Ohno becomes most decorated US Winter Olympian

Ohno's bronze in the 1,000-metre final gave him seven Olympic medals to overtake Bonnie Blair's total of six.

Lee Jung-Su of South Korea won the gold medal, ahead of teammate Lee Ho-Suk at the Pacific Coliseum.

Ohno, 27, had tied with speed-skating legend Blair after his silver in the 1,500m.

He has now two gold, two silver and three bronze medals over the past three Olympics.

"It feels amazing. It's my third Olympic Games and possibly my last. There's no other athlete (short track) here who has done that," said the skater from Seattle.

Ohno however said he did not consider himself the greatest US Winter Olympian of all time.

"I consider myself to be an athlete skating my heart out," he said.

He said he had not come to Vancouver "trying to break records or trying to tie medal counts".

"I did this first and foremost because I love it. I have no regrets up to this point. So I'm just very happy to be here competing and be doing what I'm doing."

Canadian brothers Charles and Francois Hamelin took an early lead in the final, but the Koreans came up front with Ohno in their slipstream.

Ohno then moved up to second spot but slipped to the back of the pack with two and a half laps to go before making a spectactular final push for the line.

"You know this sport is very unpredictable. You make one mistake or one bad slip like that you come to last from second.

"For me, I was able to come back and I tried very hard and I won the bronze. There's no question in my mind that I skated very well today and I'm very happy with the result."

Lee Jung-Su was timed in 1min 23.747sec with Lee Ho-Suk 0.054sec behind giving him his fourth Olympic medal. Ohno clocked 1:24.128.

Lee Ho-Suk denied that the Koreans were always fired up to beat Ohno after the 2002 controversy when South Korea's Kim Dong-Sung finished first in the 1,500m final but was disqualified for blocking Ohno on the final turn.

"I wouldn't say that anything that happened in 2002 is still carried over today," said Lee.

"That was the past, this is now. What happened in 2002 is not a reason for us to try and defeat Ohno. We really try to do our best against Apolo Ohno or any other athlete that we have to beat to get gold medals."

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