Defending champion Kasper Fosser, Norway retained his title today in emphatic fashion. Despite a mistake one-third of the way through the course, he won by more than three minutes.
The race was dominated by a near master-class performance from Fosser, whose closest challengers in the end proved to be Elias Jonsson, Norway and the Sprint champion Aston Key, Australia, who took the silver and bronze medals respectively.
The women’s race has been the subject of a protest; more on that later.
The courses started out over relatively fast terrain, but then they met the steep slopes of Velling-Snabegård with its many big spurs and reentrants, which was the scene for the biggest part of the course. It was easy to get onto the wrong spur, a fate which met quite a few runners, agonising for their coaches and country-mates when displayed in GPS on the big screen in the arena. Strength and the ability to run up hills were important today as well as good navigation.