The future is now: Up-and-coming stars at Beijing Winter Olympics

BEIJING, Feb. 18 (Xinhua) -- The Olympic Games is never short of stories about athletes striving for sporting excellence. Some veterans persist in chasing their dreams, while some prodigies grasp the opportunity to take the center stage.

With two days to go from the closing of the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games, people have witnessed several up-and-coming athletes' highlight performances at the Games, and are ready to anticipate a different landscape of global winter sports ahead.

Gu Ailing (18, freestyle skiing)

After a glittering year of 2021 with two world championships gold medals and a bronze, Gu showcased her admirable talent on the biggest winter sports stage as the first female athlete to land a right double cork 1440 trick.

The freeskier stomped a double cork 1620 safety grab, a move she had never done in previous competitions, to win the women's freeski big air gold medal, becoming Team China's first female gold medalist on snow.

Gu kept her favorable shape afterward, claiming a silver medal in slopestyle and a gold in halfpipe to wind up her Beijing 2022 campaign with two golds and one silver.

At 18 years and 168 days, Gu is the youngest athlete to win three individual medals at the Olympic Winter Games. She also becomes the first freestyle skier to win three medals at a single Winter Olympics.

"It has been two straight weeks of the most intense highs and lows I've ever experienced in my life. It has changed my life forever," said Gu.

Su Yiming (18, snowboard)

Su, who turned 18 on Friday, won the silver in the men's snowboard slopestyle to become the first Chinese male snowboarder to reach the Olympic podium. He managed a triple cork 1800 in the last sequence, marking its first time appearance at an Olympics.

Su later won China's first gold medal in snowboard from the big air event. At 17 years and 363 days, he becomes the youngest Chinese athlete to win a gold medal at the Olympic Winter Games.

Veronika Stepanova (21, cross-country skiing)

Stepanova made a storming run in the final to help the Russian Olympic Committee claim the women's cross-country skiing 4x5km relay gold.

At 21 years and 39 days, she becomes the second youngest medalist in the women's relay, after Hilkka Riihivuori-Kuntola of Finland at 19 years and 49 days in 1972.

Elvira Oeberg (22, biathlon)

Oeberg, the three-time youth world champion of Sweden, claimed one gold in the women's 4x6km relay and two silvers in 7.5km sprint and 10km pursuit.

The 22-year-old Oeberg became the second youngest Olympic medalist in the pursuit event, after Marie-Laure Brunet from France, who won a bronze in 2010 when she was 21.

Marco Odermatt (24, Alpine skiing)

Odermatt was searching for his first World Cup title at the beginning of December 2019, but has collected 10 of them about two years later.

Coming into the Winter Olympics as a leader on the men's giant slalom overall World Cup rankings, Odermatt of Switzerland lived up to his billing by winning a gold in the event.