Olympics Spotlight

Peng Shuai

Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai has met with International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach in Beijing.

The IOC says the meeting  took place over dinner Saturday and IOC member Kirsty Coventry also attended. Coventry and Peng attended the China-Norway mixed curling match that night. Peng briefly disappeared from public view in November after she accused a Chinese official of sexual assault on her verified Weibo social media. The post was swiftly removed.

Peng told a French newspaper in an interview published yesterday that the international concern over her well-being is based on “an enormous misunderstanding.” She denied having accused the Chinese official of sexual assault.

L’Equipe, which specializes in sports news, published the interview yesterday. The publication said it spoke to the tennis player a day earlier in a Beijing hotel in an hour-long interview organized through China’s Olympic committee. 

The newspaper said it had to submit questions in advance and that a Chinese Olympic committee official sat in on the discussion and translated her comments from Chinese.

Ireen Wüst

Ireen Wüst has added to her haul as the most decorated speedskater in Olympic history with another gold.

The 35-year-old Dutch skater won her second straight gold in the 1,500 meters, setting an Olympic record with a time of 1 minute, 53.28 seconds at the Ice Ribbon oval in Beijing.

Miho Takagi of Japan claimed the silver in 1:53.72, while the bronze went to Antoinette de Jong of the Netherlands in 1:54.82.

It was another Olympic disappointment for Brittany Bowe. The U.S. skater again came up short in the quest for her first individual Olympic medal, fading badly at the end to finish 10th in 1.55.81.

Dinigeer Yilamujiang

China’s U.N. ambassador has fired back at his U.S. counterpart over her remarks that sending a member of the Uyghur ethnic group to help deliver the Olympic flame was an attempt to distract from the issue of abuses against Muslim minorities. 

Ambassador Zhang Jun issued a statement to “resolutely refute” what he called unfounded accusations against China made by Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield in an interview with CNN.

Zhang said China’s Winter Olympics team includes 20 athletes from nine ethnic minorities, including Uyghur and Tibetan. China chose cross-country skier Dinigeer Yilamujiang, a Uyghur, as one of two final Olympic torchbearers at the opening ceremony.

“She is the pride and excellent representative of the Chinese people. On what ground does the U.S. has such inexplicable anger over this? And why?” Zhang said.

Max Parrot

Canadian snowboarder Max Parrot took home the Olympic gold medal in men’s slopestyle just over three years removed from being diagnosed with cancer.

Technically superior on his second of three runs, Parrot scored a 90.96 to hold off the field. He tossed his snowboard in delight after the final score was revealed.

Su Yiming of China earned the silver and Mark McMorris of Canada used a strong final run to bump himself into bronze — his third straight one — and knock defending champion Red Gerard of the United States off the podium.

Eileen Gu

Eileen Gu’s goal of three Olympic medals nearly blew off in the wind. 

The American-born freestyle skier who spurned Team USA for China ahead of the Beijing Games risked missing the finals in women’s big air when she lost a ski on her second run and crashed into do-or-die position entering Round 3.

Gu scaled back her plans in the final round and landed a conservative right-side 900.

Gu said the wind changed direction between her first and second runs. Because she was the fifth of 25 skiers down the jump at Big Air Shougang, she didn’t notice the shift until she was mid-air. She gathered herself for a clean third run and finished fifth, easily into the 12-skier finals.

Kamila Valieva

Kamila Valieva became the first woman to land a quad in the Olympics — two of them, in fact — and her historic free skate put a stamp on Russia’s dominant run to the gold medal in the team figure skating event at the Beijing Games yesterday.

The 15-year-old Valieva opened with a huge quad salchow and followed with the difficult triple axel before landing another quad, this time a toe loop in combination with a triple toe loop. The only blemish on her program came when she fell on her quad toe loop late in the program, but by that point her first gold medal in Beijing was assured.

Valieva scored 178.92 points, giving Russia 74 points and their second gold medal in three editions of the team event. The U.S. took the silver medal after back-to-back bronze, while Japan won its first team medal with bronze. MDT/AP