A Chinese language pair’s gold completes a tumultuous two weeks for determine skating.

Sui Wenjing and Han Cong of China received the gold medal in pairs figure skating on Saturday at Capital Indoor Stadium in Beijing, capping two scandal-tinged, mistake-marred, tear-stained weeks for a signature Olympic sport with a virtually flawless efficiency.

Sui and Han, who had completed first within the brief program on Friday, held off three Russian pairs within the free skate on Saturday. That they had arrived on the Video games longing for redemption: That they had victory inside their grasp on the 2018 Olympics, solely to lose the gold medal by a mere 0.43 factors.

They confronted robust competitors on Saturday from three Russian pairs. Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov had been second after the brief program, trailing Sui and Han by a fraction of a degree however rating simply forward of Anastasia Mishina and Aleksandr Galliamov, the reigning world champions. Aleksandra Boikova and Dmitrii Kozlovskii entered the free skate in fourth place.

Performing one after one other to shut the evening’s program, the three Russian pairs took turns posting the excessive rating. Every time a pair took the lead, although, the following pair took the ice and leapfrogged them with a greater rating. Tarasova and Morozov have been the final to drag the trick, their rating within the free skate simply five-hundredths of a degree higher than the one posted by Mishina and Galliamov.

Sui and Han, although, promptly got here out and beat all of them, setting a world report with a complete of 239.88 factors to edge Tarasova and Morozov by a razor-thin margin, 63-hundredths of a degree. Performing to Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” Sui and Han glided effortlessly from one finish of the rink to the opposite, executing a collection of throws, jumps and lifts that delighted the small crowd of Chinese language followers allowed into the world.

When their scores have been posted, Sui and Han each burst into tears as they have been engulfed by a crew of coaches and workers members waving a big Chinese language flag.

China’s gold was its ninth of the Video games, practically doubling the nation’s earlier Winter Video games excessive of 5.