Austrian becomes oldest Alpine winner

An Austrian was the heavy favorite to capture the men's slalom on Saturday. Just not this Austrian.

Mario Matt was a surprise winner as he became the oldest Alpine champion in Olympic history, edging pre-race favorite and teammate Marcel Hirscher.

Leading after the first run, Matt glided through the slushy course in a combined time of 1 minute, 41.84 seconds in the last Alpine event of the Sochi Olympics. Hirscher finished 0.28 seconds behind for silver, and teenager Henrik Kristoffersen of Norway captured bronze, 0.83 behind.

Matt, who turns 35 in April, surpassed now-retired Norwegian great Kjetil Andre Aamodt as the oldest Alpine skier to win gold. Aamodt was 34 years, 170 days when he won the super-G at the 2006 Games.

Sixth after the opening run, Ted Ligety of the United States fell back on his skis and couldn't recover, sliding off the course. He was far from alone, though. The course set by Ante Kostelic of Croatia was so tough and tricky that five of the last eight racers didn't finish.

"The snow is just really bad, and Ante set a really difficult, typical Ante course set, which is borderline unsportsmanlike to set those kinds of course on these kinds of hills," said Ligety, who won gold in the giant slalom three days ago. "But that's how it goes. Everybody had to ski it. Not all the best guys had a chance to make it down, unfortunately."

Dutch skaters romp once more

The final day of speedskating was nothing more than a victory lap for the mighty Dutch.

The Netherlands capped its dominant performance with two more gold medals Saturday in team pursuit, bringing the nation's haul to a staggering eight golds and 23 medals overall.

The Dutch men pulled away from South Korea to win gold with an Olympic-record time of 3 minutes, 37.71 seconds.

Then the women blew away Poland with their third Olympic-record time in three races, winning by more than 7 seconds in 2:58.05. Ireen Wust became the first athlete at these Winter Games with five medals — two golds and three silvers.

The Netherlands' eight golds in 12 events broke the record of six golds by the Soviet speedskaters at the 1960 Winter Games.

Russia takes biathlon relay

Russia won gold in the men's 4x7.5-kilometer relay on Saturday. Anchor Anton Shipulin beat Germany's Simon Schempp on the final lap to give the host nation its first biathlon gold of the Games.

Russia missed eight targets before finishing in 1 hour, 12 minutes and 15.9 seconds. Shipulin was 3.5 seconds in front of Germany and 29.8 ahead of third-place Austria.

Defending champion Norway led for most of the competition but dropped to fourth on missed shots, denying teammate Ole Einar Bjoerndalen the chance of winning a record ninth career Olympic gold medal.

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