PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Two events, two gold medals for Marcel Hirscher.

Hirscher, a 28-year-old Austrian, has a good chance to leave the Olympics with one more.

Hirscher won the men’s giant slalom Sunday, finishing in 2 minutes, 18.04 seconds and beating Henrik Kristoffersen of Norway by 1.27 seconds – the largest victory in the event at an Olympics in 50 years. He also won the Alpine combined last Tuesday and still has the slalom – his best event – to come.

“At the moment, I’m pumped,” Hirscher said.

Oystein Braaten of Norway also was excited after winning the men’s ski slopestyle, edging an American, Nick Goepper, for the gold.

“First run, I did what I planned to do, what I wanted to do as well as I could, and it held up against all the great runs today,” Braaten said. “Just being a part of a final like this was amazing.”

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Norway won its fifth cross-country skiing gold of these games, taking the men’s 40-kilometer relay. Oleksandr Abramenko was the winner of the men’s aerials, giving Ukraine its first medal of these games and just its third gold ever at the Winter Games.

In a photo finish in the biathlon 15-kilometer mass start, Martin Fourcade edged Simon Schempp to win his second gold medal of the games. And in the last medal event of the night, Nao Kodaira won the women’s 500-meter speedskating title in an Olympic record.

Hirscher led after the first run but saw Kristoffersen rise from 10th-fastest in the morning to having the quickest time in the second run.

“Wow, it was not so easy to be the absolute favorite in this discipline, then sitting up there as the leader from the first run knowing that Henrik ripped it,” Hirscher said. “I had no choice. I knew I have to give 100 percent and I had to go into this battle.”

Alexis Pinturault of France took the bronze.

Ted Ligety, the 2014 Olympic champion, was 15th in 2:21.25.

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Braaten was the big star on the slopes despite most eyes being set on Gus Kenworthy, an American who came out as gay about two years after capturing the silver medal in Russia. Kenworthy failed to land any of his three runs and finished last.

“It didn’t work out for me, which is a bummer,” said Kenworthy, who had become a strong, steady voice in the LGBT community. “I would have loved to have landed a run for sure. Definitely disappointing.”

Alex Beaulieu-Marchand of Canada won the bronze.

CROSS-COUNTRY RELAY: The Norwegian team of Didrik Toenseth, Martin Johnsrud Sundby, Simen Hegstad Krueger and Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo won 1 hour, 33 minutes and 4.9 seconds.

That was good enough to beat the second-place Russian athletes by 9.4 seconds. France took the bronze.

Of the eight golds awarded in cross-country events, Norway has all but three. The Norwegians have won 11 overall medals in cross country, two off the record set by the Soviet Union in Calgary in 1988.

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MEN’S AERIALS: Abramenko scored a 128.51 on his third and final jump, edging Zongyang Jia of China by just 0.46 points. Ilia Burov, an Olympic athlete from Russia, got the bronze.

WOMEN’S SPEEDSKATING: Kodaira’s 36.94 seconds made her the first woman to race under 37 seconds at sea level, bettering her mark of 37.07 set in November in Norway.

DINOS LEFKARITIS JR., the Bates College junior and lone athlete from Cyprus, didn’t finish his first run of giant slalom because of a fall. He was among a group of 21 men who received a DNF for not completing the first run. Another 10 failed to complete the second run.

Lefkaritis will compete in the slalom, with the first run at 8:15 p.m. Wednesday, Eastern time.


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