8 medal evenst held in Beijing on February 10

Finally, our freestyle skaters joined the Olympic medal competitions. Belarus was also represented in figure skating and speed skating.

Our freestyle team arrived in Beijing on Monday. They had only three days to acclimatize and test the local slopes. For the first time at the Olympics they all fought for the medals together. The team competitions of the aerial acrobats had never been held at the main games of the quadrennium before. The idea was simple: each country sent three skiers - two men and one woman - or vice versa. The results of their jumps are added up and the team with the most points wins.

Six teams - China, USA, Canada, Switzerland, Russia and Belarus - were at the start. To make it to the final, our athletes had to be ahead of only two teams to get in the top four. However, this time our athletes were not able to show their best jumps.

Anna Guskova performed cleanly, but it was the easiest of all the declared jumps. Stanislav Gladchenko made a good jump, but he made a mistake on the landing and Maksim Gustik did not conquer the steep Chinese slope either. The Americans celebrated the victory in the team competitions today. China and Canada got silver and bronze.

Today, the Palace of Sports in Beijing featured a free skating program. Konstantin Milyukov of Belarus performed well in the short program two days ago and qualified for the next round with the 21st result. Our representative of this sport stepped on the Olympic ice for the first time in sixteen years.

The leader of the Belarusian team in ice skating Marina Zuyeva showed quite a good time, but strong rivals shifted our athlete to the ninth place.

That was the seventh day of the Olympics. And tomorrow our biathletes will start in the mountain cluster of Jianjiakou. The races will be held almost on a daily basis. So there are a lot of interesting events ahead.