Cross-country skiing at the 1980 Winter Olympics – Men's 15 kilometre


The men's 15 kilometre cross-country skiing competition at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, United States, was held on Sunday 17 February at the Mount Van Hoevenberg in Essex County, New York.

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of Poland was the 1978 World champion and Nikolay Bazhukov of the Soviet Union was the defending champion from the 1976 Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria.

The Race

Each skier started at half a minute intervals, skiing the entire 15 kilometre course. The race developed into the closest duel in the history of cross-country skiing. Thomas Wassberg of Sweden and Finnish veteran Juha Mieto fought a tight battle for the gold medal. Wassberg started last of the 63 participants, half a minute behind Norwegian Ove Aunli. Mieto, wearing bib 54, started half a minute behind the reigning world champion at the distance, Polish skier Józef Łuszczek.
Wassberg started fast, and at the 5 km mark he had caught Aunli by 30 seconds and was in the lead, three seconds ahead of Mieto. Łuszczek also had a strong opener, only ten seconds behind the leader, closely followed by the 19-year old West German Jochen Behle and the 30 km winner Nikolay Zimyatov. At 10 km Wassberg had increased his lead to 4.8 seconds. Mieto, still in second place, had almost caught Łuszczek, starting half a minute in front of him, but the Pole was still in third place, now 30 seconds behind Wassberg. Aunli had been able to adjust his speed by following Wassberg and advanced from 13th to fifth place. Only two seconds separated the four fastest skiers behind Wassberg and Mieto 5 km from home. Behle had dropped down to ninth at 10 km and was out of contention for the medals.
Juha Mieto passed Łuszczek and left him behind before crossing the finish line in 41:57.64, beating Zimyatov's time by 36 seconds. Thomas Wassberg, still skiing together with Aunli, was told 500 m from home that he had a one second lead over Mieto, and, fighting desperately, crossed the finish line in 41:57.63. He won the race by the closest possible margin, one hundredth of a second. Aunli secured the bronze medal for Norway, beating Zimyatov by 5 seconds.

Aftermath

Wassberg proposed to Mieto that they could cut their medals in two parts and then melt them together as a mixed gold-silver medal. Mieto politely thanked him, but said no to the idea, and ended the 1980 season by winning the unofficial Cross-Country World Cup for the second consecutive time. The International Ski Federation decided shortly after the 1980 Olympics that all times in cross-country races would henceforth be rounded to the nearest tenth of a second.

Results

Sources:
RankBibNameCountryTimeDeficit
63Thomas Wassberg41:57.63
54Juha Mieto41:57.64
62Ove Aunli42:28.62
41Nikolay Zimyatov42:33.96
14Yevgeny Belyayev42:46.02
53Józef Łuszczek42:59.03
2Alexander Zavyalov43:00.81
33Harri Kirvesniemi43:02.01
30Oddvar Brå43:05.64
105Lars Erik Eriksen43:11.51
1129Thomas Eriksson43:11.88
1240Jochen Behle43:16.05
1358Vasily Rochev43:16.86
1451Jean-Paul Pierrat43:32.53
1559Ivan Lebanov43:37.32
1649Bill Koch43:38.56
1744Benny Kohlberg43:39.22
1810Sven-Eric Danielsson43:41.21
1911Kari Härkönen43:50.31
2027Pertti Teurajärvi43:59.08
2131Wolfgang Müller44:02.54
2236Stan Dunklee44:03.84
2339Jiří Švub44:20.15
2450Jiří Beran44:27.78
2522Tim Caldwell44:30.41
267Peter Zipfel44:38.23
2755Franz Renggli44:38.66
2847Paul Fargeix44:39.94
2938Konrad Hallenbarter44:42.12
3048Tore Gullen44:42.73
3160Maurilio De Zolt44:43.19
3215Hansüli Kreuzer44:44.66
3312Jim Galanes44:46.48
343Giorgio Vanzetta44:52.18
354Alfred Schindler44:52.93
3652Dieter Notz44:54.11
3756Alf-Gerd Deckert45:00.40
3845Khristo Barzanov45:05.21
3937Giulio Capitanio45:10.40
401František Šimon45:12.09
4143Ivo Čarman45:14.32
4217Gerard Durand-Poudret45:47.26
4342Shiro Sato46:15.29
4420Miloš Bečvář46:18.13
458Dominique Locatelli47:06.72
4625Tone Ðuričič47:38.45
4721Haukur Sigurðsson47:44.00
4819Luvsandashiin Dorj48:05.78
4935Charles MacIvor48:37.57
5023Lin Guangho48:38.36
5113Þröstur Johannesson49:37.75
529Michael Goode49:47.20
5328Emiliano Morlans50:42.33
5432Ingólfur Jónsson50:51.50
556José Giro51:30.06
5634Marcos Luis Jerman52:02.42+10:04.79
5724Philip Jacklin52:14.17+10:16.54
5846Kim Nam-young53:05.55+11:07.92
5918Hwang Byung-dae53:05.60+11:07.97
6026Martín Tomás Jerman53:38.47+11:40.84
6161Matías José Jerman55:50.51+13:52.88
16Giampaolo Rupil
57Kim Dong-hwan