Carrying two ski poles under his left arm, Sergey Ustiugov from the Russian Olympic Committee grabbed an Olympic flag from the cheering crowd, skiing in the dancing snowflakes to the finish line of the men's 4x10 kilometers cross-country relay here on Sunday afternoon.
After skiing dozens of meters, Ustiugov whooped together with three teammates, who had finished their runs and were waiting there, in a big hug.
The ROC led from start to finish to beat defending champion Norway and won the gold in one hour 54 minutes and 50.7 seconds. Norway had to settle for silver in 1:55:57.9, followed by France in 1:56:07.1.
In the fierce duel featuring two 10km classical plus two 10km free ski, Alexey Chervotkin from the ROC laid the foundation for their triumph, finishing first in the first 10km classical in 30:14.7, leaving Norway's Emil Iversen behind with a gap of 34.4 seconds.
Alexander Bolshunov, gold medallist in the men's 15km+15km skiathlon, increased the lead significantly by the end of leg two. Ustiugov widened the gap to more than one minute in the final fleg.
The whole snow competition zone in Chongli witnessed snowing from Saturday to Sunday. The temperature declined to 14 degrees Celsius below zero.
Chervotkin said after the race, "The weather seemed to be hard and there was snow but it was in our favor so everything was great."
"We were aiming for gold, but for several years we hadn't been able to. Today everything aligned. Everything was super," he added.
Like a reshuffle of cards, ROC changed their medal's color from silver at PyeongChang 2018 to gold at Beijing 2022, while Norway got silver this time. France pocketed a bronze for the third time - from Sochi 2014 to Beijing 2022.
Norwegian skier Hans Christer Holund said, "I think everyone is expecting us to take gold. That was what we were fighting for today, but we were not good enough."
"If you look at the results of this Olympics, the Russian guys have been performing better than us. So I'm not surprised that they're winning today," Holund added.
French skier Maurice Manificat said, "It is the third relay medal since Sochi. It's quite unbelievable when we think about it and we redo it every time."
"This one was very hard to win. It wasn't really a done deal, and we're absolutely elated," Manificat added.
It was a tough battle in the heavy snow. Sweden finished fourth and its fourth skier Johan Haeggstroem was out of strength and collapsed in the snow after crossing the finish line. -
