Short track speed skater Sean Shuai wins first U.S. gold of Youth Winter Olympics
by Olympic Talk
Short track speed skater Sean Shuai became the first American to win a gold medal at the Youth Winter Olympics in Gangwon, South Korea, taking the 500m on the third day of medal competition.
Shuai, a 17-year-old from Oklahoma, clocked 41.498 seconds, edging Zhang Xinzhe of China by .257 of a second on Monday.
It’s the first short track medal for the U.S. in the history of the quadrennial Youth Winter Games, which debuted in 2012.
On the first day of medal competition on Saturday, Josie Johnson picked up the first U.S. medal, a silver in ski jumping. That also marked the first U.S. medal in that sport in Youth Olympic history.
The Youth Olympics, for athletes ages 14 to 18, run through Feb. 1.
Peacock airs live coverage of every figure skating event, plus hockey’s bronze- and gold-medal games, from Jan. 26-31 (broadcast schedule here). Every sport streams on Olympics.com.