[BEIJING OLYMPICS] S. Korea captures gold and silver on last day of short track; curling team stays alive

BEIJING -- South Korea collected a gold medal and a silver medal on the final day of short track speed skating at Beijing 2022 on Wednesday, a feel-good finishing touch to what began as a tumultuous event just over a week ago.

Choi Min-jeong defended her gold medal in the women's 1,500m final, the very last short track race held at Capital Indoor Stadium in Beijing. She beat out Arianna Fontana of Italy and Suzanne Schulting of the Netherlands for her third medal in Beijing. Choi had earlier won silver medals in the 1,000m and the 3,000m relay.

Minutes before Choi's title, South Korea grabbed silver in the men's 5,000m relay. Hwang Dae-heon, Kwak Yoon-gy, Lee June-seo and Park Jang-hyuk finished behind Canada for South Korea's first men's relay medal since 2010.

The early portion of the short track competition for South Korea was marred by unexpected falls and officiating controversy surrounding Hwang's and Lee's disqualifications. In the end, though, South Korea led all countries with five short track medals, with two golds and three silvers.

Overall, South Korea has two golds, four silvers and one bronze. All seven of those medals have come from either short track or speed skating.

In women's curling, South Korea will live to see another day after rallying past Denmark 8-7 on Wednesday.

Team Kim, the 2018 silver medalist, lost to Switzerland 8-4 earlier Wednesday in the first game of the double header at the National Aquatics Centre. It then beat Denmark 8-7 in the nightcap with skip Kim Eun-jung's final stone in the 10th end scoring the two decisive points.

South Korea is 4-4 with one more round-robin game left against Sweden on Thursday.

The top four teams after nine round-robin games each will move on to the semifinals. Switzerland (7-1) and Sweden (6-2) have already qualified for the final four. Japan is in third place at 5-3, and South Korea is tied for fourth with Canada and Britain.

Earlier in the tournament, South Korea lost to Canada but beat Britain.

Canada will face Denmark, and Britain will play the Russian Olympic Committee, the two worst teams in the tournament so far.

Elsewhere on Wednesday, Jung Dong-hyun finished 21st in the men's alpine skiing slalom event, tying for the highest Olympic finish by a South Korean alpine skier.

Jung was 29th after the first run with 56.85 seconds but posted the 16th-fastest time in the second run with 50.84 seconds. His combined time of 1:47.69 was 3.60 seconds behind the gold medalist, Clement Noel of France. (Yonhap)