50 kilometres (Classical), Men

As always, the men’s marathon was the last event of the Olympic Program. Bjørn Dæhlie had already won two individual gold medals and was the defending champion. But he was always considered better in freestyle than classical, the style chosen for the 50 km in 1994. The other strongest skier of the past few years was Vladimir Smirnov, who had won the 1990-91 World Cup, and was in the process of winning again in 1993-94. But Smirnov always struggled in the 50 km, usually finishing poorly after good starts. He had won two silvers in Lillehammer but was not given much of a chance. The major contenders looked to be Russian Aleksey Prokurorov, the winner of the event at Holmenkollen in 1993, and Sweden’s Torgny Mogren, winner of the last two World Championships. But Sweden did not even nominate Mogren to start in the 50 km, leaving him for the 30 km, in which he placed 24th.

But something odd happened when the race was run. Smirnov started quickly and was second at the first checkpoint, but moved into the lead by the 7.8 km time check. He held that through 33.4 km, and then the strange occurrence came when, at the 47.1 km mark, he was still in the lead and skiing strongly. In fact, he had the best finish of any of the leaders, slowly down only in the last 3 kilometres when he had the race in hand, eventually winning by 1:21.6 over Finland’s Mika Myllylä. The next three finishers were Norwegian, but Dæhlie would not make the podium. Trailing only Smirnov through 33.4 km, he struggled in the last half of the race and placed fourth, behind his teammate, Sture Sivertsen.