Schulting bags Olympic gold in short track speed skating

By Selcuk Bugra Gokalp

ANKARA (AA) - Suzanne Schulting of the Netherlands bagged a gold medal in the Olympic women’s 1,000 meters short track speed skating on Friday.

Schulting broker the Olympic and world records in the quarterfinals with a time of 1:26.514.

The previous Olympic record was also made by her on Wednesday with a time of 1:27.292 in her heat, while the previous world record was 1:26.661 set by South Korea’s Shim Suk-hee in a World Cup race in Calgary in 2012.

The Dutch skater had also bagged a gold medal in the 2018 Winter Olympics.

Choi Minjeong of South Korea awarded silver medal with 1:28.443, while Belgian Hanne Desmet grabbed bronze medal with 1:28.928 time.

- US women's ice hockey team reaches semifinals

The US women's ice hockey team reached semifinals by defeating Czech Republic 4-1 on Friday.

The reigning champions struggled against Czech team, especially in the first two periods.

Czech Republic drew first blood with Michaela Pejzlova's goal in the 24th minute, but US responded quickly in kind with Hilary Knight one minute later.

After the second period ended in 1-1 draw, the US scored goals with Lee Stecklein, Savannah Harmon and Kendall Soyne Schofield in the 46th, 56th and 59th minutes, respectively.

"In the third period we started to get the puck to the net and more importantly we started to get people to the net and create some traffic and some rebounds. And that was the difference.” US head coach Joel Johnson said.

The semifinal games will be held on Feb. 14 and the gold medal game will be held on Feb. 17.