SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 20 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ M2 D11
b eijing OlyMPicsBY CHUCK CULPEPPERbeijing — Suddenly a strange
and muted Olympics lurching
toward its final curtain came
across the kind of moment it had
lacked, the kind of moment only
sports can yield: the pregnant
hush of a rapt crowd in a mass
inhalation.
That crowd numbered hun-
dreds, not thousands, and the
hundreds sat in every other seat
as another sighing emblem of a
pandemic. Yet they seemed to
join another billion-and-then-
some in their China as they
waited in mathematical sus-
pense for the judges’ last ruling
of a Saturday n ight s pent at p airs
figure skating witnessing impos-
sible artistry piled atop impossi-
ble artistry.
The last score would go to the
last skaters, Sui Wenjing and
Han Cong, the beloved Chinese
who have paired from childhood
through their teens and all the
way to ages 26 and 29 , respec-
tively, already silver medalists at
PyeongChang in 2 01 8. With
about as much pressure as sports
could heap on anybody any-
where, in a pairs event moved
from the front of the Olympic
schedule to the back so they
might provide a moving closing
scene — good grief — they had
skated to a two-verse, two-voice
cover of “Bridge Over Tr oubled
Water” with a mastery that
seemed to show their whole 15
years together, and to roars that
seemed t o outpace the number of
throats making them.
Now they and their audience
sat gawking at various screens
for numbers in the excruciating
silence, knowing the pair needed
154 .85 to surpass the Russian
team of Evgenia Tarasova and
Vladimir Morozov, who h ad skat-
ed just before them with polish
and elegance and something
pretty close to greatness to the
neck-hairs-up voice of Patrick
Watson in “Lighthouse.”
When at l ast the n umber c ame
with announcement in Manda-
rin — 155. 47 — the place started
bouncing.
It did not stop for a good
while, and the Chinese authori-
ties proved exhilarated enough
about it that they went ahead
and presented the medals, rather
than at the customary separate
ceremony, so that Sui and Han
hung the medals upon each oth-
er at the top of the podium andthen sang the national anthem,
“March of the Volunteers,” with
unmistakable gusto.
“First of all, I think this is an
unforgettable night,” Han said a
good hour-and-change later in
the news conference. “We real-
ized our dreams in our home-
land.”
They realized them with their
world record 239.88 for the two-
part event, eking past the 239.25
of Tarasova and Morozov, who
finished ahead of two more Rus-
sian teams, bronze medalists An-
astasia Mishina and Aleksandr
Galliamov (237.71), the reigning
world champions, and fourth-
place Aleksandra Boikova and
Dmitrii Kozlovskii (220.50).
Another Chinese team would
draw good cheers and happy
chants and place fifth, that being
Peng Cheng and Jin Yang, and
then came some Americans.
Bunched around the dazzling
Japanese team of Riku Miura
and Ryuichi Kihara, who placed
seventh, stood the California-
based team o f Alexa Knierim and
Brandon Frazier at sixth with a
personal-best 212.68 and the Tex-
as-based team of Ashley Cain-
Gribble and Timothy LeDuc
eighth at 198. 05 after some wob-bles.
“It’s nuts,” Frazier said of the
personal best, calling it a dream
come true in which they “didn’t
let the nerves get the best of us.”
From the other U. S. team, Knier-
im said she felt “a little bit let
down” after falling twice but
added, “I have to put that behind
me and just think of all the
good.”
Her team, after all, had
dreamed of the top 10 and had
achieved same, while Sui and
Han had dreamed for four years
since PyeongChang while haul-
ing around pretty much the
world’s t hird-largest country a nd
largest population, all with body
types once deemed a hindrance
for pairs glory.
For almost two weeks after
participating in the team compe-
tition at the outset, they had
watched and cheered other Chi-
nese Olympians from various
places such as the athletes’ din-
ing hall. “There are some anxiet-
ies,” Han said. “There is some
fidgeting.” And: “And we have to
wait all this time for this day.”
Then the Friday and Saturday
night always lingering on the
end of the Olympic fortnight
finally turned up, and rivalsupon rivals excelled in a breath-
taking show that closed a turbu-
lent meet. “Today, before I got on
the ice,” Han said, “I knew that
all my competitors have done
very well, so there is a lot of
pressure.”
