3,000 metres Relay, Women

Featuring the two individual champions to date (Wang Meng and Zhou Yang), the Chinese team was the heavy favorite in this event. They had won three of the four World Cup races earlier in the season, and were the defending World Champions. But South Korea was not to be forgotten, having won the Olympic gold four times in a row since 1994. Finally, the home nation was also strong, having medalled at all four World Championships since the Torino Olympics.

The three favored nations easily made it to the final - both South Korea and China broke the Olympic Record - where they were joined by the United States. The deciding moment of the race was just after an exchange, with Korea’s Kim Min-Jeong and China’s Sun Linlin fighting to take the lead. In the process, Kim slightly bumped into Sun, who was able to continue only after a slight stumble. The Koreans then pulled away to win in a world record time. But as the Koreans were picking up flags, it slowly became clear that the jury was investigating the maneuver by Kim. After a few minutes it was announced that South Korea had indeed been disqualified, giving the gold to China, silver to Canada and bronze to the United States, which had nearly been lapped during the race. Naturally, this led to protests from the Korean camp, especially since the referee making the call, Jim Hewish of Australia, had been the same to controversially disqualify Kim Dong-Seong in the 2002 Winter Olympics.