Cross-country skier Stina Nilsson was the first Swedish woman to win the Olympic gold medal in the sprint at the winter games in Pyeongchang. The 24-year-old won the final in classic style with a lead of more than three seconds over Sochi winner and world champion Maiken Caspersen Falla from Norway. The bronze medal went to Yulia Belorukova of the Olympic athletes from Russia.
The four German runners were eliminated early. Sandra Ringwald missed her entry into the semi-finals as a quarter-final third round by 67 hundredths of a second and finished in 13th place “She showed herself well in the prologue, in the quarter-finals she left the time behind with a fiddling on the mountain”, said the German sporting director Andreas Schlütter.
Katharina Hennig and Elisabeth Schicho also finished the quarter-finals. Hanna Kolb had already failed in the qualification. Four years ago in Sochi, Denise Herrmann, who had meanwhile switched to biathlon, reached the semi-finals as a medal candidate and finished eighth.
Nilsson, Olympic rider in the team sprint of Sochi, won her first big title after four World Cup silver medals and brought Sweden’s cross-country skiers to a 2-0 lead in the Olympic duel with arch-rivals Norway.
Nilsson’s compatriot Charlotte Kalla, who won gold in the ski athlon on Saturday, and Norway’s second-placed cross-country ski trail monument Marit Björgen, 2015 world champion in the last major sprint event in classic style to date, will be competing for the second time on Thursday in the freestyle race over 10 km.