ALMATY – Madika Natsumi won the first gold medal for Japan here Monday at the Asian Winter Games giving all she had in the final run for a comprehensive victory in the women’s cross-country ski sprint. She gained an early narrow advantage ahead of her rivals and managed to hold on to it by clocking a time of three minutes 35.2 seconds over the 1.2km distance to finish four seconds ahead of Elena Kolomina of Kazakhstan.
“I’m happy to win the first gold medal for my country,” Natsumi said. “I went ahead early and forced myself to run and endure to keep the lead up to the end.” Compatriot Yoshioka added a gold medal to his country’s collection winning the individual K125 ski jumping competition with a 122.9 metres jump in the final of the event. Another Japanese athlete Kazuyoshi Funaki, 1998 Olympic champion, took second place, while local favourite Karpenko was third. Hozumi won Japan’s third gold on the opening day topping the women’s 3,000m speed skating event.
Meanwhile, South Korean alpine skier Kim Sun Joo won the first gold for her country clinching top place in women’s downhill. The Korean, who was the last to take the start, clocked one minute 37.61 seconds and managed to beat Kazakhstan’s Lyudmila Fedotova by 0.26sec. Another local athlete, Xenia Stroilova, finished third. South Koreans Cho Ha Ri and Noh Jinkyu added two more gold medals to their country’s haul by winning the women’s and men’s short track 1500m races.
Lee Seung Hoon rounded off South Korean success on Monday by winning the men’s 5,000m speed skating gold. Biathlete Wang Chunli opened the gold medal score for China by winning the women’s 7.5km sprint with a time of 23 minutes 12.1 seconds. The 27-year-old was flawless in the shooting to leave two Kazakhstan biathletes – Yelena Khrustaleva and Marina Lebedeva – trailing behind her. But it was the hosts, who dominated the Games ‘opening day winning six gold medals to grab the lead in the medal table with 19 medals overall.
Olga Novikova provided a perfect start for the home team by taking the gold medal in the day’s opening event – the women’s sprint in ski orienteering with a time of 13 minutes 04.7 seconds. “I still cannot believe I won the first gold of the Asian Games,” Novikova said. “It wasn’t easy at all to win today. I was a bit nervous from the start making early mistakes. Luckily, later I managed to move up a gear and win.” Liu Xiaoting of China was second finishing 4min 25sec behind. Another Kazakh athlete Yevgenia Kuzmina came third.
Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Sorokin won the men’s sprint in orienteering clocking 13 minutes 31 seconds to finish 1:42.7 ahead of a second-placed compatriot Alexandr Babenko. Mongolia’s Gerelt-Od Bayaraa was third. The hosts also swept the gold medals in freestyle skiing winning both the men’s and women’s mogul disciplines. Yulia Galysheva was the best in the women’s mogul with a solid performance making no mistakes to earn the best mark of 22.09 points. Miki Ito of Japan was second collecting 17.48 points to edge China’s third-placed Ning Qin by just 0.37 points.
Kazakhs Dmitriy Reiherd and Dmitriy Barmashov took the first and the third places in the men’s moguls allowing Osamu Ueno of Japan to grab the silver medal. Kazakhstan cross-country skier Alexey Poltoranin won the men’s 1.6km sprint with a time of 3 minutes 59.9 seconds to finish just 0.1sec ahead of his second-placed compatriot Nikolay Chebotko. Yuichi Onda of Japan came third.
Dmitriy Koshkin increased his team’s gold medal tally by winning the men’s downhill event ahead of compatriot Igor Zakurdayev and Jung Donghyun of South Korea.