They took the ice at about
9:45 p.m. Beijing time. Some
extraordinarily good rivals had
preceded them, each seeming to
edge the previous with the mar-
gins infinitesimal. Sui wore blue
on the skirt and white on the
top. Han wore black. The arena
went silent. They began to Paul
Simon’s wildly famed composi-
tion, which would include one
verse each from female and
male voices. “We hope that our
program,” Sui said, “can be that
bridge over troubled water to
support everyone in their dark-
est moments so they can over-
come their lows.”
By the time they fashioned
their opening quadruple twist
lift, the spectators went raptur-
ous. Then Sui and Han proceed-
ed with their own elegance and
polish and maybe one wee mis-
step, and by the time they n eared
the e nd with Han skating upright
while carrying Sui, who was
straight-up upside-down, theyseemed to have climbed the
mountain of pressure and
basked in the view.
They finished, and Sui cried
into Han’s chest. They went to
center ice and hugged again.
They bowed to all sides of the
stadium, which she did at one
point by kneeling. Then they
made a tight hug and proceeded
off the ice to sit and wait and
learn if their world-record short
program of 84.41 plus this free
skate would add up to the first
Chinese pairs gold medal since
Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo, the
latter among their coaches, at
Vancouver 20 10.
The number came, and the
crowd exulted, and the “kiss-
and-cry” area became a stable of
mad hugs among skaters and
coaches, with Han himself now
weeping. A TV reporter called it
“an amazing night for China.”
Han said, in an i diom t hat appar-
ently translates right smack from
Mandarin, “We put a good icing
on the cake [of the Olympics],
and we are proud of that.” He
called it “an amazing journey,”
for the journey had been long,
both the years and the weeks,
before a ll of it would come to o ne
hell of a hush.FIGURE SKATING
Late drama in pairs ends with g old for h ome team, jubilation for h ome crowd
BY ROMAN STUBBSbeijing — I n the moment b efore
Joey Mantia crossed the finish
line in the men’s speedskating
mass start final Saturday, he
peeked down at his right blade
and could see he was a hair in
front o f South K orea’s Lee Seung-
hoon. The two w ere jostling for a
bronze medal at the end of an
exhausting race that had lasted
almost eight minutes and
spanned nearly four miles, but
now they were inches apart, and
Mantia could feel a hand on his
arm.
He looked down again. Lee’s
blade was now just ahead of his
as they both extended at the
finish line, and Mantia skated to
the nearest replay screen he
could find. It confirmed his
worst fear: Lee had won the
bronze medal by 0.0 02 seconds,
ending Mantia’s bid to become
the only U. S. male speedskater to
win an individual medal at these
Olympics.
That hope had hinged on this
chaotic e vent — which was intro-
duced at the Olympics in 2018 in
PyeongChang and featured an
aggressive ending — with Bel-
gium’s Bart Swings and South
Korea’s Chung Jae-won taking
gold and silver, respectively. But
the controversy surrounding
Mantia’s finish hovered in the
aftermath of the event. The 36 -
year-old American watched the
replay several times, and his
coaches protested that he had
been pulled back at the finish
line, he said. B ut because this is a
new event with little precedent
for rules, he didn’t expect any
change of the result.
The official times were post-
ed: Lee finished in 7:47.204, with
Mantia at 7:47.206. About 20
minutes after the skaters had
crossed the finish line, officials
brought out the podium, and
Lee was awarded the bronze
medal.“I’m pretty biased on t he situa-
tion, obviously,” Mantia said. “I
want that medal, and I feel like I
was maybe cheated a little bit. I
don’t think he did it on purpose.
It’s racing. It still happened.”
Lee, the last skater to arrive
for h is n ews conference, said that
he was t ired as he came up on the
final stretch of the race, in which
Mantia caught him and muscled
his way between Lee and Chung.
Lee was asked if h e made c ontactwith Mantia.
“At the finish line, I was kind
of flustered, so I can’t remem-
ber,” he said through an inter-
preter. “But I thought he had
caught up with me, so I didn’t
know actually my position, but I
ended up being the third.”
