20 kilometres, Men

Since the 1964 Games Norway had emerged as the strongest opponent to the Soviet biathletes, with individual World Championships for Olav Jordet, the Olympic bronze medalist from 1964, in 1965, and Jon Istad in 1966. The World Champion of 1967, Viktor Mamatov, was considered the strongest Soviet contender for the gold medal. To the surprise of many Norwegian journalists, a 31-year-old newcomer on the international circuit, Magnar Solberg was given the last place on the Norwegian team, and former World Champion Olav Jordet became only a substitute.

The youngest member on the Soviet team, 21-year-old Aleksandr Tikhonov, was the first to start out of 60 competitors from 16 countries. The silver medalist of the 1967 World Championships, the 33-year-old Pole Stanisław Szczepaniak, was wearing start number two, and Magnar Solberg followed with start number three. Those three early starters should more or less dominate the event.

After the first round of shooting the Soviet Union’s Vladimir Gundartsev had a scant lead, only two seconds ahead of Solberg, with Nikolay Puzanov 42 seconds behind in third place, all of them with 5 hits. On the second shooting round both Solberg and Gundartsev continued with perfect shooting scores, but Solberg had built a one minute lead. Szczepaniak had advanced from seventh to third place, another minute behind. The third shooting session turned out to be decisive. Solberg once again was perfect, while both Gundartsev and Szczepaniak sustained one-minute penalties. Tikhonov, with two penalty minutes on his two first shooting rounds, was now in second place, over one and a half minutes behind, with Gundartsev another minute behind in third place. The last round of shooting brought no change among the medal candidates. Solberg made his fourth perfect shooting round, and would finish the race as a surprising gold medal winner, 55 second ahead of Tikhonov, the fastest skier of the day. Gundartsev secured the bronze medal half a minute ahead of Szczepaniak, but was 4:42 behind the gold medalist.

Magnar Solberg, a police officer from Trondheim, was an unexpected winner. He had never before done all perfect shooting rounds in a competition, and he had never even won a national championship. His only national championships was won four years later, just before his second Olympic appearance in the 1972 Sapporo Games. The silver medalist Aleksandr Tikhonov was at the start of an impressive international career which included three more Olympic appearances.