Norway won both the men's 4x10km and women's 4x5km relays in Falun, Sweden.
In the women's event, Norway and Finland skied away from the rest of the field early on, creating a gap of more than 14 seconds by the end of the first leg. The teams were evenly matched until the final 5km loop, when Finland's Riikka Sarasoja was unable to match the pace of Norway's Marit Bjoergen. Bjoergen brought the Norweigan squad in a comfortable 30 seconds ahead of the second place Finns. Germany took third 55 seconds behind.
 leads Riikka Sarasoja (FIN) up the big climb on the last leg (Photo Credit: Johan Ericsson)</font></center></p><p>Poor course marking led to a wrong turn by Finland's Riitta-Liisa Roponen – but she was able to recover and close back to the lead.</p><p><center><img decoding=)
</font></center></p><p>A short movie of the lead pack on the big climb:</p><p><object width=)
Kris Freeman led the US team out of the start. Freeman was unable to stay with the lead pack, handing off to Andy Newell 25 seconds back. Newell skied in a pack with the Russians and Italians, among others, staying within 30 seconds off the lead group for the first 5km of his leg. But the US sprint star was unable to maintain the pace and dropped a minute and a half over the remaining 5km. Leif Zimmermann took over for the first skate leg holding the US in 12th place. Garrott Kuzzy skied a strong final leg, posting the 9th fastest time for the anchors while overtaking the Canadian team.
 (Photo Credit : Johan Ericsson)</font></center></p><p>“The relay is not one of our strong events as a nation because you need to have four pretty good distance skiers to have a good relay team. We have a lot of sprinters who are good but we don't have a lot of international level distance skiers,” U.S. Sprint Head Coach Chris Grover said. “The crew that we had out there was a younger crew and they skied great.</p><p><center><img decoding=)
“It's a really low snow situation here and it is very warm today. So, they were kind of limited on the courses they could use,” Grover said. “The course wasn't marked super well and the Finns on the women's side took a wrong turn that led them off course. No one was disqualified because of the poor markings.”
 on the tails of Japan (Photo Credit : Johan Ericsson)</font></center></p><p>Despite the conditions, Grover went on to say that the Team loves skiing in Falun because of the strong cross country history and the hospitality shown to visitors. </p><p>“We always like coming to Falun,” Grover said. “The people that organize this do an unbelievably good job. They really are a welcoming committee and we're happy to be here.”</p><p>The US ended up 11th, with the Canadians in 12th.</p><p>Canada started out strong, led by Devon Kershaw. Kershaw stayed even with the lead group over the first 10km before passing off to Drew Goldsack. Like Newell, Goldsack held position over the first 5km of his leg, but was unable to maintain the pace.</p><p><center><img decoding=)
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