Olympics-Short track-South Korea leave with bumps, bruises but no medals

By Pritha Sarkar SOCHI, Russia, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Crash, bang, wallop and the 1,500 metres short-track event was over for South Korea, who came with high hopes of completing a gold medal hat-trick at the Sochi Olympics but left with battered bodies and bruised egos. The nation that ruled the distance at the last two Olympics had been expected to show their speed and stamina over 13-1/2 laps in the energy-sapping race on Monday as Lee Han-bin and Sin Da-woon had been among the front runners for the title. Instead a collision between the two in the semi-finals knocked the wind out of them and left them chasing shadows at the Iceberg Skating Palace. Sin lost his balance after hitting one of the black pucks marking the track and in the impact he took out team mate Lee and they both slammed into the barriers. Lee was given a ticket into the A final as the referee judged he had been impeded by his fellow South Korean but with barely an hour between the two races, he could not recover and finished sixth. For a nation that leads the overall short-track Olympic medals table with 19 golds - which is almost three times the tally of their nearest rivals Canada - there was further misery. Park Se-yeong tripped on the final corner of the B final and rammed into Dutchman Sjinkie Knegt, with both flying into the boards. While the Koreans were left icing their wounds on Monday, their former team mate Viktor Ahn won the bronze for Russia - the hosts first ever Olympic medal in short track. Ahn, who switched citizenship after being passed over for the Vancouver Games, was roared on by the Russian crowd as he whizzed around the ice to cross the line just behind China's Han Tianyu. Charles Hamelin took gold for Canada. It seemed to take an eternity before officials declared the silver and bronze medallists on the giant screen and once the celebrations were over, he was bombarded with questions about what his former country would make of his success when they failed so miserably. After a long pause, the man who had won gold over the same distance eight years ago in Turin for South Korea, said: "I never had any problems with my Korean colleagues. The issue was blown up by everyone and I hope they will be happy for me." (Editing by Peter Rutherford)