The Chinese team took gold in the Olympic 3000m Ladies Relay. Canada took silver, USA won the bronze.
In the Semifinals, China was already the fastest, in an Olympic record time of 4:08.797. The top four teams in the world, Korea, China, Canada and the USA competed in the A-final. Meng Wang took the lead for China right from the start. Canada got itself in second place in front of Korea, but soon Korea went past Canada. In the wrestle for a good position, the American team fell back. Most of the race then was a competition between Korea and China. Eun-Byul Lee (KOR) succeeded several times in passing Hui Zhang (CHN). Canada could follow but not pass these two rivals. Korea crossed the line first but was disqualified for impeding, leaving the gold to China, the silver to Canada and bronze to USA.
Meng Wang at the press conference thanked her teammates for their perseverance. The Canadians have been on every Olympic relay podium. “This was our best relay ever, we skated a national record. We always were reaching for the gold, but we were ecstatic with our bronze medal. The silver is just a bonus.” Team USA was very happy with its medal. “We’re bringing home the bronze! We feel we deserve the medal after all the hard work we put into it. Every team in the final is good enough to win. Having the fourth starting position was tough, so we had to try to fight our way to a good position, but sometimes you end up losing a lot of speed.”
Noteworthy Netherlands won the B-final and finished in fourth overall, their best result ever.
“We stayed calm and did what we had to do. We only just lost to the US in the semi-finals and the level is very high.” said Maaike Vos from the Dutch Team.
Medalists
3000m Relay, ladies
1 Linlin Sun, Meng Wang, Hui Zhang, Yang Zhou CHN 4:06.610 WR
2 Jessica Gregg, Kalyna Roberge, Marianne St-Gelais, Tania Vicent CAN 4:09.137
3 Allison Baver, Alyson Dudek, Lana Gehring, Katherine Reutter (Kimberly Derrick) USA 4:14.081