Cross Country Skiing at the 2022 Winter Olympics

The 2022 Beijing Olympic Winter Games hosted twelve cross-country skiing events, six each for both men and women. The venue was the Guyangshu Nordic Ski and Biathlon Center near Zhangjiakou, located 180 km north-west of Beijing. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the pre-Olympic competitions, planned as the completion of the 2020/21 World Cup, had to be canceled, meaning most athletes were confronted with a completely unknown course.

The program for the cross-country events had not changed since 2006, when team-sprint and skiathlon were introduced for both men and women. According to the usual routine, events that were run in classical style in 2018 were now held in freestyle, and vice versa.

Most of the events took place in the afternoon daylight under varying weather conditions. Some events suffered from icy winds and extreme cold temperatures of more than -15° C. On the last two days of the Games, the two longest races were rescheduled by a few hours to avoid the worst conditions. For the first time in the history of the Winter Games, the men’s 50 km was also shortened, to just under 30 km.

The most successful male athlete was Aleksandr Bolshunov (ROC) with five medals (3G – 1S – 1B), who dominated the distance events, followed by Johannes Høsflot Klæbo from Norway with four (2G – 1S – 1B). Klæbo, a triple gold medalist in PyeongChang, repeated his victories in sprint and team sprint. Iivo Niskanen, classical specialist from Finland, was the only male athlete, other than Bolshunov and Klæbo, to secure an individual gold.

After her doping ban in 2018, Therese Johaug returned to win three golds in all three distance events, adding them to her relay gold in 2010, and silver and bronze in 2014. Jonna Sundling took the remaining individual gold in the sprint. In the team sprint, however, Germany celebrated an upset victory, beating Sweden with the individual sprint gold and silver medalists in their team. The relay gold medals both went to ROC, who had the strongest runners. At her third Olympics, American Jessie Diggins took medals in the shortest and longest events (bronze in sprint, silver in the 30 km) showing her versatility.

Overall, the most gold medals went to Norway (five) with ROC taking four. The ROC, however, won the most medals in total with 11, compared to Norway’s eight. Norway had been more superior four years earlier because of the ban of many Russian athletes. The traditional cross-country nations, Sweden and Finland, took six and five medals respectively in 2022 and the remaining three gold medals were shared by Finland, Sweden, and Germany.

France extended their medal-winning streak in the men’s relay to three back-to-back bronze medals. Germany took their first gold since 2010. Iivo, and his sister Kerttu Niskanen, increased their collective medal tally to 3G – 4S – 2B from three Olympic appearances. Other countries on the podium were Italy with Federico Pellegrino, who placed second in the sprint behind Klæbo, replicating the 2018 result, and Austria with Teresa Stadlober (bronze in skiathlon). Stadlober finally won the medal that she missed in the 30km at PyeongChang after taking a wrong turn.