Olympics Reside: Athletes parade in for closing ceremony | Olympics

Athletes who’re nonetheless in Beijing after competing on the Winter Video games are parading into the stadium for the closing ceremony as “Ode to Pleasure” performs.

The athletes needed to bear strict COVID protocols, together with testing to get into the nation, day by day testing after they arrived and carrying masks besides after they have been competing. They needed to stay inside the Olympic bubble your entire time they have been in China.

Not many examined constructive, however those that did have been taken to isolation accommodations the place they raised issues about troublesome dwelling circumstances and a lack of awareness.

The closing ceremony for the Beijing Video games has begun, signaling the tip to the second Olympics of the pandemic period.

There is a modest however enthusiastic crowd of invited visitors shaking hand clappers and doing the wave on the Chook’s Nest stadium.

Regardless of COVID issues forward of the Video games, a strict system that principally turned the Olympics into an enormous bubble stored coronavirus circumstances to a minimal. There have solely been 463 constructive exams amongst 1000’s of tourists contained in the bubble since Jan. 23.

There was loads of different drama among the many athletes. A doping scandal involving a 15-year-old determine skater overshadowed the ladies’s competitors. U.S. snowboarding star Mikaela Shiffrin faltered and went house empty-ended. And American-born star Eileen Gu received three medals – for China.

Internationally, many critiqued them because the “authoritarian Olympics” and denounced the IOC for holding them in live performance with a authorities accused of human rights violations. A number of Western governments boycotted by not sending any official delegations, although they despatched athletes. China denied such allegations, because it sometimes does.

South Korean Olympic officers say they nonetheless need to embrace North Korea in serving to host the 2024 Winter Youth Olympics and the IOC can also be within the mission.

Korean Sport & Olympic Committee president Lee Kee Heung says the group will provide North Korea the chance to carry the occasion collectively.

South Korea is internet hosting the following winter version of the Youth Olympics in two years’ time in Gangwon province. It can use a few of the identical venues because the 2018 Olympics, named for the city of Pyeongchang.

The 2018 Winter Video games have been held throughout a thaw in relations between the Korean neighbors, whose athletes entered the opening ceremony collectively and fielded a mixed ladies’s hockey crew.

Diplomatic relations are at the moment tense and a North Korean missile check final month raised concern in Seoul and Washington, D.C.

Gangwon organizers have been in Beijing and Korean Olympic official Lee says: “The IOC has eager curiosity on this concept” of cooperating on internet hosting in 2024.

Hannes Bjorninen scored the go-ahead purpose 31 seconds into the third interval and Finland claimed its first Olympic males’s hockey gold medal with a 2-1 win over the Russian Olympic Committee on the ultimate day of the Beijing Video games.

Ville Pokka additionally scored and Harri Sateri stopped 16 photographs as Finland rallied from a 1-0 first-period deficit. The Finns’ greatest finishes in 17 earlier Olympic appearances have been silver medals on the 1988 Calgary Video games and 2006 Torino Video games.

Mikhail Grigorenko scored for the favored Russian crew, the defending champions, within the second consecutive event with out NHL gamers. The Russians received 4-3 over Germany in extra time within the gold-medal remaining on the 2018 Pyeongchang Video games.

Ivan Fedotov stopped 29 photographs for the Russian Olympic Committee.

Finland accomplished the event with a 7-0 report.

Taiwan’s premier desires a Taiwanese Olympic speedskater to be punished for carrying what gave the impression to be a swimsuit from rival China’s crew throughout coaching.

Symbols of the 2 sides are particularly delicate at a time when China’s ruling Communist Social gathering, which claims Taiwan as a part of its territory, is attempting to intimidate the island democracy by flying fighter jets and bombers close by.

Huang Yu-ting, one in every of 4 Taiwanese athletes on the Winter Video games, posted a video on her social media web page Jan. 23 exhibiting her coaching in what gave the impression to be a Chinese language swimsuit, the Central Information Company reported. It stated Huang apologized and eliminated the video.

Premier Su Tseng-chang requested the Ministry of Schooling and the Sports activities Administration to research so Huang would “obtain an satisfactory punishment,” CNA reported, citing a Cupboard spokesperson, Lo Ping-cheng.

