Olympic wins
February 17, 2010
Germany currently leads the medals table at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, with three golds, four silvers, and two bronzes, after a string of successes in Tuesday's competition.
First, Magdalena Neuner added a second gold to Germany's medal count, winning the women's biathlon 10-kilometer pursuit at Whistler Olympic Park in British Columbia.
The 23-year-old Neuner completed the course in 30 minutes 16 seconds, 12.3 seconds ahead of Slovakia's Anastazia Kuzmina, to claim her first Olympic gold medal. Marie Laure Brunet of France took the bronze.
Neuner won silver in the women's 7.5-kilometer sprint on Saturday, then coming in behind Kuzmina. That silver was Germany's first medal of the Games.
Neuner, a six-time world champion, is a native of Wallgau near Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria, the site of the 1936 Winter Olympics.
More gold, and a silver lining on the ice
In the luge, German favorite Tatjana Huefner claimed gold in the women's singles. Another German hopeful Natalie Geisenberger grabbed bronze, and Austrian Natalie Reithmayer came in second, almost half a second adrift of Huefner.
Reithmayer becomes the first non-German woman of this century to win an Olympic medal in the luge singles event, after German racers locked out the podiums at both Salt Lake City in 2002 and Turin four years ago.
On Sunday, 20-year-old German Felix Loch won the men's singles, so Germany - usually dominant in this discipline - will shoot for a luge "grand slam" in the doubles later this week.
But German speedskater Jenny Wolf just missed out on gold in the women's 500 meter event. South Korea's Lee Sang-Hwa won the first race starting on the outside lane and managed to maintain her aggregate advantage when the skaters switched sides, despite world recordholder Wolf setting the fastest single time of the competition: 37.84 seconds.
Lee's combined time over the two races was 76.09 seconds, just five hundredths of a second quicker than Jenny Wolf.
The second quickest pair racing head-to-head in the final, China's Wang Beixing and Margot Boer of the Netherlands, secured third and fourth places, respectively.
cmk/msh/apn/dpa/Reuters
Editor: Chuck Penfold