On 25 February 2018, Johannes Høsflot Klæbo skied the anchor leg for Norway in the men's 4×10 km relay at PyeongChang. He crossed the line first. The win gave him his third gold medal of the Games.
An anchor leg to seal a three-gold debut
Norway handed Klæbo the final 10 km, the last of four legs. He carried the team home at the Alpensia Cross-Country Centre in South Korea. It was the closing act of a relay that Norway led to the podium's top step.
The anchor role fell to the youngest man in the squad. He took the exchange and did not let the lead slip. The result completed a set that few skiers reach on debut.
Twenty-one years old, and already an Olympic champion three times over
Twelve days earlier, he had won the classic sprint to become the youngest male Olympic champion in cross-country history. The relay gold followed, and it was his third of the Games at just 21. Weeks later he added the overall World Cup, the youngest Crystal Globe winner the sport had seen.
PyeongChang set the shape of what came next. He retained his sprint title and won team sprint gold at Beijing 2022. In 2025 he swept all six events at the World Championships in his home town of Trondheim.
The pattern held into 2026. At Milano Cortina he won relay gold for his ninth career Olympic title, passing the all-time Winter Games record of eight. He then swept all six events to reach eleven golds across a single Games.
The relay in 2018 was where much of that began. For a skier still new to the Olympic stage, the anchor leg marked a quiet, sure start.