Taiwan’s Sports activities Administration stated Huang would face no penalty however must be “extra conscious of the sensitivity of cross-Taiwan Strait politics,” in accordance with CNA.

Cross-country skier Therese Johaug of Norway received the ladies’s 30-kilometer mass begin, her third gold on the Beijing Olympics.

Preventing fierce winds and brutal temperatures, she went out entrance early within the race and held on, ending in 1 hour, 24 minutes and 54 seconds. Johaug additionally received the skiathlon and 10-kilometer basic race.

American Jessie Diggins stored a gentle tempo behind the Norwegian as gusts whipped throughout the tracks, battering the skiers. She crossed the end line 1 minute and 43.3 seconds behind Johaug to win silver. She had already change into the primary American lady to win an particular person cross-country medal when she took bronze within the dash earlier within the Beijing Video games.

Finland’s Kerttu Niskanen received bronze 2 minutes and 33.3 second again.

Robust wind gusts despatched snow squalls throughout the frozen tracks as the ladies skied 4 laps on a 7.5-kilometer (4.6-mile) course with buffs pulled up over their hats, tape throughout their faces and additional layers beneath their racing fits.

Francesco Friedrich and Germany have completed off an unforgettable present in sliding on the Beijing Olympics.

Friedrich received his second Olympic gold medal in Beijing and fourth of his profession by driving to the win Sunday within the four-man occasion, the ultimate sliding race of those video games.

There have been 10 sliding occasions in Beijing. Germany received gold in 9 of them and took 16 medals total. The remainder of the world mixed had 14 medals in sliding.

Johannes Lochner received silver for Germany on Sunday and Justin Kripps of Canada obtained the bronze. Hunter Church was tenth for the U.S. and Frank DelDuca tied for thirteenth.

Eve Muirhead led Britain to the Olympic ladies’s curling gold medal — the primary for the game’s homeland since 2002 — with a record-setting 10-3 victory over Japan.

In the future after the British males took silver, dropping to Sweden within the remaining, the ladies picked up two factors within the first finish and managed the scoreboard from there. They primarily clinched it within the seventh after Japanese skip Satsuki Fujisawa didn’t maintain her final stone within the scoring space.

That left only one pink Japanese rock and three yellow British ones in the home. Muirhead simply picked off the Japan’s lone stone and scored 4 to take an 8-2 lead, bringing the most important cheer but from the British followers within the crowd.

Japan might solely handle one level within the eighth. When Muirhead tallied two within the ninth, Fujisawa slid over to bump fists and concede. One other roar arose from the group, which included the lads’s silver medalists.

It was probably the most lopsided ladies’s remaining in Olympic historical past.

It was the second straight medal for the Japanese crew of Fujisawa, Chinami Yoshida, Yumi Suzuki and Yurika Yoshida, who took bronze in Pyeongchang. The Swedish ladies received bronze on Saturday evening, beating Switzerland.

Mikaela Shiffrin and the American combined ski crew missed out on a medal by 0.42 seconds, dropping within the bronze matchup within the remaining Alpine ski occasion of the Beijing Olympics.

The highest-ranked Austrians received gold within the Winter Video games’ second iteration of the combined crew parallel occasion, holding off Germany within the remaining.

The U.S. primarily used Shiffrin on the slower of the parallel programs, and she or he misplaced three of her 4 heats, together with within the bronze matchup in opposition to Norway. Teammate River Radamus delivered the win the U.S. wanted within the final warmth to power a 2-2 tie, however he wasn’t quick sufficient to tilt the tiebreaker — mixed occasions of the quickest man and lady — to the People’ favor.

Austria additionally tied within the remaining in opposition to the Germans, however Stefan Brennsteiner and Katharina Liensberger took their heats in a quicker mixed time than Lena Duerr and Alexander Schmid. Austra took silver within the occasion’s debut at Pyeongchang 4 years in the past.

Shiffrin, a two-time gold medalist, went 0 for five in her bid for a person medal in Beijing. She solely reached the end line at two particular person occasions, coming in ninth within the super-G and 18th within the downhill.

Extra AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports