15 kilometres, Men

Sweden’s Lars-Göran Åslund was the reigning 1970 World Champion, winning the distance in a convincing way in Vysoke Tatra. He was on the Swedish team, but obviously not in his best shape, while another Swede, 24-year old Sven-Åke Lundbäck, dominated the 15 km race from start to finish. At 5 km he was in the lead, nine seconds ahead of East German Gert-Dietmar Klause, who eventually faded to 13th place. At 10 km, Lundbäck had increased his lead to half-a-minute, and he would finish in superb style, his winning margin being almost 32 seconds. The struggle for the other medals developed into a fierce fight between five men. Yury Skobov, a 22-year old Soviet skier, was in second place at 10 km, 2.5 seconds ahead of another youngster, the 20-year-old Norwegian Ivar Formo. Under a second behind Formo was a young Finn, Juha Mieto, also aged 22, while lying fifth, only fifth seconds behind Mieto, was another Soviet athlete, Fyodor Simashov. First to finish among those was Skobov, taking an early lead at the finish. Five minutes later Formo approached the finishing line, finishing strongly and beating Skobov’s time with 1.9 seconds. But Simashev had the strongest finish of all and bettered Formo’s time by 1.9 seconds. After Lundbäck had finished his gold medal race, only Mieto among the last starters could do something regarding the distribution of the medals. The big Finn, at 1.97 m tall, finished bravely, but arrived at the finishing line just 0.06 seconds behind Formo in the unlucky fourth position. Eight years later Mieto was involved in another hundreds-of a-second duel, this time for a gold medal.