It was a difficult finish to a
difficult Olympics for Mantia,
who had established himself as
one of the premier performers in
mass start in recent years — hehas won three world champion-
ships in the event — but he
experienced back issues while in
Beijing. He finished sixth in the
1,5 00 meters, and after helping
the United States win bronze in
the team pursuit, he withdrew
from the 1 ,000-meter competi-
tion Friday because he wanted to
have as much gas in the tank as
possible for Saturday’s event. He
qualified with a seventh-place
finish in the mass start semifinal
earlier in the day, but his back
was ailing, to the point that he
thought he was racing on his
final lap when really he had two
remaining.
“It’s just part of being 36 and
trying to compete at a h igh level,”
he said. “Sometimes your body
doesn’t give you what you need.”
Mantia had about 45 minutes
at that point to prepare for the
final as the women competed in
their semifinals. The entire after-
noon depicted how wild mass
start can be for skaters, especial-
ly those who might be more
accustomed to more traditional
speedskating e vents. In t he wom-
en’s final, Mia Kilburg of the
United States finished fourth —
the Netherlands’ Irene Schouten
earned gold, while Canada’s
Ivanie Blondin claimed silver
and Italy’s Francesca Lollobrigi-
da won bronze — but Kilburg,
like Mantia, had to muscle her
way to the edge of the podium.
“S--- happens. Unfortunately a
bit of luck has to go into it,”
Kilburg said. “It’s its own animal
compared to traditional long-
track racing with the metric style
and going against the clock. But
it also h as its aspects to it that a re
joyous and allows you to get
some aggression out.”
Mantia got some aggression
out by the final lap Saturday.When his back has been tight
during races, he hasn’t been able
to transfer as much weight into
his skating, which has disrupted
his rhythm at times — but in the
final, he felt as comfortable as he
had at these Olympics. The field
had slowed, and that catered to
his field sprint ability. He made
his move and passed several
skaters, and even as he stumbled
entering the final turn, he had
created enough momentum to
sail up to the backs of the
leaders.
“I was getting excited and
ready to rock,” he said.
Swings had separated himself
enough by the final stretch to
guarantee the gold, but Mantia
wedged himself between Lee and
Chung as he pushed for the
finish line. He could feel the
contact with Lee at t hat point, he
said, and as he met with report-
ers underneath the National
Speed Skating Oval afterward, he
was still looking at his phone.
“Usually in the mass start,
there are no rules, so we don’t
know how to call the race be-
cause there are no real rules on
stuff like that,” he said. “It’s
interesting, because in short
track there’s a whole video replay
system they can refer to and
somebody that makes that call.
Long track is such a new event
that... you hope for the best but
usually you don’t get calls.”
At one point, Mantia shook his
head and had lost the words to
describe how he was feeling. Out
on the track, Lee waved to the
television cameras as he accept-
ed his bronze.
“I felt like I put myself in the
perfect position to medal and I
skated the best race I could,”
Mantia said. “It’s a mass start.
You never know.”MEN’S SPEEDSKATING
In last event, Mantia misses a medal — b y 0.002 seconds
WANG ZHAO/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
U.S. speedskater Joey Mantia, right, finished a split second hehind South Korea’s Lee Seung-hoon.U.S. skater feels ‘cheated’
after falling inches shortin chaotic mass start final
had tormented her over the pre-
vious two weeks.
“It’s the most special feeling,
the most positive and optimistic
feeling I’ve had for this whole
time we’ve been here,” Shiffrin
said.
In the three events where she
had her best chances at an
individual medal — the slalom,
giant slalom and Alpine com-
bined — she skied out each time
on the course known as the “Ice
River.” Her official finish each
time: DNF. She added a ninth-
place finish in the super-G and
an 18 th i n the downhill, events in
which she was not considered a
medal favorite.
After each race, Shiffrin
poured her heart out to the
assembled television cameras
and microphones, processing
her “failures” — a word she used
on multiple occasions — in real
time in front of the world.
“Right now,” she said at one
point, “I feel like a joke.”
