Philippines group members react after profitable the boys’s gold medal sport between Philippines and South Korea in the course of 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 international locations 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 group wins historic gold
An enormous display displayed photos 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 velocity 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 harm.
South Korea’s world-class skaters got here out on prime briefly observe, profitable two-thirds of the golds within the sport.
READ: PH Curlers–the sporting type–rock Asian Winter Video games with enormous upset
Naturalized Chinese language brief observe skater Lin Xiaojun, the 2018 Olympic champion within the 1500m for South Korea, was the hosts’ sole particular person champion, clinching the boys’s 500m dash.
A late conflict between China’s Lin and South Korea’s Park Ji-won within the males’s 5,000m relay price each international locations 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 received the boys’s singles gold.
That got here hours after 18-year-old teammate Kim Chae-yeon beat out scorching favourite Kaori Sakamoto of Japan for the ladies’s crown.
“Sakamoto is such a superb skater,” Kim stated, based on Yonhap Information company.
“I needed to beat Sakamoto not less than as soon as sooner or later, 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 boys’s group curling occasion in the course of 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 airplane crash that killed 67 folks.
“I needed to take them on a global stage and do it for them,” she advised AFP, having clutched photographs of tragic teenage skaters Spencer Lane and Jinna Han.
Taiwan, Thailand and the Philippines all received Asian Winter Video games medals for the primary time.
Philippines roller Alan Frei advised 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 stated.
‘Act of violence’
This handout photograph taken on February 10, 2025 and obtained through Hong Kong’s Info Companies Division exhibits the town’s Chief Government John Lee (centre L) assembly injured gamers from Hong Kong’s males’s ice hockey group in the course of 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 received all 9 obtainable 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 group didn’t win a medal in both of their two occasions: males’s curling and alpine snowboarding.
Controversy was by no means far-off.
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 not less than 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,” stated Hong Kong’s chef de mission Kenneth Fok.
