Winter Olympics upset: Another Chinese gold medal hope falters due to two mistakes; slow-motion replay shows Zhang Chutong looking back

On February 10th Beijing time, the short track speed skating events continued at the Milan Winter Olympics. In the highly anticipated A final of the mixed-gender team relay, a key gold medal opportunity for China slipped away. After a strong start, two errors in the latter stages caused the Chinese team to finish fourth, missing out on a medal. The gold was claimed by host nation Italy. It was truly unfortunate and disappointing as China’s first gold of the Games has been repeatedly delayed!

Three competition days have passed in this event, and China is still searching for its first gold medal. Two major medal hopes, the men's big air snowboarding and women's freestyle ski slopestyle, both fell short and failed to capture gold. On the fourth day of competition, the third gold medal chance arrived with the short track speed skating mixed team relay, which also awards the first gold in short track. As defending champions, we entered aiming to defend our title. This event is highly unpredictable, where on-the-spot performance and teamwork are crucial!

Our team consisted of Gong Li, Zhang Chutong, Liu Shaoang, and Sun Long competing for the gold. When the race began, Zhang Chutong took the lead for China and maintained first place until the fifth lap. However, as the race progressed, we couldn’t hold on in the final stages. Zhang Chutong looked back and had issues with his footing, allowing Italy’s Fontana to overtake and push us to second place. In the end, Sun Long became anxious seeing us falling behind, disrupting the team’s rhythm. Another slip caused further mistakes, dropping us to fourth place as Canada and Belgium overtook us, leaving us off the podium!

This result was quite unexpected. As defending champions, we truly missed a rare opportunity to win gold. Notably, two top contenders, the Netherlands and South Korea, didn’t even make it to the A final. Despite that, we still couldn’t secure the gold, which shows our strength is still lacking. However, missing out on any medal is hard to justify and calls for reflection on where the problems lie!

Written by / Sports Fiction