Klaebo Races Toward Olympic Immortality

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Two days ago, at the finish line of the Men’s Classic Sprint, Norway’s Oskar Opstad Vike celebrated like a lottery player who had just scratched the winning ticket. Fist-pumping, chest-thumping, wild gesticulating toward fan-filled grandstands and visceral howling at the proverbial moon. He hadn’t won gold—Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo did that. Vike hadn’t won silver—Ben Ogden secured that little piece of Olympic skiing history. What Vike celebrated was his own third place finish—his bronze medal. Norwegian skiers can dream of no higher honor than to win an Olympic medal in cross-country skiing, and Vike had just done that. His goal had been met, his future had been made, his celebration was sincere. There are plenty of male Norwegian skiers who are capable of winning an Olympic medal; what Vike understood was this: most of them never get to. It was a visual reminder of just how important this ski-thing is to the Kingdom of Norway.

Imagine, then, what it must be like to be Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, arguably the greatest skier of all time. He’s done so much in his career that only the near-impossible will suffice. Last year, at the World Championships in his hometown of Trondheim, Klaebo swept the entire card of races: Skiathlon, Sprint, Team Sprint, Team Relay, 10 k and 50 k. No one had ever done that before. No one had even come close. Klaebo did it, and made it look easy. Now, in the Olympic Winter Games of Milano-Cortina, Klaebo finds himself faced with perhaps the most daunting and elusive of athletic accomplishments—do it again.

And today, “doing it again” meant doing something that Klaebo had actually never done before—win a 10 k Freestyle Interval Start.
“This is the first time I’ve won a 10 k Skating Interval Start,” said Klaebo. “So being able to do that here at the Olympics, it’s just amazing. And with the weather and the atmosphere, to have my best day here at the Olympics, it’s special.”

The 10 k Freestyle Interval Start was the race in which Klaebo’s pursuit of ski-immortality was most clearly vulnerable. If he got careless, if he made mistakes, if he showed up a little flat, or if one of his Norwegian teammates showed up supernaturally hot, the 10 k could’ve marked the end of Klaebo’s quest for Olympic perfection. After all, the 10 k interval start is a race that Klaebo can’t control by simply sitting in and sprinting. This is a distance that each skier must race alone, competing against their own limitations, summoning their own competitive courage, and baring their own athletic souls. Each of them knows that in order to win they must commit fully . . . but any skier who over-commits—even by just a little bit—would find themselves hitting the wall. There is nothing to gain by taking it easy, and there is much too lose by going too hard. We can assume that must be kind of terrifying for a skier like Klaebo. On his march toward Olympic immortality, Klaebo would know that this race puts him at his most vulnerable. And the only way to combat that would be to commit every ounce of energy he has. No coasting across the finish line today, no waving to the crowd down the finishing straightaway. The media suggests that Klaebo is the greatest cross-country skier ever. If he wanted to prove it, then an all-out effort in the 10 k would be required.

And that is exactly what Klaebo did, skiing the opening kilometers smoothly and conservatively, then creating a steady acceleration over the closing kilometers that no other skier could match. Klaebo would continue his pursuit of six gold medals, winning the 10 k Freestyle by a narrow, but sufficient, margin over Mathis Desloges (FRA) and Einar Hedegart (NOR).

Canadian skiers delivered fine performances as well, with Thomas Stephen in ninth, Remi Drolet 19th, and Max Hollman 23rd. British skiers also distinguished themselves at the 10 k distance, with Andrew Musgrave finishing a tremendous sixth, followed by Joe Davies in 12th. A shirtless John Steel Hagenbuch delivered the top American finish in 14th, even after a suffering a mid-race course deviation that may have cost him precious seconds and precious finish-placings.

“I made a mistake,” said Hagenbuch. “And I think I was more just proud I made the mistake and I just let it go.”

“I have so many friends and family out here cheering, and I could hear them. And it’s just a beautiful day. It’s hard to be upset. Such a nice day like this when you get to ski and be with your teammates and represent the United States on the highest stage. I’m really proud to be here.” said Hagenbuch. “But I went into today with my goal being try as hard as you can. And I would have been a little bit faster had I not made that mistake. But I did try as hard as I could. So in many ways, I achieved my goal.”

A year ago—after Klaebo’s miraculous clean-sweep of World Championship events in Trondheim, fans began wondering if he might retire. After all, after such delivering such a performance the only sufficient encore is to do so again. But there’s no way that could happen, right? No way the stars would so align, or the fitness be so sharp, and the equipment be so dialed, and the conditions be so conducive. No way . . . but less than a year later here we are, halfway to seeing the impossible happen yet again. Three events, three gold medals, three events remain. As fans of cross-country skiing, we’ve come to expect it . . . it’s Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, after all.

