Snowboarding
WORLD CUP: It was a double victory for the U.S. Snowboard Team as Tommy Czeschin of Mammoth Lakes, Calif., and Gretchen Bleiler of Snowmass Village, Colo., won Sunday's FIS World Cup halfpipe contest in Asahikawa, Japan.
The wins were crucial for the United States in its hunt to secure maximum quota spots at the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics.
Czeschin picked up the win with a score of 46.4. Rounding out the top three were a pair from Sweden, Magnus Sterner (43.1) and Markus Jonsson (42.8).
The win threw the monkey off Czeschin's back as he has had a string of second-place finishes, which included a silver medal at the X Games. Czeschin finished second at last weekend's event in Sapporo.
Bleiler logged her first career victory, with her score of 41.3 topping France's Doriane Vidal (40.9) and U.S. teammate Kelly Clark (39.8). Clark, of Mt. Snow, Vt., who won last week's Sapporo event, has racked up two other seconds and a third-place finish this season.
The World Cup tour visits Park City this weekend, which will be the snowboarding venue of the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics.
Superpipe finals will be Thursday, with a parallel giant slalom Sunday — both events are Olympic disciplines.
A quarterpipe exhibition will be Friday night at the base of the superpipe in Eagle Race Arena.
Skiing
WORLD CUP: Two-time world Super G champion Isolde Kostner of Italy earned her third victory of the season at Sunday's World Cup event at Lenzerheide, Switzerland, by .08 seconds over reigning World Cup overall champion Renate Goetschel of Austria.
Megan Gerety of Anchorage, Alaska, led all three U.S. skiers into the top 15, finishing sixth.
Kostner won with a time of one minute, 36.61 seconds. Goetschel was second at 1:36.69, and Frances Carole Montillet was third at 1:36.74.
Gerety clocked in at 1:37.09, with Kirsten Clark of Raymond, Maine, seventh at 1:37.38 and Jonna Mendes of Heavenly, Calif., 13th at 1:37.92.
Clark had won Saturday's downhill, the first American woman to do so on the World Cup for a half-decade.
Speedskating
WORLD JUNIORS: Sarah Elliott of Oconomowoc, Wis., and Shane Davis of Chicago turned in top-10 finishes on the final day of the World Junior Speedskating Championships to cap a strong weekend for the United States at the event held in Groningen, Netherlands.
Elliott, who earned a bronze in the women's 1,500 meters Saturday, recorded her third top-10 finish of the weekend by placing fifth in the 3,000 meters with a time of 4 minutes, 32.45 seconds.
Davis, who was fifth in Saturday's 1,500 meters, finished ninth in the men's 5,000 meters at 7:03.56.
Nordic skiing
WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: Defending World Cup champion Johann Muehlegg of Spain led all the way Sunday in 3-degree cold to reach his dream of taking a gold medal as he won the 50-kilometer freestyle title on the last day of the 44th World Nordic Ski Championships in Lahti, Finland.
Carl Swenson of Boulder, Colo, was the top U.S. finisher at 21st.
Earlier in the day, organizers canceled the women's 30-meter freestyle race because of continued extreme cold. International Ski Federation rules call for no elite-level race to be held if the temperature is below -20 degrees Celsius (-4 F). It was the first Olympic of World Championship cross country race ever canceled.
Muehlegg, starting near the back of the field, finished in 2 hours, 5 minutes and 27.2 seconds. Rene Sommerfeldts, one of Muehlegg's former teammates in Germany, took the silver with a 2:07.23.4 time. Russia's Sergei Krianin was the bronze-medal winner at 2:07.28.4.
"This was my day," said Muehlegg, who won two World Cup races last month on the 2002 Olympic trail at Soldier Hollow. "I had a dream to one day win a gold medal, and now my dream is finished."