TURIN, Feb 25 (Reuters) - American Apolo Anton Ohno won the men's 500 metres in the Winter Olympics short track skating on Saturday, winning his first title of the Games and putting an end to Ahn Hyun-soo's bid to make a clean sweep of the golds.

"Oh Wow!" Ohno exclaimed as he crossed the line, his arms raised in surprise and victory.

Ahn of South Korea had won the 1,000 and 1,500 and was the favourite for the 500 and the men's 5,000 relay, due to be raced later on Saturday.

Ohno put a stop to that from the very start of the 500 final, swinging around the first corner like lightning and keeping the lead through the fast and furious race.

Ahn was trailing at the start of the race and could not find the speed to overtake the whole pack, sliding in third. Canada's Francois-Louis Tremblay took silver.

Ohno could hardly believe he had won as he crossed the line and he quickly skated across to hug his coach before doing a victory lap, pumping his fists to the flock of American fans in the crowd.

TURIN, Feb 25 (Reuters) - Canada's Clara Hughes won the women's speedskating 5,000-metre gold medal on the Turin Winter Olympics on Saturday.

Claudia Pechstein of Germany won the silver and Cindy Klassen of Canada the bronze.

The last speed skating race at the Lingotto oval will feature the ladies' 5000m. Here is some statistics collected by Lars Finsen about ladies 5000m. For sure, an interesting race to come.

TURIN, Feb 24 (Reuters) - Dutch speedskater Bob de Jong won the men's 10,000 metres at the Turin Winter Olympics on Friday.

De Jong built up a world-record pace halfway through and, fired on by a Dutch crowd clocked laps below 32 seconds until the end.

Skating to the chants of "Holland, Holland", the Dutchman who had won silver in the distance at the 1998 Nagano Games, maintained his speed to set an unbeatable time of 13:01.57.

American Chad Hedrick claimed silver with 13:05.40 while De Jong's compatriot Carl Verheijen finished third.

Hedrick won his third medal in Turin having grabbed a 5,000 gold and a 1,500 bronze earlier in the Games.

De Jong, who had competed in the fourth pair, kept a close eye on the set of skaters and as soon as he noticed that Hedrick had failed to beat his time, he punched the air in delight before collapsing on his back at the centre of the rink.

When the result flashed up on the giant screen at the Turin rink, a sea of orange-clad supporters jumped up to their feet to cheer on yet another Dutch success.

De Jong's victory gave the Netherlands their third speedskating title at the Olympics.

It was an emotional farewell for Bart Veldkamp, who was competing in his last race after five Olympic Games.

Given a standing ovation by the crowd and throwing flowers back into the stands, Veldkamp, racing for Belgium since 1998, had won gold in the 10,000 at the 1992 Games and bronze in the 1994 Olympics for Netherlands.

In some hours, athetes will be skating the 10 000m at the Lingotto oval. If Netherlands and Sweden appear the best countries in that distance so far, american Chad Hedrick has great chance to win this event, like past olympic winner Jochem Uytdehaage who won both the 5000m and 10000m.