Thanks to heroic performance from a teenage duo of short track speed skaters, China claimed their first medal at the Sochi 2014 Winter Games here on Monday.

Han Tianyu, 17 years old, clocked two minutes and 15.055 seconds in Final A to finish second for the silver of the men's 1,500 short track, trailing eventual gold medalist and world No. 1 Charles Hamelin from Canada by 0.70 seconds.

Chinese Chen Dequan, 18, finished fifth in 2:15.626.

Victor An, who collected the men's 1,000m, 1,500m and 5,000 relay titles for South Korea at the Turin Winter Games in 2006 and now represents Russia, had to settle for a bronze medal after timing 2:15.062 in the final. Due to an injury that nearly ended his career, An, now 28 years old, had skipped the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.

Han and Chen, both from northeast China's Liaoning province, made surprising runs into the final, with Han beating An by 0.142 seconds in the semis. Endi