Lipnitskaya leads Russia to gold

Teenager Yulia Lipnitskaya stole the show as host nation Russia won their first gold medal at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, with their figure skating team triumphing in some style at the Iceberg Skating Palace.

The discipline is new to the Games and, after an enthralling evening ended yesterday, the home team were 10 points ahead of second-placed Canada and the US in third.

Elsewhere, snowboarder Jenny Jones won Great Britain’s first ever Olympic medal on the snow with a dramatic slopestyle bronze.

Jones, 33, held the lead after scoring 87.25 points in her second run and had an agonising wait while 10 athletes tried to better her score.

American Jamie Anderson eventually took gold with 95.25, ahead of Finland’s Enni Rukajarvi on 92.50.

Meanwhile, Felix Loch wrapped up a successful defence of his Olympic luge title yesterday, powering to victory at the Sanki Sliding Center.

The 24-year-old German began the evening’s action in pole position for the gold medal, having moved into top spot during Saturday’s two runs, the second of which had seen him set a new course record of 51.964 seconds.

He proceeded by lowering the record even further in his third run, posting a time of 51.613secs, and his fourth and final effort then came in at 51.764s, giving him an aggregate time of 3:27.526 – 0.476s ahead of Russian silver medallist Albert Demchenko and 1.271s clear of Italy’s Armin Zoeggeler, who took bronze.

In the men’s downhill skiing, Austrian Matthias Mayer stormed to victory as favourites Bode Miller and Aksel Lund Svindal missed out on a medal.

Mayer, 23, competing in his first Olympics, went one better than his father Helmut who won silver in Super-G at the Calgary Games in 1988.

He clocked two minutes 06.23 seconds down one of the most challenging and certainly the longest Olympic downhill course ever to beat Italy’s Christof Innerhofer by 0.06secs.

Norway’s Kjetil Jansrud was third, 0.10 secs adrift, with World Cup downhill leader Svindal 0.29secs back in fourth.

American Miller, 36, bidding for a sixth Olympic medal and second gold, was fastest in two of the three training runs on the steep, icy track above Rosa Khutor village but was unable to replicate his pace on an overcast race day and finished eighth.

Also at the Games, Anastasiya Kuzmina entered the history books as she stormed to a second successive biathlon sprint Olympic gold – and she did it all in the country of her birth.

The 29-year-old, who had not won a world event since her success in the 7.5km sprint in Vancouver four years ago, finished 19.9 seconds clear of the rest of the field as she became the first woman to win two Olympic gold medals in a single individual event in biathlon.

Despite competing for Slovakia, Kuzmina – whose brother Anton Shipulin represents Russia in the men’s event – stressed that she feels Russian at heart, which made her victory at the Laura Cross Country Centre in Sochi all the more sweeter.

“This victory in my homeland is a big thing. I am Russian after all, although I am a Slovakian passport holder, this is my home,” she said.

Ireland’s involvement continues this week with Seamus O’Connor in qualifying for the halfpipe tomorrow and Sean Greenwood in qualifying for the skeleton on Friday as well as Jan Rossiter in the 15k cross country skiing race.