Olympics: Stunning skate sinks favourites

SALT LAKE CITY - Sixteen-year-old Sarah Hughes vaulted over early leaders Michelle Kwan and Irina Slutskaya to take the Olympic women's figure skating gold medal in a major upset yesterday.

The American teenager skated first of the top contenders and, it turned out, skated best.

Russian Slutskaya won the silver, and Kwan, the 1998 Olympic silver medallist and favourite heading into the free skating programme, grabbed the bronze. Both had flawed performances.

Hughes, last year's world championships bronze medallist, skated the performance of her young life, knocking off seven triple jumps, four executed as rarely-seen combinations.

"I've never skated that well in my whole life. I just thought if there was one place to do it, it was here," Hughes said minutes after her stunning skate.

When Hughes landed the second combination, her coach, Robin Wagner, almost jumped over the sideboards.

The crowd were on their feet 10 seconds before the end of her four-minute skate to Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe, and flowers rained down on the ice as Hughes took her final bows.

Fellow American Kwan, skating second-to-last, just before Slutskaya, faltered on her only triple-triple jump combination, double footing the landing of the first toe-loop and doubling out on the second.

Kwan also lost her footing on the landing of her triple flip, putting a hand and extra foot down. In all, her lyrical Sheherazade programme included just five cleanly executed triples.

This was clearly not what Kwan had waited four long years to do after settling for silver in a showdown with Tara Lipinski at the Nagano Olympics in 1998.

Kwan's worried face told the story as the four-time world champion watched her technical marks - mostly 5.6s and 5.7s - flash on the scoreboard.

Now the second-guessing will begin concerning Kwan's decision to come into these Games without a coach after firing long-time mentor Frank Carroll last year.

As the last competitor out of the gate, Slutskaya knew she had to skate cleanly to beat Hughes, but her triple-triple combinations did not materialise.

Slutskaya, who has four world championship silver medals, did land six triple jumps in her dramatic Tosca programme, but her free leg swung wildly on the flip and she lacked the fire of Hughes.

The third American contender, Sasha Cohen, slipped from third to fourth overall in her finale to Carmen , while Japan's Fumie Suguri climbed from seventh to fifth.

Cohen, who has never even competed at the world championships, completed six triples, but sat down on the triple toe of her triple lutz combination.

That seemed to knock a bit of the wind out of her sails, and the 17-year-old lacked the spark that brought the house down in Wednesday's opener.

Russian Maria Butyrskaya, 29, the 1999 world champion and the oldest women's competitor in Salt Lake City, stuttered and stumbled six times on her jumps and landings to finish sixth.

With a gold medal on her neck, Hughes is about to become a very wealthy young woman.

With the glory of the women's Olympic figure skating crown will come millions of dollars in performance and endorsement opportunities.

Her win marks the seventh time in the last 13 Olympic Games that a United States woman has landed atop the Olympic podium.

Meanwhile, Austrian Stephan Eberharter finally won a gold medal in the giant slalom, the oldest man to claim an Alpine ski Olympic title, at 32.

Wanaka skier Jesse Teat and Aucklander Todd Haywood had their own private battle, finishing within one place of each other.

Teat was 50th of the 78 starters, and Haywood 51st.

Haywood said he was happy to finish 17 places above his starting draw.

"I'd say I would have been happier if I'd been further up the field."

Haywood, 24, will be skiing in the slalom, his favoured event, also with Teat, tomorrow.

Teat said he had been working hard on his slalom technique in recent weeks and his immediate aim was to get a better finish than yesterday's 50th.

But he said he considered Salt Lake City a stepping-stone to the next winter Olympics, in Italy in 2006, and to the next two world championships, next year and in 2005.

Also looking to Italy is short-track speed skater Mark Jackson. He has raced twice, in the 1000m and 1500m, at the Games and both times missed reaching the second round. He races in the 500m tomorrow.

Britain won their first winter Olympic gold medal since 1984 when the women's curling team beat Switzerland 4-3 in the championship match after edging defending champions Canada in the semis.

Canada, led by Kelley Law, downed the Americans 9-5 for bronze.

Canada's women beat the Americans 3-2 to win the ice hockey gold and Russia have a powerful point to prove when they play the United States in the men's ice hockey semifinals today.

A flood of "insulting" e-mails from South Korea after the controversial victory of American short track speedskater Apolo Anton Ohno caused the server of the United States Olympic Committee to crash yesterday.

A spokesman for the commmittee said it received 16,000 e-mails from South Korea within five hours of Ohno's win.

Kim Dong-Sung crossed the line first in the 1500m final, but was disqualified for impeding Ohno.

The spokesman said the e-mails were insulting to Ohno and had crashed the Olympic system.

He said: "Ohno has demonstrated terrific sportsmanship, but unfortunately there are crazy people out there."

South Korea are protesting over the disqualification.

- AGENCIES