10 k Freestyle

Experience matters—just ask Einar Hedegart. Announcers love to remind us that Hedegart “wasn’t even a cross-country skier” until his arrival on the World Cup tour two months ago, but that’s a statistic that ignores the facts. Hedegart has spent his career as a biathlete, the Nordic discipline that combines Freestyle Nordic skiing and marksmanship. That means that Hedegart has spent years refining his technique as a skier—he’s hardly a skiing neophyte, and Freestyle (the technique designated in biathlon races) is his specialty. That said, racing tactics in biathlon prioritize the discipline to avoid exhaustion during races in order to steady a competitor’s aim on the shooting range. It’s a sport that rewards steady pacing, conservative racing, measured efforts. Ironically, Hedegart never managed to excel at the top level in biathlon. Fortunately, someone suggested he hang up his rifle and just plain race. Some months ago, Hedegart seems to have found that his bodily engine could produce tremendous speed across the snow. He proved it with two World Cup victories (albeit over fields that did not include Klaebo), but he still did not have much experience in racing at this level, or under these pressures. Klaebo possesses blazing finishing speed; it was likely that he’d pace his race in a way that would take advantage of that. The only tactic left to the less-experienced Hedegart was to go out hard, and hope to hang on. That’s the way the stage was set, and that’s the way the race played out.

Klaebo would wear bib number 44, making him the first of the realistic contenders to start. Klaebo knew he would be pursued by his own countrymen—Harald Oestberg Amundsen, Martin Loewstroem Nyenget, and Hedegart—each of them determined to interrupt Klaebo’s date with destiny.

Race day in Val di Fiemme dawned sunny and warm, with temperatures rising to the mid 40s by race time. The snow would play a part in the challenges on the day, with slushy conditions along course edges and the possibility of earlier racers experiencing superior conditions. Klaebo began conservatively, posting only the 12th fastest split time at 1.8 kilometers. But by the next time check at 3.7 kilometers he had jumped to the top of recorded splits. The pre-race favorite was warming to his task.

10 k is a funny distance. By Nordic skiing standards, it’s so short—just over 20 minutes—but so very much can go wrong in that relatively brief timespan. Many of the expected mistakes were evident in the first few meters skied by the earliest starters, skiers from Roumania and Japan and Latvia and Ukraine who took off like sprinters. Way too fast, way too soon . . . the uphills would be soon to appear, and legs and arms that had already begun to accumulate lactate would be in serious trouble. Ten kilometers is a short distance to race, but do it wrong and it can begin to feel endlessly long.

DesLoge, Hedegart, Amundsen, Nyenget all started quickly, coming through the early checkpoints at the top of the list where they were joined by the impassioned French revelation, Desloges. Klaebo trailed by seven seconds at this first checkpoint, but his time of moderate effort would soon end. Klaebo began tightening the screws; by the halfway point of the race, his early splits still led over DesLoge, Amundsen and Nyenget. Not so for the fast-starting Hedegart who came through the halfway mark with an advantage of five seconds over Klaebo. Five seconds with five kilometers to go—it seemed like a lot, but also somehow seemed manageable. Klaebo would find himself needing to produce a scorching finish to close the gap, but Klaebo is entirely capable of producing the scorching finish. He stormed up the final hill—the one that has recently made him meme-famous for his 11+ mph run during his Sprint victory—and dashed across the finish line with an urgency we rarely see in his races. Klaebo collapsed to the snow at the finish line . . . the kind of drama we’re accustomed to seeing from Jessie Diggins, but a demonstration that Klaebo, himself, rarely allows. It’s amazing to see this great skier arriving at the finish line totally spent. He knew he’d need to commit that level of effort if he wanted to beat the hard-charging Hedegart.

Klaebo sat in the leader’s chair, but it was a seat in which he found himself incapable of getting comfortable.

“When you start early, you just fight with yourself out there,” saud Klaebo. “And when you cross the finish line, it’s all about waiting. Luckily, I was able to see that people were losing a little bit at the end there.To be able to see that I’m first is just crazy.”

With 2.5 kilometers remaining, Hedegart continued to lead Klaebo by 5.5 seconds. Well, experience matters—Hedegart knows that now. Next time, Hedegart may not go out quite so hard. But that’s a lesson he needed to learn, and today’s classroom was the race course in Val di Fiemme. Hedegart’s’ all-or-nothing tactic fell short, but it would also be rewarded—with Olympic bronze. And, in between Klaebo and Hedegart, came the indefatigable Desloges, securing his second silver medal of these Olympic Games. Americans and Canadians have been coming on in the rankings, and the world has anticipated the return of Russian athletes, but it is the arrival of the Frenchmen—and Desloges in particular with his medals in the Skiathon and the 10 k—that has begun to show that the podium need not be the exclusive domain of skiers from Norway.

Youth can be a time of glorious impetuousness, like Icarus flying too near the sun. Hedegart may have learned that lesson, though we hope he will also be as thrilled with his bronze as was his teammate, Vike, just the other day. Announcers make much of Hedegart winning his “first Olympic medal “. . . but it’s so presumptuous to assume that any athlete who wins such a medal could ever win another. To repeat such a feat is even more rare than accomplishing it the first time. Hedegart may find himself on this podium many times more, but today we hope he pumps his fist and thumps his chest and celebrates with the crowd that is thrilled by his accomplishment.

And now Klaebo has claimed his eighth (!) Olympic gold medal, drawing him into a tie atop the all-time Winter Olympic medal standings with three other Norwegian legends: Marit Bjoergen, Bjorn Daehlie, and Ole Einar Bjoerndalen. And Klaebo still has three events remaining in these Olympic Games. But there is still much that can go wrong in Klaebo’s quest for even more gold—teammates could stumble in relays, equipment malfunctions could slow him down, conditions could conspire against him—but if there ever were an athlete who can overcome all those obstacles, then we are watching him today in the Olympic Winter Games of Milano-Cortina.

Men’s Olympic 10 k Freestyle Interval Start RESULTS

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