Philippines crew members react after successful the lads’s gold medal sport between Philippines and South Korea through the Harbin 2025 Asian Winter Video games in Harbin, northeast China’s Heilongjiang province on February 14, 2025. (Photograph by Jade Gao / AFP)
The Asian Winter Video games closed in Harbin on Friday with host China dominating the medals desk a 12 months out from the Olympics and the Philippines among the many tropical nations making historical past.
Tightly rehearsed dancers and a digital symphony orchestra kicked off the closing ceremony earlier than athletes entered the ten,000-capacity stadium waving flags and snapping selfies.
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READ: Asian Winter Video games: PH males’s curling crew wins historic gold
An enormous display displayed photographs of futuristic ski slopes and the phrases “See you in Saudi Arabia”, the subsequent Asian Winter Video games hosts, and a brand for “Neom 2029”.
The ninth version of the regional Video games — however the first since 2017 — noticed China win twice as many gold medals as nearest challengers South Korea, with Japan third.
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China loved success in pace skating and swept the ladies’s freeski golds regardless of lacking Beijing Olympics hero Eileen Gu, who withdrew days earlier than the Video games with damage.
South Korea’s world-class skaters got here out on prime briefly monitor, successful two-thirds of the golds within the sport.
READ: PH Curlers–the sporting type–rock Asian Winter Video games with large upset
Naturalized Chinese language brief monitor skater Lin Xiaojun, the 2018 Olympic champion within the 1500m for South Korea, was the hosts’ sole particular person champion, clinching the lads’s 500m dash.
A late conflict between China’s Lin and South Korea’s Park Ji-won within the males’s 5,000m relay value each nations gold, with Kazakhstan taking the win.
In determine skating, the place the sphere additionally contained world and Olympic medallists, South Korea’s 23-year-old Cha Jun-hwan gained the lads’s singles gold.
That got here hours after 18-year-old teammate Kim Chae-yeon beat out sizzling favourite Kaori Sakamoto of Japan for the ladies’s crown.
“Sakamoto is such a wonderful skater,” Kim mentioned, in keeping with Yonhap Information company.
“I wished to beat Sakamoto at the least as soon as in some unspecified time in the future, and it’s an honor to beat her at an enormous competitors like this.”
North Korean determine skater Ryom Tae Okay, who competed below a unified Korean flag on the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics, was second with Han Kum Chul in pairs skating.
Gold medalists Philippines (C), silver medalists South Korea (L) and bronze medaolists China attend the awards ceremony of the lads’s crew curling occasion through the Harbin 2025 Asian Winter Video games in Harbin, northeast China’s Heilongjiang province on February 14, 2025. (Photograph by Jade Gao / AFP)
Thailand’s Teekhree Silpa-Archa paid a poignant tribute to members of her Boston skating membership who died final month within the Washington aircraft crash that killed 67 folks.
“I wished to take them on a world stage and do it for them,” she informed AFP, having clutched pictures of tragic teenage skaters Spencer Lane and Jinna Han.
Taiwan, Thailand and the Philippines all gained Asian Winter Video games medals for the primary time.
Philippines roller Alan Frei informed AFP on Friday it felt “completely wild” to beat out two-time champions South Korea for a historic gold.
“That is so bizarre, isn’t it?” he mentioned.
‘Act of violence’
This handout picture taken on February 10, 2025 and acquired through Hong Kong’s Info Providers Division reveals the town’s Chief Govt John Lee (centre L) assembly injured gamers from Hong Kong’s males’s ice hockey crew through the Harbin 2025 Asian Winter Video games in Harbin. (Photograph by Handout / HONG KONG INFORMATION SERVICES DEPARTMENT / AFP)
Ski mountaineering made its Winter Asiad debut, a 12 months earlier than the game will run for the primary time on the Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina.
China promptly gained all 9 out there medals.
Saudi Arabia had been on the Video games for the primary time, forward of the desert kingdom internet hosting the 2029 Asian Winter Video games.
Their eight-athlete crew didn’t win a medal in both of their two occasions: males’s curling and alpine snowboarding.
Controversy was by no means distant.
READ: Hong Kong condemns ‘assault’ after Asian Winter Video games ice hockey match
4 ice hockey gamers from Turkmenistan had been suspended and thrown out of the Video games after a violent aftermath to their 5-1 thrashing by the hands of Hong Kong.
Footage on social media confirmed at the least three Turkmenistan gamers throwing punches at Hong Kong gamers as referees tried to intervene.
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“I’m very shocked and heartbroken. I strongly condemn this act of violence,” mentioned Hong Kong’s chef de mission Kenneth Fok.