Programs
Competitions
Venues
Access
A la carte
Photo Album
From the Olympics Toword Tomorrow
 |
Norway wins men's relay, Daehlie wins record 11th medal
 Deadheat |
10:15- Start
Norway gained sweet revenge over Italy in the men's 4 x 10-kilometer cross country ski relay Wednesday as Bjorn Daehlie earned a record seventh career gold medal in the Olympic Winter Games.
In a deadheat between the two anchors down the final stretch, Norway's Thomas Alsgaard thrust his right leg forward and over the finish line just 0.2 second ahead of Italy's Silvio Fauner.
Four years ago before a home crowd in Lillehammer, Norway surrendered the gold medal to the Italians by a mere four-10ths of a second. And for a moment, those memories flooded the mind of Daehlie.
''I was thinking about Lillehammer and I knew how fast Silvio is, so yes I was worried,'' said Daehlie, who was the third racer in Norway's quartet and watched Alsgaard from the finish area.
Asked if this victory was revenge, Daehlie answered, ''Yes. It is better to win by 20 centimeters than by half a minute.''
The Norwegian quartet of Sture Sivertsen, Erling Jevne, Daehlie and Alsgaard won the race in 1 hour, 40 minutes, 55.7 seconds underneath a clear blue sky at the Snow Harp tracks in Hakuba.
Finland was third more than 1 minute behind and clinched its third consecutive bronze medal in this event. Sweden was fourth and Russia fifth.
Japan's anchor Kazutoshi Nagahama punched the air in ecstasy as he crossed the line in seventh place in 1:43:06.7. He and teammates Katsuhito Ebisawa, Hiroyuki Imai and Mitsuo Horigome gave the host country its first top-eight finish in any cross country ski event in the history of the winter Olympics.
Daehlie now holds the record of most gold medals (seven) by a winter games athlete and the most medals overall (11), but he shrugged off suggestions that he may be the greatest winter Olympian of all time.
''I haven't been focusing on these records. It's the journalists who do,'' he said. ''It's a nice feeling to know I have won so much, but I don't feel I'm the best skier ever. I'm looking forward to skiing better races in the future.''
The previous record of six golds is held by speed skater Lydia Skoblikova of the former Soviet Union and Russian cross country skier Lyubov Yegorova.
Daehlie, 30, won the men's 10-km classical title and gained the 15-km free pursuit silver here last week.
In Wednesday's relay, Norway's leadoff skier Sivertsen struggled over the final 2 km and put his team in 10th place at the 10-km point.
But Jevne and Daehlie both skied strongly to put the team on the heels of the pace-setting Italians.
An awkward moment occurred at the end of Daehlie's leg when he deliberately slowed down to give Italy's Fabio Maj the lead. But Maj slowed down as well, suggesting that both teams wanted to avoid taking top position until the very end of the race.
''No, I wasn't trying to have a coffee break,'' joked Daehlie. ''I wanted to Thomas to go behind Silvio. It was just a tactical move.'' (Kyodo News)
Results of men's 4x10-kilometer cross-country skiing Wednesday in the 18th Olympic Winter Games at Snow Harp, Hakuba, Nagano Prefecture:
1. Norway (Sture Sivertsen, Erling Jevne, Bjoern Daehlie, Thomas Alsgaard) 1 hour, 40 minutes, 55.7 seconds
2. Italy (Marco Albarello, Fulvio Valbusa, Fabio Maj, Silvio Fauner) 1:40:55.9
3. Finland (Harri Kirvesniemi, Mika Myllylae, Sami Repo, Jari Isometsae) 1:42:15.5
4. Sweden (Mathias Fredriksson, Niklas Jonsson, Per Elofsson, Henrik Forsberg) 1:42:25.2
5. Russia (Wladimir Legotin, Alexej Prokurorov, Serguei Krianin, Sergej Tchepikov) 1:42:39.5
6. Switzerland (Jeremias Wigger, Beat Koch, Reto Burgermeister, Wilhelm Aschwanden) 1:42:49.2
7. Japan (Katsuhito Ebisawa, Hiroyuki Imai, Mitsuo Horigome, Kazutoshi Nagahama) 1:43:06.7
8. Germany (Andreas Schluetter, Jochen Behle, Rene Sommerfeldt, Johann Muehlegg) 1:43:16.1
9. Austria (Markus Gandler, Alois Stadlober, Achim Walcher, Christian Hoffmann) 1:43:16.5
10. Estonia (Andrus Veerpalu, Raul Olle, Elmo Kassin, Jaak Mae)
1:44:20.9
-----
16. Kazakstan (Pavel Ryabinin, Vladimir Bortsov, Andrej Nevzorov, Vitalii Lilichenko) 1:46:12.9
20. South Korea (Park Byung Chul, Ahn Jin Soo, Shin Doo Sun, Park Byung Joo) 1:55:17.1
 Japan's team |
No part of the article, photographs, or illustrations presented here may be printed or used without permission.
Copyright 1998 The Shinano Mainichi Shimbun