Heading into the 2026 Olympic Winter Games in Milan/Cortina d’Ampezzo, there was significant hype surrounding Norway’s Johannes Hosflot Klaebo. The 29-year-old from Oslo is considered not just one of the top athletes in men’s cross country skiing, but the entire 2026 Olympic Winter Games themselves. Over the next two weeks, you could see Klaebo win six gold medals at the Fabio Canal Cross Country Skiing and Biathlon Centre in Tesero. Klaebo has won two gold medals already after winning the men’s sprint and skiathlon.
On Tuesday, the more interesting story was who finished in second place in the men’s sprint. Ben Ogden of Lebanon, New Hampshire emerged as the top story by winning a silver medal with a time of 3:40.61. The only other time an American man won an Olympic medal in cross country skiing was Bill Koch of Brattleboro, Vermont. Koch was second to Sergey Savelyev of the Soviet Union in the men’s 30 kilometre cross country ski race at the 1976 Olympic Winter Games in Innsbruck.
Jessie Diggins’s recent success
Throughout the history of the Olympic Winter Games, only two other Americans have reached the podium in cross country skiing. At the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang, Jessie Diggins of Saint Paul, Minnesota teamed up with Kikkan Randall of Salt Lake City, Utah to win gold in the women’s team sprint. Diggins also won silver in the women’s 30 kilometres and bronze in the women’s individual sprint at the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing.
Ogden’s mega surprise
The Olympic medals for Diggins and Randall was not that surprising based on Diggins’s great success at the World Cup level and World Nordic Skiing Championships. Ogden was a significant darkhorse. The odds of him winning an Olympic gold medal was +6500 according to The Sports Bet Network. Ogden had only won one individual sprint medal at the World Cup level. That came in the Stage World Cup in Toblach, Italy on December 30, 2023. Now that Ogden has one Olympic medal in Milan, it will be interesting to see how many more Olympic medals the pride of the New England region can win.
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