Japan's defending Olympic champion Nana Takagi crashed out in the women's speed skating mass start semifinals Saturday at the Beijing Winter Games, her bid for another gold medal ending in uncannily similar fashion to her team pursuit title defense.
Takagi's pursuit teammate Ayano Sato finished eighth in the final won by Irene Schouten of the Netherlands, who collected her third gold medal of the games.
The 29-year-old Schouten held off Canadian silver medalist Ivanie Blondin and bronze medal winner Francesca Lollobrigida of Italy in a furious final dash to the line at the National Speed Skating Oval.
Takagi was poised to advance to the medal race as one of the top contenders until disaster repeated in her semifinal.
Leading on the final lap, the 29-year-old lost her footing coming around the last bend and slammed into the padded wall surrounding the "Ice Ribbon" track.
The tumble mirrored her fall in the women's team pursuit final on Tuesday, which saw Takagi, her sister Miho, and Sato relinquish the lead and the gold medal to Canada.
"I just couldn't put together a good race," said Takagi, the first Japanese woman with multiple gold medals at the same games following her 2018 mass start and team pursuit wins.
"By the end, my leg was out of synch with what I was trying to tell it."
Sato was in the mix for most of the final, staying near the front until the second half of the last lap, when she clashed skates with a competitor as the medal-winning trio broke away.
She had advanced to the final with a second-place finish in her semifinal, when she made a late move to skate ahead of the main pack.
"The race was a little tougher than I expected," Sato said. "If not for the clash, I think I could've aimed for third, but I didn't do such a good job reading the race heading into the last 100 to 200 meters of the final lap."
Japan's Ryosuke Tsuchiya finished sixth, and Seitaro Ichinohe eighth, in the men's mass start final won by Bart Swings of Belgium.
South Korean skaters Chung Jae Won and Lee Seung Hoon took silver and bronze, respectively.
The men's final marked the last appearance on the ice of Dutch great Sven Kramer. The 35-year-old was unable to finish the final race of his illustrious career.
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