.

Adrenaline-pumping action also brought Beijing 2022's alpine course back to life as Japanese rider Tsubaki Miki and Italian talent Daniele Bagozza took advantage of the optimal slope conditions at the National Alpine Ski Center in northwest Beijing's Yanqing district to win the women's and men's finals respectively at the snowboard parallel slalom World Cup on Sunday.