Sui, Han earn Olympic gold at last in pairs figure skating

BEIJING — Sui Wenjing and Han Cong exploded from their seats in the kiss-and-cry area, and a small and carefully chosen crowd of Chinese fans in the stands did the same, the moment their scores were read in the pairs event at the Beijing Olympics. Sui and Han scored a world-record 239.88 points with a flawless free skate set to a rendition of “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” beating Russian rivals Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov by just 63 hundredths of a point. “So today, we have really put out our best on the rink.” The difference in gold may have come down to Sui and Han opening with a quad twist, a high-scoring element that made up for a sloppy triple salchow and kept them from losing their lead of 16 hundredths of a point after the short program. We feel like we skated as one, so it went pretty smooth for us.” Tarasova and Morozov, coached in part by the polarizing Eteri Tutberidze, finished with 239.25 points to claim the silver medal while teammates Anastasia Mishina and Aleksandr Galliamov, the reigning world champions, scored 237.71 to earn the bronze medal and cap a strong — and controversial — Winter Games for the Russians. Here, we understood that maybe it will not work this way, and we were just happy with the fact that we managed to do everything well.” The Russian team won two of the five figure skating gold medals and six medals in all, though the total could change in the future because the nation also dominated the Olympic news cycle with another doping scandal.