Another golden day for China, Muraoka gets another Gold.
China’s skiers showed once again that they are a force to be reckoned with on day two of the Beijing 2022 Paralympic Games, winning eight medals, including four golds.
In the Para Alpine Skiing Super-G event at the Yanqing National Alpine Skiing Centre, Daqing ZHU opened their medal tally with a Bronze in the Vision Impaired event thus claiming her second medal of the Games. In the Standing event, Mengqiu ZHANG went one better, winning China’s first Gold in Alpine, beating French legend Marie Bochet, who had won eight Gold medals in this classification at the previous two Games. In the Sitting event, Japan’s Momoka MURAOKA again took the Gold medal, improving on her PyeongChang bronze medal and making her the first athlete at this Games to win two Gold medals. China’s Wenjing ZHANG won bronze in the same event, helping to ease her disappointment at crashing out of the Downhill the previous day.
Then it was the men’s turn and in the Standing event, China’s Jingyi LIANG took the Gold medal, ensuring his country went ahead of Ukraine on the overall medal tally.
Over at the Zhangjiakou National Biathlon Centre, there were two Gold medals up for grabs in the Para Cross-Country Skiing Men’s and Women’s Long Distance Sitting events. China’s Peng ZHENG took Gold in the men’s event, beating fellow countryman Zhongwu MAO into second place. MAO had led the field up to the 6km time check but then ZHENG pulled away and remained in first place for the remainder of the 20km race, eventually finishing 14.6 seconds ahead of MAO.
In the women’s event, China’s Hongqiong YANG beat the veteran Paralympian Oksana MASTERS to the Gold medal whilst her teammate Panpan LI took the Bronze. Both athletes were making their Paralympic debut. YANG led the race from the 2.6km time-check and ended up with a winning margin of +32.1 seconds.
In the Para Ice Hockey, Korea faced the USA. They went behind by 5 goals after the first period, then fell further behind in the second. They managed to win the third period but it was too late to change the overall result and the final score was KOR 1 – 9 USA. Tomorrow they will face Canada who will be smarting after their 0-5 defeat to the USA on the opening day of competition. Korea will progress through the group stage as Russia are no longer in the competition but a victory over Canada on Tuesday could mean that they go straight to the Semi-final. In the other group, China took on the Czech Republic. Flying high after their resounding 7-0 victory over Slovakia the day before, the Chinese had a strong second period to break the 0-0 deadlock that remained after the opening period. They established a 5-1 lead that was too much for the Czechs and the match finished CHN 5 – 2 CZE. This result leaves them top of their group and therefore almost certainly in the qualifying play-off for a Semi-final spot.
In Wheelchair Curling, Korea faced Switzerland in the round robin stage. They were leading 7-5 going into the final end, but Switzerland, with the Hammer pulled two back meaning the game went to an extra end. Unfortunately, Switzerland won this by one so the final score was SUI 8-7 KOR. The Koreans then went on to face Norway and managed to put the morning’s disappointment behind them to win 9-4. China faced Sweden and were looking to secure a win to make up for their disappointment of losing to Canada the previous day but unfortunately their poor start to their title defence continued. They struggled to put points on the board, only scoring in the seventh end and ended up losing 1-5. Later in the day, they faced Estonia and raced into an early lead. They were 4-0 ahead after the first two ends but then Estonia pulled one back in the third. They pushed further ahead in the fourth and fifth ends, running out eventual winners 9-3. This means that after three Games, Korea and Japan are lying in joint sixth place with only the top 4 going through to the Semi-finals. However both teams have plenty more matches to play.
At the end of day 2, China are lying at the top of the medal table with a total of 16 medals, 6 of which are Gold. Japan lie in third place.
Tomorrow will see 14 medals being contested in Para Alpine Super Combined, Para Cross-Country Long Distance Classical Technique and Snowboard Cross events. It is a rest day in Para Ice Hockey but the Wheelchair Curling Round Robin will continue both Asian teams facing each other tomorrow (Monday 7 March) in the morning and Korea also facing Switzerland.
