Team Sprint (Freestyle), Men

One week after the individual sprint, 28 two-men teams took part in the team sprint. They had to qualify in two heats with 14 teams in each. The first two from each heat, plus another six fastest teams advanced to the final. Maybe the biggest surprise in this round was the failing of the Swiss team that contained 15 km gold medalist Dario Cologna. The heavily favored Norwegian team of Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, already a double gold medalist in PyeongChang, and Martin Johnsrud Sundby, did not waste any energy in both rounds. Then, in the fourth round, things really went off, when all of a sudden Klæbo, lying second to Aleksandr Bolshunov, started his attack and nobody followed him immediately. Even though in the next leg, the pack led by Denis Spitsov from the OAR team, and Sweden’s Marcus Hellner, almost close the gap, but Sundby maintained an extremely high pace and eventually increased the lead, when he passed on to Klæbo for his last round. On the last leg, Klæbo made it clear the he was not willing to give the others any chance of fighting for gold. Three teams, OAR, Sweden and France then battled for the other two medal places with Bolshunov holding on to second place for the OAR, but had a hard time defending it against Richard Jouve of Fance on the last stretch in the stadium. A rather exhausted Calle Halfvarsson continued Sweden’s non-medal streak with a fourth place.

The victory of Sundby and Klæbo in the men’s team sprint did not come as a surprise, like the gold of the US team in the women’s event on the same day. The Olympic Athletes from Russia confirmed their excellent performances in the previous races, although the athletes that won the last World’s title were banned from the Games. France’s bronze medal was their second team medal after taking bronze in the 4x10 km relay. Behind fourth-placed Sweden, were Italy and the United States in fifth and sixth, although the American Erik Bjornsen fell at the beginning of the third round. For Italy, Federico Pellegrino, the individual sprint silver medalist from the last World Championships, came nowhere near a medal in PyeongChang.