Yoon Seung Lee wins fourth gold for hosts

Day eight of the Winter Youth Olympic Games in Gangwon produced just six medals, all in freestyle skiing, with the USA the most decorated country and Korea's Yoon Seung Lee the main star.

Saturday wasn't as exciting as some of the previous days at Gangwon 2024, with some disciplines and sports that already finished and others just starting, such as the 6x6 ice hockey, after the 3x3 modality ended with gold medals for Latvia in the men's competition and for Hungary in the women's side. After taking silver with Shin-Eee Yun in the mixed team dual moguls, Yoon Seung Lee came out on top in the men's singles after a nail-biting duel with Porter Huff of the USA. In the semi-finals, the American (gold medallist in the mixed final) defeated Japan's Takuto Nakamura 32-3 and the Asian dominated USA's Jiah Cohen 20-15. Yoon Seung Lee withstood Huff's constant attempts to win an exciting final by a single point (18-17) to claim a well-deserved gold medal, the fourth for the hosts at Gangwon 2024. It's worth noting that Korea won five gold medals at the last edition of the Games at Lausanne 2020. In the women's singles dual moguls final, it was USA's Elizabeth Lemley who took the gold medal, beating Australia's Lottie Lodge 22-12 after controlling every part of the final. She had also won gold in the USA mixed team event with Porter Huff the day before.


In the mixed curling competition, Group A saw wins for Canada (9-5 over Korea), the Czech Republic (7-2 over Hungary) and Great Britain (18-0 over Nigeria). In Group B, Slovenia defeated Ukraine 11-5, the USA won a thriller game against Sweden (11-5) and Norway crushed Qatar 15-0. 

In Group D, Denmark did much better than Italy (3-13), Germany beat Switzerland 9-6 and Austria beat Kazakhstan 5-4. Finally, the Group C, also saw three games: New Zealand-Brazil (12-5), Latvia-Turkey (10-1) and China-Japan (7-5). There were two short programmes in figure skating.  Jacob Sanchez of the USA leads the men's competition with 76.36 points, but Slovakia's Adam Hagara is just one point behind with 75.06. Korea's Hyungyeom Kim is in third place with 69.28 points.


Canada's Kole Sauve and Annika Behnke lead the pairs short programme with 39.09 points, ahead of the USA's Jared McPike and Cayla Smith (36.80) and Spain's Pau Vilella and Carolina Shan Campillo (31.52), who are fighting for their country's first medal at Gangwon 2024.

Finally, ten women and ten men have qualified after the first two runs of the Snowboard Big Air competition. In the women's competition, only Japan and New Zealand managed to qualify their two athletes, while in the men's competition, New Zealand, France and the USA also did it. Italy dominates the medals table with nine golds and a total of 14 medals, followed by Germany with seven gold medals and France with six. Will the Italians remain at the top after the final day of competition?