50 kilometres, Men

Defending Olympic Champion Nikolay Zimyatov and the reigning World Champion Thomas Wassberg were considered among the favorites, but Gunde Svan had been the most successful cross-country skier so far at the 1984 Olympics, with two gold and one bronze medal already in his pocket. Wassberg had the advantage of starting behind most of his rivals, with the exception of Zimyatov, starting 1½ minutes behind Wassberg.

The race turned out to be one of the most thrilling duels in the history of 50 km cross-country skiing, with the two Swedes playing the main roles. It was a duel between experience represented by Wassberg and youth represented by Svan. After 7 km Wassberg had a five second lead, while at 19.7 km he had increased his lead to 15 seconds. The Swiss Andi Grünenfelder, starting half a minute ahead of Wassberg, had followed in the Swede’s heels from around 10 km, was in third position, 33 seconds behind, but now struggling to keep Wassberg’s pace. At 32 km Svan struck back, and had a seven second lead over his teammate. Wassberg had on his heels a row of strong skiers that had started ahead of him: the two Finns Aki Karvonen and Harri Kirvesniemi and the Norwegian Jan Lindvall. The trio was able to hang on to Wassberg for almost the rest of the race, but Grünenfelder, still in third place, fell behind. At the last official intermediate point, 44.7 km, Svan was still in the lead, but now with only a one second margin to Wassberg. Karvonen, Kirvesniemi, Grünenfelder and Lindvall followed, but they were far behind the Swedish duo and had to settle for the fight for bronze. Svan was still skiing well, but Wassberg then increased his speed and crossed the line 4.9 seconds ahead of his young rival, the narrowest victory margin in the Olympic 50 km race until mass start was introduced for the distance at the 2006 Games in Torino. Finland’s Karvonen secured the bronze medal, followed by Kirvesniemi. Due to his strong finish, Lindvall passed Grünenfelder on the final stage of the race and advanced to fifth.