Estonia's Kristina Smigun became the first athlete to win two gold medals at the Turin Olympics on Thursday, still she wasn't good enough - or bad enough - to catch spotlight.

Russia's Olga Pyleva, silver medalist in Monday's women's 15km biathlon, hogged most headlines for being booted out of the Olympics as the first drug cheat.

The 30-year-old tested positive for the stimulant carphedon and was stripped of her medal.

Facing a two-year ban from competition, she may also face prosecution because in Italy, doping is a crime that carries a jail term of between three months and three years.

Russian anti-doping chief Nikolai Durmanov blamed the positive test on a doctor's mistake.

Durmanov said a doctor who treated Pyleva for an ankle injury in January gave her an over-the-counter medication that did not list carphedon as one of its ingredients.

"This was 100 percent the physician's mistake," he said.

For cross-country skier Smigun, no mistake was made as she added the women's 10km classical gold to Sunday's 15km pursuit gold.

Her clocking of 27 minutes, 51.4 seconds was 21.3 seconds ahead of silver medalist Marit Bjorgen of Norway.

Bjorgen's 41-year-old teammate Hilde Pedersen claimed bronze to become the oldest women to reach the podium in Winter Olympic history, beating the previous record of Raisa Smetanina, who at 39 led Russia to a team gold in 1992.

Smigun was once suspected of doping when she tested positive in December 2001 for an anabolic steroid. But a second sample turned out negative. The World Anti-Doping Agency's probe showed the first lab that tested her sample fumbled and didn't realize she was female.

Russia's Yevgeny Plushenko was in a class of his own as he crushed the opponents to become the fifth straight Russian or former Soviet Union skater to win the Olympic men's figure skating title.

The 23-year-old outclassed the silver medalist Stephan Lambiel of Switzerland by 27.12 points and Jeffrey Buttle from Canada took the bronze.

Plushenko, 23, skated a dazzling program to "The Godfather" that featured an excellent quadruple toeloop and triple toeloop as well as a triple axel, triple loop and an impressive change foot combination spin.

The three-time world champion also nailed a triple salchow and earned a new personal best of 167.67 points (85.25 points for technical elements/82.42 for component), totaling 258.33 points.

French biathlete Florence Baverel-Robert surprisingly won the 7. 5km Olympic sprint, ahead of Anna Carin Olofsson of Sweden and Lilia Efremova of Ukraine.

The United States nabbed its third snowboard gold through Seth Wescott, who beat Radoslav Zidek of Slovakia and Paul-Henri Delerue of France in the snowboard cross' Olympic debut.

While the United States continues to top the gold tally with six, its northern neighbor had a frustrating day, losing the men's speedskating team pursuit final to Italians and the women's team gold to Germans.

Canada didn't do well in the women's skeleton either as its World Cup winner Mellisa Hollingsworth-Richards finished third after champion Maya Pedersen of Switzerland and Shelly Rudman, who claimed Britain's first medal in Turin.

Austria won its first ever Olympic Nordic combined team event, beating Germany into second place. Finland was third.

Source: Xinhua