Klaebo on course for 10th Olympic gold as Sundling goes for first at Milano Cortina

Norway’s greatest skier Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo will attempt to win his 10th Olympic gold while Sweden’s sprint specialist Jonna Sundling will try for her first gold at Milano Cortina 2026 in the Men’s and Women’s Team Sprints on Wednesday.

Klaebo will pair with Einar Hedegart and look to be an unstoppable force together in the Men’s Team Sprint, with Italy’s Federico Pellegrino feeling it is “hard to imagine trying to emulate or even beat” Klaebo.

“He is the greatest of all time. We knew that, and now it is also in the numbers,” said Pellegrino’s sprint partner Elia Barp.

Pellegrino and Barp already have a bronze medal from the Men’s 4 x 7.5km Relay and will be hoping for another chance at the podium where they will face the Norwegians.

“He is so strong, and what he is doing is incredible,” Pellegrino said of Klaebo. “He never messes up and always is at his best possible physical and mental condition. It’s an example that’s hard even to imagine trying to emulate or even beat.”

The 35-year-old Italian, who is competing in his last Olympics, has experienced what few others have however, having beaten a young Klaebo earlier in their careers.

So far, the only two athletes to have come second to Klaebo in the individual events at Milano Cortina are France’s Mathis Desloges and USA’s Ben Ogden, whom he will face again in the Team Sprint.

Desloges, who has won three Olympic silvers in the Skiathlon, Interval Start Free and the Men’s Relay in Italy, will pair with Jules Chappaz.

Ogden and Gus Schumacher kept up with the leaders in the first half of Sunday’s men’s relay which will give them confidence heading into the Team Sprint, along with their historic first men’s World Cup podium for USA in the event in Goms in January, where they won bronze.

While Klaebo is going for his fifth gold of Milano Cortina, Sundling is still in search of her first gold in Italy, having come second to team-mate Linn Svahn in the Women’s Sprint final and unexpectantly finishing with silver in the Women’s 4 x 7.5km Relay after a disastrous second fall for Ebba Andersson scuppered the team’s chance for the title.

Having gone from the lead to eighth position before Frida Karlsson got them to fourth in the third leg, Sundling took them to silver but still showed her disappointment along with her team-mates as they believed that the gold was theirs for the taking.

“You stand there at the starting line, thinking, ’Now is the time, we are going to get that gold’,” said Sundling after the relay. “But despite everything that has happened, we got a silver. As a team, that’s still pretty strong.

“We didn’t go all the way but you need to remember what happened in the race. Not all teams would be able to handle that at all. So it’s still pretty cool how we solved it.”

Sundling will pair with Maja Dahlqvist in the Women’s Team Sprint with whom she won silver at Beijing 2022, behind Germany, who will have a different line-up in Laura Gimmler and Coletta Rydzek at Milano Cortina. Both made the final of the Women’s Sprint with Gimmler just shy of achieving her first Olympic medal in Saturday’s Women’s 4 x 7.5km Relay in fourth.

USA’s Jessie Diggins made history in this event at Beijing 2022 when she and Kikkan Randall won the first ever gold for USA in Cross-Country skiing and the first medal of any colour for USA’s women. She will be keen for another Olympic gold before she retires and will this time pair with Julia Kern, who had a sixth place finish in the Women’s Sprint final on Tuesday.

Norway also have a strong team in Olympic relay champion Astrid Oeyre Slind, and Julie Bjervig Drivenes, who came fourth in the individual sprint.

For the full Cross-Country schedule for the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games click here.