10 kilometres (Classical), Women

After her victory in the skiathlon, Norway’s Therese Johaug also became Olympic champion in the 10 km classic style. Johaug and Kerttu Niskanen fought an exciting duel with the Norwegian crossing the finish line in 28:06.3, just 0.4 ahead of Niskanen, who had to settle for silver after a courageous performance.

Niskanen pushed hard on the uphill sections of the course and built up a lead of 11 seconds at the third intermediate, but she was unable to match Johaug’s time in the closing part of the race. Despite coming so close to the gold, Niskanen was delighted to finally win an individual Olympic medal after two silvers in team events in 2014. Individually, she had finished fourth in the 30km mass start freestyle at Sochi, and missed out by a single placing again in the skiathlon a few days earlier in Beijing.

The battle for the bronze medal was even closer. Russian athlete Nataliya Nepryayeva passed the first intermediate in first place, but then held on in third place for most of the remainder of the race. Ultimately, Krista Pärmäkoski of Finland was 0.1 faster and Nepryayeva finished in a thankless fourth place. The best German was Katharina Hennig, who ran a strong race and finished fifth.