On a race weekend twice interrupted by weather, Ole Einar Bjørndalen claimed his first Olympic gold in the 10 km sprint. At 24, the Norwegian shot clean and finished in 27:16.2, winning by more than a minute on the re-run day at Nozawa Onsen.
The day the race stopped
Snow and fog rolled in after the start on 18 February 1998, making the shooting targets nearly invisible. Officials halted the event after 40 minutes and pushed it to the following morning. Bjørndalen, who had been leading, had to begin again from scratch.
Clean shooting, clear margin
On the restart he hit every prone and standing target, avoiding penalty loops while rivals paid for their misses. Fellow Norwegian Frode Andresen took silver 1:01.6 behind with two penalties, and Finland's Ville Räikkönen bronze at 1:05.5 back with one. The gap between first and second matched the distance from second place to 18th.
"I was really angry," Bjørndalen told reporters later. "But five minutes later I was ready for the new race." The swift change of mood turned a frustrating stoppage into the first gold of an unmatched Olympic run.
Four years earlier in Lillehammer his best individual finish had been 28th in the same event. The Nagano sprint gold, along with a relay silver he won there, set a new path. By 2002 he would sweep all four biathlon golds at a single Games, and he eventually collected 13 Winter Olympic medals — more than any athlete before or since.
The longest career in biathlon history began with a race that was ordered to stop, and then restarted clean.
