SOCHI, Russia — Swiss outsider Dominique Gisin and Tina Maze of Slovenia shared women's downhill gold Wednesday in the first dead heat in Olympic alpine skiing history as the men's ice hockey players prepared to take to the ice in Sochi. Under piercing blue skies on the mountains at Rosa Khutor, Maze, racing 13 bibs after Gissin, matched the long-time leader's time of 1min 41.57sec in a race missing injured US defending champion Lindsey Vonn. Switzerland's Lara Gut took bronze but pre-race favorite Maria Hoefl-Riesch of Germany, who won super-combined gold Monday, failed in her bid for a fourth Olympic gold. “This is incredible. I am overwhelmed with emotions,” said a tearful Gisin, 28, forced to watch in agony as racer after racer came down the icy, hard-packed 2.7-kilometer course chasing her mark. Maze was up on Gisin's time at all four intermediate splits but a small mistake on the final section slowed the 30-year-old fractionally. “I have been dreaming about this since I was little,” said Maze, who climbed onto the podium hand-in-hand with Gisin. Germany's Eric Frenzel kept his cool amid spring-like temperatures to storm to Olympic gold in the nordic combined (normal hill/10km cross-country). Starting first after winning the morning's ski jumping on the normal hill, Frenzel took the lead in the 10km cross country ski phase with only Akito Watabe of Japan for company. Frenzel, who won a bronze in the team event in Vancouver 2010, finished in 23min 50.2sec with Watabe in second on 23min 54.4sec. Norway's Magnus Krog took the bronze in 23min 58.3sec. The Netherlands won a fourth gold in five speedskating events here when former world champion Stefan Groothuis claimed the men's 1000m title. The 32-year-old beat Canada's Denny Morrison into second place with Dutchman Michel Mulder, who won the 500m gold on Monday, in third. America's Shani Davis, seeking a third consecutive gold in the event, was a disappointing eighth. Davis, 31, finished third when Groothuis clinched the 1000m world title in 2012 and had been trying to become the first male speed skater to triumph in a single event at more than two Winter Olympics. Germany captured its third gold in three luge events when world champions Tobias Wendl and Tobias Arlt won the men's pairs. World Cup winners Wendl and Arlt clocked a combined time of one min 38.933 sec after two runs to finish 0.522sec ahead of Austrian brothers Andreas and Wolfgang Linger, who came to Sochi as reigning two-time Olympic champions. Latvian brothers Andris and Juris Sics, who grabbed silver at Vancouver in 2001, finished in third place. On Sunday Felix Loch won the men's singles gold medal while Natalie Geisenberger added the women's title Tuesday. Russia is facing growing public and media pressure after a sluggish start to the Games, which sees it lagging a long way behind medal leader Norway. But the host nation is favorite to take the pairs title after team gold medalists Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov set a new world record in the short program Tuesday. Kumaritashvili remembered The fourth anniversary of Nodar Kumaritashvili's death was remembered Wednesday with a moment of silence from luge's top officials, along with a pledge to build “a lasting memorial” in his native Georgia. Kumaritashvili died Feb. 12, 2010, in Whistler, British Columbia, in a horrifying training crash just hours before the start of the opening ceremony of the Vancouver Games. Sliding sports have placed a larger premium on safety ever since, and so far at the Sochi Olympics no major crashes have occurred on the Sanki Sliding Center track. — Agencies
