10 kilometres, Women

The queen of cross country skiing at the 1964 games, Klavdiya Boyarskikh, collected two more gold medals at the 1966 World Championships in Oslo, and had also a strong season in 1966/67, winning the Holmenkollen 5 km race. To everybody’s surprise, she decided to end her sporting career just before the new Olympic season. There was newspaper speculation that this had something to do with the IOC decision in 1967 to introduce sex-testing at the forthcoming Olympic Games.

Toini Gustafsson, a Finnish-born athlete who was sent to Sweden as a 6-year old girl due to the intense fighting in the Continuation War around her birthplace of Suomussalmi in western Karelia, completely dominated the 10 km race. At the halfway point she had a clear lead, almost 15 seconds ahead of Marjatta Kajosmaa from Finland. In the second part of the race, Gustafsson was in a class of her own and won by a large margin, 1.08 ahead of the silver medallist, Berit Mørdre from Norway. Another Norwegian skier, Inger Aufles, secured the bronze medal 5 seconds behind Mørdre, securing the first ever Olympic medals for Norway in cross country skiing for ladies. The Soviet ladies ended up with no medals in a cross country event for ladies for the first time since they made their first Winter Olympic appearance in 1956. Their best skier, 25-year old Galina Kulakova, ended in a disappointing 6th place, 1:40 behind the winner.