Skier lands 7th gold medal for nation

Team China extended its record medal haul at the Beijing Winter Olympics on Wednesday after freestyle skier Qi Guangpu secured the host delegation's seventh gold at his fourth Games.

A two-time world champion and winner of 13 World Cup titles, aerial specialist Qi finally won the coveted medal by landing perhaps the biggest jump of his career in the final's medal round to win an individual gold in the daredevils' event, which involves skiers launching themselves off a steep jump to perform multi-flip stunts before trying to land cleanly on a ramp.

The gold was Qi's second medal following a silver he won with teammates Xu Mengtao and Jia Zongyang in the mixed team final on Feb 10, and the host delegation's 13th medal at Beijing 2022. China ranked fourth on the Games medal rankings with seven gold, four silver and two bronze by the end of Wednesday's competitions.

Entering the medal round with confidence built upon two clean qualification jumps, Qi overcame his nerves to perform a quintuple-twisting triple back flip in a neat fashion, which got him the top score of 129 points.

The 31-year-old native of Xuzhou, Jiangsu province, was the only skier on Wednesday night who attempted the super-difficult trick to land cleanly in the gut-wrenching knockout format, which saw half of the 12 finalists eliminated following the first two runs before the final six battled it out in the medal round with a third run.

Defending champion Oleksandr Abramenko of Ukraine had to settle for silver after he scored 116.5 points, while Ilia Burov of the Russian Olympic Committee finished third to win bronze at the Games.

Both Qi, who finished fourth in 2014 and seventh in 2018, and women's skier Xu had the honor of standing at the top of the Olympic podium at their fourth Games.

With the victories by Qi and Xu, who won the women's final on Monday, China has proved its supremacy in the event, in which men's skier Han Xiaopeng first won gold for China at the 2006 Turin Winter Games in Italy.

"I've been dreaming about this moment for so long, so I am so excited I finally nailed it. Yet I feel like I could've performed better today and I didn't land my jump the best possible way," said Qi, who grabbed a Chinese flag and shouted to the crowd at Genting Snow Park to express his joy.

"Every trick in this competition is very important and very impressive. I did my best. During the competition, almost every competitor did their best, so every trick was very wonderful," he said.

Abramenko, who won Ukraine's first medal in Beijing, was proud of being able to finish on the podium at back-to-back Games.

"It was an amazing competition today. I'm so happy for this silver and really proud of myself that I've won the first medal for Ukraine at these Games," said the 33-year-old fifth-time Olympian.

"I'm really happy that I made my quintuple twists, although the landing was not really good, but enough for second place."

At 31 years, 119 days, Qi became the oldest Olympic gold medalist in the men's freeski aerials event, winning China's 16th medal in freestyle skiing since the country's Winter Olympic debut in 1980 in the United States.

With three gold medals so far in Beijing, including the women's Big Air won by teenage prodigy Gu Ailing, China leads in the gold medal tally at Beijing 2022 in freestyle skiing.