Teenager Li wins China's 4th silver medal at PyeongChang

By Sportswriters Yi Ling and Wang Junbao

PYEONGCHANG, Feb. 17 (Xinhua) -- Teenager short-tracker Li Jinyu was on fire and gave China a wonderful surprise by claiming the country's fourth silver medal at the PyeongChang Olympics in women's 1,500 meters on Saturday.

The race favorite Choi Min-jeong of South Korea won her first Olympic gold medal in 2:24.948 before a loud and excited audience, including South Korean President Moon Jae-in, while Kim Boutin of Canada claimed her second bronze medal at PyeongChang after 500m event with 2:25.843.

The 17-year-old Li was narrowly qualified into the final after she was brought down to the ice by Britain's Elise Christie in the semifinals. She traced all along behind the pace setters in the final and only surpassed Boutin before the last bend to finish the second place in 2:25.703.

The bulk of China's gold medals at Winter Olympics came in short track speed skating with nine alone from women's events. However, the Chinese short-trackers had been held back from the final in PyeongChang, either in men's or in women's events, until Li made it on Saturday night.

Her coach Li Yan sang highly of the long-awaited medal in short track speed skating, entitled Jinyu's medal as a great encouragement for the whole team.

"I was not nervous or excited in the final, really, I felt nothing, even now," said Li, shyly, recalling the race.

"The first thing my coach told me by the barrier was 'girl, you are very good,' I know I' m," she said, calmly.

Wearing her glasses with navy blue frame, Li, with simple layered short hair, looks more like a high school student, holding tight the white tiger mascot toy, a gift for medal winner, in her hands while answering questions from a crowd of journalists, mostly from China.

"I didn't feel any pressure from my coach at all. She kept telling me I was not worse than them (other skaters). But she asked me to be more active in the race. I followed her advice and I skated very well, I know," she said.

Defending champion Zhou Yang of China settled for the 8th and another Chinese skater Han Yutong the ninth.

As the youngest of the Chinese women's national team, Li, often nicknamed by teammates as "Li, the Little" , took the 27-year-old Zhou, twice Olympic gold medal winner of the event, as her icon.

"She gave me a lot of support. I feel secure whenever she is around, and when she talks to me, I immediately feel the power," she said.

The young star denied the title "successor of Zhou", preferring to stay down to earth.

"If I wanna be better in Beijing Games, I have to work harder. I have a lot to improve, for an instance, the skills of skating over a curve," she added, in a matter-of-fact way.

Before the women's 1,500m final, China's Wu Dajing, Sochi silver medallist, was disqualified from the men's 1,000m semifinals because of a penalty in the quarterfinals.

Canadian Samuel Girard won the gold medal in 1:24.650 and American John-Henry Krueger harvested the silver and South Korean Seo Yi-ra the bronze.

Lim Hyo-jun, a first-time Olympian who won the championship in men's 1000m, finished fourth, after he crashed and slid into the barriers when jostling for position with Liu Shaolin Sandor of Hungary. Enditem