China's freestyle skiers enter Olympic record books

The Chinese freestyle skiing aerials squad landed a five-medal haul to achieve its best ever result at the Winter Olympics after signing off its Milano-Cortina 2026 campaign with a bronze medal in Saturday's mixed team final in Livigno, Italy.

Made up by two-time women's champion Xu Mengtao, her husband and fresh men's winner Wang Xindi and men's bronze medalist Li Tianma, the Chinese trio failed to live up to its pre-final favorite billings after Wang and Li both fell on their landings in the final's medal round to cost the squad's chances of bringing home a third gold. Xu and Wang had earlier won the women's and men's titles.

The United States team, as defending champion from Beijing 2022, held its nerve in the medal round, where its three skiers all completed their jumps cleanly, to score a winning total of 325.35 points to retain gold.

Switzerland won silver with 296.91 points, while China had to settle with a bronze with a sub-par total of 279.68 points.

In the mixed team format, each squad's three skiers, including at least one woman, take turns to jump off a kicker to each perform one multi-somersault air stunt, with their combined score counting for the standings.

Only the top-four teams from the final's first round advance into the second and medal round.

After a slow start in the first round, where the Chinese trio ranked second following defending champion USA to reach the second round, Xu kicked off the medal-round actions with a quality run of 96.59 points that was the best among all female skiers. However, her two men's partners proved vulnerable under pressure with their landing failures dragging the Chinese squad far off the USA.

China remains the most successful program in aerials in Italy, having collected five medals, including a bronze in women's individual by Shao Qi, to surpass its three-medal finish at the home Games in Beijing, where it also triumphed in both men's and women's events before winning a silver in the mixed discipline.

It was the Chinese aerials' team 19th overall medal of all colors at the Winter Games since the event was added on the Olympic program in 1994, underlining the Chinese program's collective strength which has been compared to the country's all-conquering diving and table tennis programs at the Summer Games.