Ben Ogden won silver in the men’s cross-country skiing sprint Tuesday at the Milan Cortina Olympics, becoming just the second U.S. man ever to win an Olympic cross-country skiing medal and the first in 50 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bill Koch, a fellow Vermonter, won silver in the 50k classic at the Innsbruck 1976 Winter Games. Ogden actually grew up in the Bill Koch Youth Ski League and has skied with Koch.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s an unbelievable dream come true. Everybody who races dreams of being on an Olympic podium,” Ogden said. “It\u2019s the ultimate goal, and I feel like this last year I\u2019ve dared to set my expectations on an Olympic podium.\u00a0“<\/p>\n
With his fantastic classic technique, Ogden surged to silver with a time of three minutes and 40 seconds. Norwegian Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo won his seventh Olympic gold medal with a time of three minutes and 39 seconds, and his teammate Oskar Opstad Vike won bronze in his Olympic debut.<\/p>\n
From the start, Ogden was on fire and set the second fastest time in qualifications. In the quarterfinals, Klaebo utilized his energy-saving strategy. In another heat, Ogden surged from second to first by hitting the gas on the incline and leaving the other skiers behind.<\/p>\n
In the narrowed field of the semifinals, Klaebo trailed Ogden at the start of the race before sprinting forward. Ogden and Finland’s Lauri Vuorinen fought for second with a photo finish giving the win to Vuorinen. Ogden advanced to the finals as the fastest “lucky loser.”<\/p>\n
Three of the American men qualified for the sprint classic. In the semifinals, JC Schoonmaker waited until after the climb to use the draft for a late surge, but he did make the finals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ben Ogden won silver in the men’s cross-country skiing sprint Tuesday at the Milan Cortina Olympics, becoming just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[214911,185252,214909,212963,214914,214910,214913,214912,214916,3,6803,214915,99,6804,42270,21,214917],"class_list":{"0":"post-460455","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ben-ogden","9":"tag-cross-country-skiing","10":"tag-gold-medal-moments","11":"tag-jessie-diggins","12":"tag-johanna-hagstroem","13":"tag-johannes-hoesflot-klaebo","14":"tag-jonna-sundling","15":"tag-linn-svahn","16":"tag-mens-sprint-classic","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-norway","19":"tag-oskar-opstad-vike","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-sweden","22":"tag-team-usa","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-womens-sprint-classic"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}