Relay (4 × 5 kilometres), Women

Norway with Ingvild Flugstad Østberg, Astrid Uhrenholdt Jacobsen, Ragnhild Haga and Marit Bjørgen , secured the gold medal in the 4x5 km relay ahead of Sweden. These teams, the last two Olympic gold medal winners, were expected to finish on the top of the podium. The impressive showing of the young Olympic Athletes from Russia Nataliya Nepryayeva, Yuliya Belorukova, the only individual female medal winner from Russia at these Games, Anastasiya Sedova and Anna Nechayevskaya took them to the bronze medal.

Right from the start, the Russian youngsters set the pace, with Norway’s Østberg having a hard time to be close on Nepryayeva’s heels. At the first exchange, surprisingly, Anamarija Lampič kept Slovenia in second place. For Sweden, one of the two favorites, Anna Haag, had a slow start and was in fifth place. On the second leg, it was Charlotte Kalla, who ran the fastest time, and made up 24 seconds on Belorukova. On the other hand, Jacobsen was Norway’s weakest link on the second position. She had an illness at the beginning of the Games and at the end of the leg exchanged in fourth place, some 30 seconds behind the Olympic Athletes from Russia, who held the lead from Sweden, Finland’s Kerttu Niskanen holdng third, 20 seconds ahead of Jacobsen, when the freestyle skiers took over.

Now it was Ragnhild Haga’s turn to close the gap on the O.A.R. and Sweden. She clocked the fastest time, and finished on third place, just three seconds behind the leading duo of Sedova and Sweden’s Ebba Andersson. The chasing “group” of Switzerland with Nathalie von Siebenthal and Finland with Riitta-Liisa Roponen had already lost the chances of a medal with a 40-second gap between them and the top three teams. On the last leg, the race boiled down to a duel between distance skier Bjørgen, and sprint gold medalist Stina Nilsson. The Norwegian kept up a high pace, but could not shake off Nilsson. However, Nechayevskaya succumbed to Bjørgen’s pace, and in the end was desperately trying to hold Finland’s top skier Krista LPärmäkoski at bay for the bronze medal position. In the lead, Bjørgen further increased the pace leaving Nilsson no chance to attack on the last kilometre. At the finish line, Sweden was just two seconds behind.

The teams from Finland and the United States were not strong enough to do better than fourth and fifth eventually. On the home stretch, Germany passed Switzerland for an honorable sixth place.