ALMATY – Hosts’ Kazakhstan dominated the day’s action at the Asian Winter Games on Thursday adding four gold medals to their impressive collection to stay on top with 17 golds and 46 medals overall. South Korea failed to add to their gold haul, but remain in second place with 10 gold and 24 medals overall.
Meanwhile, Japan stayed in the race for the lead in the medal table with their skiers winning two gold medals to lift their country into third position with eight golds. Japanese skier Masako Ishida recorded the first win of the day finishing first in the rain-hit women’s 5km classic style course with a time of 16 minutes 10.3 seconds, 38 sec ahead of second-placed compatriot Madoka Natsumi. Li Hongxue of China came third.
“I tried hard to act according to the plan that we worked out with my coach and it payed off as I managed to win the gold though it was very hard to compete today,” Ishida said. “I already have certain experience of competing under the rain. The rain upon the course is a good sign for me as I managed to win at all my previous runs under the rain.”
The winner of the men’s 10km classic distance in nordic skiing, Keishin Yoshida of Japan, who won the 15km freestyle race on Wednesday, also had to battle with a soaked course and rain. But he managed to adjust his skiing to the weather conditions better than his rivals to clock a time of 29min 39.2sec to win his second gold medal of the games finishing ahead of two local skiers – Nikolay Chebotko and Alexey Poltoranin.
“I experienced problems with my skis at the very beginning so I had to force myself to speed up later though it was very hard to slide along the course fighting against the strong wind and melting snow,” Yoshida said. The bandy match between hosts Kazakhstan, who are red hot favourites for the gold medals, and Kyrgyzstan was in danger as the showfall and the fog, which descended from the surrounding mountains, seriously threatened the technical services at the Medeu ice rink.
After the officials decided to play the match in a three 30-minute periods format, the Kazakh team had experienced few troubles against their former compatriots clinching a confident 21-0 win. Unfavourable weather conditions also forced the organisers to postpone the men’s alpine skiing Super Combined event and the women’s 15km individual biathlon competition until Friday.
Kazakhstan’s Yulia Galysheva won her second gold medal of the Games beating compatriot Yulia Rodionova in the final of the freestyle parallel mogul discipline. Miki Ito of Japan won the bronze medal. Another Kazakh freestyler, Dmitriy Barmashov, added gold by winning the men’s parallel mogul. He beat Osamu Ueno of Japan in the final with another Japanese, Yugo Tsukita, in third.
In ski orienteering local favourite Olga Novikova won her third gold medal, finishing first in the women’s long distance 17 minutes ahead of second-placed compatriot Yevgenia Kuzmina, while South Korea’s Kim Ja Youn was third. Mikhail Sorokin also completed a hat-trick winning all three distances in the men’s section of ski orienteering. Alexey Nemtsev was second, while Gerelt-Od Bayaraa of Mongolia won his second bronze medal here.
The winner of the women’s ice hockey tournament will be decided in a match between the hosts and China later on Thursday, while the men’s top division rivals will continue battling in a round robin. The figure skating short programmes of ice dancers, pairs and men will complete the day’s schedule.
