Krasnaya Polyana, Russia (SportsNetwork.com) - Germany's Carina Vogt captured the first-ever Olympic gold medal in women's ski jumping by winning the normal hill competition on Tuesday.
Vogt, who held the lead after the first round, made a 97.5-meter jump on her second attempt for a total score of 247.4 to narrowly edge Austrian Daniela Iraschko-Stolz by 1.2 points.
Iraschko-Stolz was fifth after round one, but easily had the best distance of the 30 jumpers in the second round, 104.5 meters, three more than any of her competitors.
France's Coline Mattel, a World Cup winner in this event in Sochi in 2012, totaled 245.2 points to nab the bronze.
Current world champion and the runaway World Cup leader, 17-year-old Sara Takanashi of Japan disappointed with a fourth-place finish.
Takanashi has won 10 of the 13 events on the World Cup circuit.
While women have been participating in the sport for more than a century, the International Olympic Committee argued that there weren't enough women or countries participating at a high enough level to justify its inclusion until now.
An official once said jumping thousands of times was "not appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view."
However, on April 6, 2011, the IOC finally announced that a women's ski jumping event was being added for Sochi.
American Sarah Hendrickson, who suffered torn knee ligaments in August, wore bib No. 1 and became the first woman to ever make a competition jump in an Olympic event. The 2013 world champion, though, finished 21st overall with a total score of 217.6
Hendrickson has said that she will take the rest of the season off to further recover from her knee injury.
Fellow Americans Jessica Jerome and Lindsay Van finished 10th and 15th, respectively, while Atsuko Tanaka and Taylor Henrich were the top Canadian finishers in 12th and 13th place.
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