Cross Country Skiing at the 1998 Nagano Winter Games:

As the races got longer, the oft-favored Bjørn Dæhlie became slightly more vulnerable. He had been runner-up at the last two World Championships, won by Vladimir Smirnov in 1995 and Aleksey Prokurorov in 1997. He was also runner-up in the 1996-97 distance World Cup to Finland’s Mika Myllylä, who wsa 1997 World Champion over 50 km, and was trailing in the 1997-98 distance World Cup, behind his teammate, Thomas Alsgaard, who was also the defending champion. The race was held in a heavy, damp snowfall that made conditions difficult. The leader at every checkpoint, with the fastest intermediate splits at all but the closing split, was Myllylä, who won convincingly by 1:31.3 over Norway’s Erling Jevne. Dæhlie was sixth at the 1.8 km split, but got progressively slower as the race went on, eventually finishing a shocking 20th.

At the 1999 World Championships, with Dæhlie retired, Myllylä won the 10 km, 30 km, and 50 km gold medals. He would eventually win 10 World Championship medals and six Olympic medals. In 2001 he seemingly led Finland to the relay World Championship in Lahti, Finland, before his fans. But the team was later disqualified when six skiers where found to have used hydroxyethyl starch (HES), a blood plasma expander that can be used as a masking agent for erythropoietin or its derivatives. The team was disqualified and all the skiers, including Myllylä, were suspended for two years. He tried to come back briefly, but with little success and retired in 2005. Jevne was a distance specialist, who won several gold medals with the powerhouse Norwegian relay teams. Individually his best performances came when he won the 50 km at the 1996 Holmenkollen Ski Festival, and won silver at the 1997 World Championships over 50 km. In his entire Winter Olympic career, Bjørn Dæhlie raced 12 individual events, won six of them, was second three times, fourth twice, and 20th in this race. The Norwegians coaches attributed his finish in this race to waxing problems.