Cross Country Skiing at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games:

This was the final women’s event of the 2002 cross-country program. The event had not been held at the 2001 World Championships, when it was cancelled because of weather conditions. The best female cross-country skier of the past five years had been Norwegian Bente Skari-Martinsen, but she was better in the shorter distances. The early leader in this race was Russian Larisa Lazutina, the 1999 World Champion and 2001 Holmenkollen champion in the event. And she was the late leader too, winning by almost two minutes over Italy’s Gabriella Paruzzi. Lazutina led at every checkpoint and had the fastest intermediate split for each time check. But she would not win the gold medal.

In December 2003 it was revealed that Lazutina had tested positive for darpopoietin, an erythropoietin analogue, and was disqualified from all events in Salt Lake City. Her teammate, Olga Danilova, who had originally finished eighth had been discovered two months earlier and was also disqualified. This brought Paruzzi up to a very surprising gold medal, as she had never won an individual medal before at three Winter Olympics or the World Championships. The silver medalist became Italy Stefania Belmondo while Skari-Martinsen won the bronze. For Belmondo this was her 10th Olympic medal, equaling the Winter Olympic record for women held by Soviet/Unified Team skier Raisa Smetanina, both trailing only Norway’s Bjørn Dæhlie among men, who won 12.