But just by simply tackling a
sixth event in Beijing, Shiffrin
made history, matching Slova-
kia’s Petra Vlhova (2018) for the
most Alpine events in a single
Olympics. She had raced in the
mixed-team event only once be-
fore in a World Cup and never in
an Olympics, acknowledging
Sunday, “There’s been a lot of
times in my career where I’vehad to put individual interests
first in order to accomplish the
goals I had.”
When high winds in the
mountains northwest of Beijing
on Saturday forced officials to
push the race to Sunday — the
day of the B eijing Games’ C losing
Ceremonies — Shiffrin had a
decision to make: Leave Beijing,
as scheduled, on a flight at 5 a.m.
Sunday to Europe, where she
plans to resume competing on
the World Cup circuit, or change
her travel plans to stay and
compete.
“There was absolutely some
thought” about leaving, Shiffrin
said. “... I decided to stay be-
cause I wanted to compete with
my teammates.”
Sunday’s conditions were
barely any better, with winds
gusting up to 25 mph and tem-
peratures that d ipped t o minus-3
Fahrenheit. Skiers stayed bun-
dled in their parkas until the
very last second they entered the
starting gates.
The lure of another Olympic
medal — and perhaps the chance
to extract a measure of revenge
from the Ice River — brought
Shiffrin back to mountain one
last time Sunday. She got that
measure of revenge, with four
trips across the finish line, but
the elusive medal remained just
out of reach.Shiffrin lost by two-hun-
dredths of a second to Italy’s
Marta Bissino in the quarterfi-
nals — a match Team USA sur-
vived thanks to wins by h er three
teammates, Paula Moltzan, Tom-
my Ford and River Radamus. She
lost by a tenth of a second to
Germany’s Lena Duerr in the
semis, with the Americans losing
to fall into the bronze medal
match.
And in her 10th and final run
of the Beijing Olympics, Shiffrin
lost by 0 .52 to Norway’s TheaLouise St. Jernesund. With the
teams splitting the match’s four
heats, the winner was deter-
mined by adding the fastest
men’s time and the fastest wom-
en’s time — which handed Nor-
way the bronze medal by 0.42.
If it was a n unsatisfying end to
Shiffrin’s quest for a fourth ca-
reer Olympic medal — which
would have tied her with Julia
Mancuso for the most by an
American Alpine skier — it also
gave her a small measure of
revenge against a course thatTOM PENNINGTON/GETTY IMAGES
Mikaela Shiffrin will leave the Winter Games without a medal after
missing out on a bronze by 0.42 seconds in her sixth and last event.BY DAVE SHEININbeijing — T he last act of Mikae-
la Shiffrin’s B eijing Olympics was
a group hug with her teammates
beyond the finish line at the end
of the bronze medal match of the
mixed-team parallel event at the
Yanqing National Alpine Skiing
Centre. It wasn’t even clear if
Shiffrin and her American team-
mates knew if they had won or
lost — they lost — b ut there was a
smile, or s omething c lose to it, on
Shiffrin’s face.
On the day Shiffrin finally
made it to the finish line in a
technical race at these Olympics
— four times, no less — it ended
up not making a difference. Team
USA was beaten by Norway in
the bronze medal final, sealing a
fate for Shiffrin that would have
seemed u nfathomable two weeks
ago: six events, zero medals.
Top-seeded Austria took the
gold medal, winning the final
match in a tiebreaker over Ger-
many.
“I am not disappointed,” said
Shiffrin, 26. “I’ve had a lot of
disappointing moments at these
Games. Today is not one of them.
Today is my favorite memory.
This was the best possible way
that I could imagine ending the
Games, skiing with such strong
teammates.”
In a newfangled, made-for-TV
event that was making just its
second appearance on the Olym-
pic Alpine program, Shiffrin, a
three-time Olympic medalist,
went head-to-head against a
counterpart from another coun-
try four times and won only one
of the four — in the first round
against Slovakia. However, each
time Shiffrin was skiing on the
red course, which was demon-
strably slower than the adjacent
blue course.ALPINE SKIING
S hi≠rin comes up empty
on her final opportunity
Decorated American
can’t secure a bronze
in mixed-team parallel