LIBEREC, Czech Republic—Ola Vigen Hattestad won his second gold medal in two days, helping Norway take the men’s team sprint in a furious finish Wednesday at the Nordic skiing world championships.
Hattestad pushed past Finland’s Sami Jauhojaervi on the home straight to cement his status as the world’s top sprinter. Germany took silver after Axel Teichmann also came from behind to beat Jauhojaervi in a photo finish, with Finland settling for bronze.
“In the last climb, I was really tired. But … I felt the smell of the gold. My head wanted to get the gold,” said Hattestad, who also won the individual freestyle race Tuesday. “It was a very good feeling when I passed the Finnish guy and Axel was behind us.”
While the men’s race was wide open until the end, the women’s event was decided shortly after the start.
Aino Kaisa Saarinen pulled away from the field at the start, and teammate Virpi Kuitunen built a 13-second lead after the second of six 1.3-kilometer legs. No team was close to catching up, and Kuitunen entered the final leg with a comfortable 23-second lead.
“At the last exchange, I just told Virpi, ‘Enjoy it,'” said Saarinen, who also collected her second gold after taking the opening 10K classical race.
The rest of the field was left fighting for second, with Swedish Olympic champion Lina Andersson pulling away from Italy’s Arianna Follis shortly before entering the ski stadium to take the silver.
“This feels like a gold,” said Sweden’s Anna Olsson, whose last name was Dahlberg when she won the Olympic title with Andersson in Turin. “We couldn’t do much about Finland today.”
Kuitunen defended her title from two years ago when she was part of Finland’s winning sprint team in Sapporo, Japan.
“We decided we’d try from the start to build a gap, and it worked today,” she said.
It was a lot more difficult for Hattestad, who had to use every bit of his sprinting prowess on the home straight.
All 10 teams stayed together for the first five of the six 1.6-kilometer classical style legs, before a late push by Norway’s Johan Kjoelstad created a four-man group going into the final lap. Jauhojaervi held a slim lead over both Hattestad and Teichmann going into the ski stadium, but the Norwegian again proved to have the best finish.
“I’ve never pushed so hard as I did this time,” he said. “But when I passed Jauhojaervi I felt I could make it.”
Hattestad and Kjoelstad, Tuesday’s silver medalist, finished in 22 minutes, 48.5 seconds. Tobias Angerer and Teichmann were 0.5 seconds back for Germany, while Ville Nousiainen and Jauhojaervi were given the same time.
With the win, Norway passed the United States atop the medals table, with three golds, three silvers and a bronze. The Americans are having their best Nordic worlds ever, but both the men’s and women’s teams failed to reach the finals on Wednesday.
Finland won its second men’s cross-country medal in Liberec, after not making a podium since the doping scandal at its home worlds in Lahti in 2001.
“I was hoping it was the silver,” Jauhojaervi said. “I lost a couple of centimeters at the final stretch.”
