Germans grab a gold and two silvers in team competition in the nordic sports to climb to the top of the medal table at the Winter Games.
Germany joined the United States at the top of the Winter Games medals table on Monday (February 22) with gold in the women's cross country team sprint as well as silver in the men's event and team ski jump to climb to the summit alongside the high-flying Americans.
Both countries had seven golds midway through the 10th full day of competition. The Germans had nine silvers, one more than the U.S, but the Americans had five more bronze than their European rivals.
A late surge by Claudia Nystad enabled Germany to win the women's cross country final ahead of Sweden, who had led at every exchange. Russia came third.
Sweden, featuring 10 km freestyle gold medal winner Charlotte Kalla and 15 km pursuit silver medallist Anna Haag, had at least a share of the lead at every exchange but was overtaken in the final loop and settled for silver.
Germany, with Evi Sachenbacher-Stehle joining Nystad, finished in 18:03.7, 0.6 seconds ahead of Sweden. Russia completed the course four seconds off the pace.
"In 2002 no one had ever heard of cross-country, and no one reckoned that we would ever get a medal in it. So that was something special. Now we've turned up as medalists, and no one reckoned with it this time, but at least people knew we were able to do it," said Sachenbacher-Stehle afterwards.
Germany looked to be on course to win the men's final too when they led at the final changeover but Norway's Petter Northug unleashed a powerful burst on the last lap to snatch his first gold of the Games after failing in three individual events. Russia again took the bronze.
The ultra-talented Norwegian delivered a barn-storming finish to the men's team sprint freestyle, coming from 2.6 seconds behind going into the final lap to cross the line 1.3 ahead of Germany's Axel Teichmann.
In the team ski-jump, the Austrians, who had the top four-ranked jumpers in the team competition and won the event in 2006, captured the gold with a total of 1107.9 points after the eight jumps.
"We don't have one extraordinary jumper, we have four or five really, really good jumpers. So the other countries have to go out of their way to beat us. In the last few year it didn't always work so the pressure for us was really high, but the belief that we could get a silver was in all of us," said Germany's Michael Uhrmann afterwards.
The Germans were in second place on 1035.8 points with the Norwegians in third on 1030.3.
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