Beijing Olympics medal tally: Round-up of events and winners on Day 4, February 8

The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics saw several medal events take place. Here’s the round-up of Day 4, February 8:

ALPINE SKIING

MEN’S SUPER-G

Defending champion Matthias Mayer of Austria won the men’s super-G, capturing a third Olympic gold medal.

Ryan Cochran-Siegle of the United States was 0.04 seconds behind in second and World Cup super-G leader Aleksander Aamodt Kilde of Norway was 0.42 behind in third.

Mayer broke Norway’s 16-year grip on the men’s Olympic super-G title when he won in 2018. That was four years after winning the downhill in Sochi.

The 31-year-old Mayer also claimed bronze in the men’s downhill on Monday.

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BIATHLON

MEN’S 20KM INDIVIDUAL

Quentin Fillon Maillet of France won decisively in the 20-kilometer individual biathlon, adding a gold medal to the silver he won in the mixed relay over the weekend.

Fillon Maillet has dominated the biathlon world lately. He’s had 10 World Cup podium finishes this season. Half of those were wins.

He missed two of 20 targets Tuesday and finished the course in 48 minutes, 47.4 seconds. Anton Smolski of Belarus shot clean, hitting all 20 of his targets, but came in 14.8 seconds behind the Frenchman.

Defending individual Olympic champion Johannes Thingnes Boe of Norway also missed two targets and took the bronze medal.

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CROSS-COUNTRY SKIING

MEN’S SPRINT FREE

Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo of Norway defended his Olympic cross-country sprint title at the Beijing Games on Tuesday, leading the final for the entire race and punching the air when he crossed the finish line.

Klaebo won the race in 2 minutes, 58.06 seconds. Frederico Pellegrino of Italy took silver, .26 seconds behind. Russian skier Alexander Terenteva earned bronze, 1.31 behind.

WOMEN’S SPRINT FREE

Jonna Sundling of Sweden won the race in 3:09.68, finishing 2.88 seconds ahead of teammate Maja Dahlqvist on Tuesday. Jessie Diggins of the United States took bronze, 3.16 seconds behind.

Sundling is a first-time Olympian but has two world championship sprint titles, and team sprint titles with Dahlqvist.

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CURLING

MIXED DOUBLES

Italy won the gold medal in mixed doubles curling, completing a near-perfect Olympics.

The 8-5 win over Norway on Tuesday at the Ice Cube capped a dominant performance for Amos Mosaner and Stefania Constantini. The Italians were undefeated in the round-robin and then advanced to the gold medal match with an 8-1 victory over Sweden.

Kristin Skaslien and Magnus Nedregotten will take a silver medal back to Norway four years after claiming bronze in Pyeongchang.

Sweden won the bronze medal in mixed doubles curling, bouncing back from a semifinal blowout to dominate Britain 9-3 in six ends in the third-place game.

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FREESTYLE SKIING

WOMEN’S BIG AIR

American-born Eileen Gu of China cranked out the first 1620 of her career on her final jump, stunning France’s Tess Ledeux and earning the first of what she hopes will be three gold medals in women’s freestyle big air.

Nicknamed the “Snow Princess,” Gu is a medal favorite in big air, slopestyle and halfpipe. Her first stab at gold came down to the last round.

Ledeux is the only other woman to ever land a 1620 — 4 ½ spins — in competition, and she stomped one out with a slight wobble on the landing in Round 1.

Ledeux won silver and Mathilde Gremaud of Switzerland won bronze.

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LUGE

WOMEN’S SINGLES

Natalie Geisenberger is the first three-time Olympic champion in women’s luge.

The German great won the gold medal Tuesday at the Beijing Games, her third consecutive title. Germany’s Anna Berreiter was second and Tatiana Ivanova of the Russian Olympic Committee was third.

Berreiter was a half-second back of Geisenberger. Ivanova was a full second back. In luge, those time gaps are massive.

That speaks to how dominant Geisenberger was. No woman in luge history has more Olympic golds, or world championship golds, or World Cup race victories than Geisenberger.

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SNOWBOARDING

MEN’S PARALLEL GIANT SLALOM

Second-seeded Benjamin Karl of Austria held off Tim Mastnak of Slovenia for the gold.

Russian athlete Vic Wild picked up the bronze as the No. 9 seed in the bracketed field.

Wild, who is from the United States and was granted Russian citizenship in 2012, won gold in the event at the 2014 Sochi Games.

WOMEN’S PARALLEL GIANT SLALOM

Ester Ledecka of the Czech Republic defended her Olympic snowboard parallel giant slalom title with a quick final run on a sun-splashed course.

Four years ago in South Korea, Ledecka became the first competitor to win gold in two different sports at the same Winter Games. She has a chance to accomplish the feat once again in China. The women’s super-G ski race is scheduled for Friday at the Yanqing Alpine Skiing Center.

In the gold-medal race, the top-seeded Ledecka opened an early lead on Daniela Ulbing, putting pressure on the Austrian snowboarder along the side-by-side course at the Genting Snow Park. Ulbing made a mistake up top and later veered off course. Gloria Kotnik of Slovenia earned the bronze.

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SPEEDSKATING

MEN’S 1,500 METERS

Kjeld Nuis of the Netherlands became the first speedskater since 1994 to successfully defend his Olympic title in the men’s 1,500 meters, edging countryman Thomas Krol at the Beijing Games.

Krol, the reigning world champion, broke the 20-year-old Olympic record in his race. Nuis went even faster in the very next pair, crossing the line with a blistering time of 1 minute, 43.21 seconds.

There were still three pairs to go, but no one came close to the Dutch duo. Nuis took his country’s third gold in four events at these games, while Krol’s runner-up finish of 1:43.55 gave the Netherlands a total of six medals in a competition that is shaping up as another rout for the Big Orange Machine.

The bronze went to South Korea’s Kim Minseok, who was more than a second behind the winner in 1:44.24.