Winter Olympics: Three's a treat for Austria as they take out slalom

TURIN - A stunning clean sweep by Austria in the final alpine ski race of the Turin Winter Olympics yesterday helped to relegate to the sidelines a drugs controversy which has dogged their teammates for a week.

But the Austrians by no means hogged all the limelight on the penultimate day of the Games.

A German biathlete and Korean short track skater won their third golds, Germany swept the bobsleigh titles and a Canadian speed skater triumphed to complete a unique Winter and Summer Olympic medal collection.

There was also some belated cheer for the US - Bode Miller again flopped on the ski slopes and leaves without a medal - when Apolo Anton Ohno left his arch-rival South Korean Ahn Hyun-soo in his slipstream in the men's 500m short track skating to take gold.

Ahn recovered to help South Korea to the relay gold, his third of the Games, to match the achievement of Michael Greis, who also completed a hat-trick of titles in the biathlon.

They were the two most successful male competitors overall at the Turin Games and another Korean short track skater, 17-year-old Jin Sun-yu, also joined their ranks yesterday when she added the 1000 women's gold to earlier wins in the 1500 individual and 3000 relay.

To round off a whirlwind programme packed with eight medal events, the Czech Republic team edged out their arch-rivals Russia 3-0 to snatch the men's bronze-medal ice hockey game.

The day, though, belonged to an Austrian slalom team which had been battered by a week's worth of negative headlines after a drugs raid on their biathlon and crosscountry skiing teams last Saturday.

"I'm very proud of being in this team," said winner Benjamin Raich.

"We should say thank you to our coaches. There is such a good spirit. This makes such things possible."

Reinfried Herbst took the silver and Rainer Schoenfelder the bronze.

It was only the third time in Olympic history that a country had swept the board in a men's alpine race.

Austria last took all the medals in the 1956 giant slalom and Norway filled the combined podium at the 1994 Games in Lillehammer.

Austria climbed the medals table to second, with a total of 22 medals, nine gold, before Ohno's win and a short track relay men's team bronze leapfrogged the US ahead of them again, with 25 medals, also including nine golds.

Germany will finish top of the overall medals table with only two medal events to be completed today. The Germans have 29 in total, including 11 gold and 12 silver.

Greis, who had won just once on the World Cup circuit coming into the Games, missed only one of his 20 shooting targets to win the men's closing 15km mass sprint event.

Ahn never threatened to overhaul Ohno's lead in the 500 and had to settle for a bronze. Canada's Francois-Louis Tremblay took silver.

The Korean was not finished yet, however. Less than an hour after his defeat, he produced an extraordinary burst of speed to buzz past Canada and clinch gold in the 5000m relay.

- REUTERS