St. Moritz, Switzerland, January 15, 2020: Teamwork and tactics paid dividends in a morning of excitement at the Winter Youth Olympic Games speed skating mixed NOC team sprint event on Lake St. Moritz on Wednesday.
Featuring 16 teams of four athletes – two men and two women – from different nations, the gold medal went to Team 3, made up of Sini Siro (FIN), Yukino Yoshida (JPN), Ignaz Gschwentner (AUT) and Alexander Sergeev (RUS). Their winning time was 2 minutes, 4.1 seconds.
This was Yoshida’s second medal at Lausanne 2020, following her bronze in the women’s 500m.
“Teamwork is for sure the reason behind this success, because we learn from each other. It is very awesome to win gold,” said Siro.
In what proved to be a dramatic event, three teams were disqualified for overtaking infringements. This included Team 5 whose second-place position was wiped out following a crash by Kim Min Hui (KOR).
The silver medal went to Team 16 comprised of Theo Collins (GBR), Laura Kivioja (FIN), Daria Kopacz (POL) and men’s 1500m gold medallist Motonaga Arito (JPN).
Team 14 took bronze with the collective of Valeriia Sorokoletova (RUS), Ramona Ionel (ROU), Jonathan Tobon (USA) and Tuukka Suomalainen (FIN).
The experience of being involved in a team event of mixed ability proved both inspirational and instructive for the young athletes, as well as providing two more medals for the powerful Japanese team at the St. Moritz Speed Skating Oval. This took their total in speed skating to six, including three gold medals.