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The second day of the Winter Olympics featured several historic moments for competitors.
Adrianna Fontana became the most decorated short track skater in Olympic history. Early on Saturday, Fontana made it through the 500m quarter finals winning her heat in 42.940. Fontana’s biggest rival, the Dutch Suzanne Schulting, was the fastest qualifier with a new Olympic record of 42.379.
“Yes, it’s pretty awesome.
Today was the first day, the first medal event and to start this way is pretty great. We’re off to a good start and, you know, we still have a few races ahead of us and I feel good. We’ll see what will happen. During the season we were unlucky, we fell a lot. But we got here, we wanted this medal. We fought for it and it’s a silver that means a lot,” said Fontana.
Mikael Kingsbury also won his third consecutive Olympic medal on Saturday. The Canadian freestyle skiing star took the silver medal on Saturday. Theonly other freestyle skiier to have won three consecutive Olympic medals is Norway’s Kari Traa. Kingsley is the first male to have won three consecutive Olympic medals.
“I’m really proud of myself, the way I dealt with all the pressure. We’re in a sport where it’s performance on demand and unlike other sports, where athletes can compete in many events at the Games, for us, it’s once every four years. I’m very proud to be the first guy to win three consecutive … Olympic medals. I’m very satisfied,” said Kingsbury.
Kingsbury’s third Olympic medal comes after making a comeback from breaking his back during a training accident in December of 2020.
“It was not easy. When you know you broke your back and you’re watching these guys compete on TV. It’s not ideal. But I was motivated last year. I wanted to come back for the World Championships, and I knew the Olympics were coming very fast and I worked very hard and now I feel like my back is stronger than it was before I broke it. So yeah, it’s quite special to have been able to come back after such an injury. When I was injured, I thought, maybe that was the end of me performing at a high level, but I just kept going and being better,” said Kingsbury.
Elana Meyers Taylor, 37-year old Team USA bobsledder has been cleared to compete after testing negative for Covid-19 on Saturday. Taylor had to be isolated in her hotel room after testing positive just two days after arriving in China, shortly before the start of the Beijing Olympics.
On Sunday, world record holder Kamila Valieva, the 15 year-old ROC figure skater, will be making her Olympic debut. Valieba will compete for her squad in the women’s short program on the second day of the Olympic figure skating team event.email: kzehnder@newspress.com
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