Cross-country skiing at the 2010 Winter Olympics - sprint (women)

Cross country skiing 2010 Winter Olympics
10 km				women
15 km		men
Pursuit		men		women
Mass start		men		women
Relay race		men		women
Sprint		men		women
Team sprint		men		women
Qualification

Petra Maidich with a bronze award

The women's classic sprint skiing event at the 2010 Winter Olympics was held on February 17th . Sprint competitions were held at the Olympic Games for the third time and for the first time in the classic style. The competition was attended by 54 skiers from 27 countries. The maximum number of participants - 4 from the country - was exhibited by Canada, Finland, Kazakhstan, Norway, Russia and Sweden.

All races took place in the Whistler Olympic Park . Qualification passed from 10:15 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. local time ( UTC-8 ), and from 12:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. the quarter-finals, semi-finals and the final.

2006 Olympic champion Canadian Chandra Crawford took part. She was able to get into the quarter finals, but in her race took the last, sixth place. Silver and bronze medalists of the 2006 Olympics, German Claudia Künzel and Russian Alyona Sidko did not participate.

One of the leaders of the sprint World Cup, Petra Maidic, at a warm-up just before the start, fell off the track into a ravine and was injured. She was allowed to start last (under the third starting number), and she, despite the obvious signs of severe pain right on the track, was able to qualify and subsequently win a bronze medal. After the finish, she could not go, and she was carried away by Red Cross officers.

Future winners of the competition - Marit Björgen and leader of the World Cup standings Justina Kowalczyk - went to the finals. Kovalchik was the leader in the finals for a long time, then Bjergen caught up with her, and Petra Majdic and Anna Ulsson kept them at a certain distance from them. At the finish line, Björgen, who had previously won the quarter-finals and semifinals, broke away from Kowalczyk and became the Olympic champion, and Majdic beat Ulsson and approached Kowalczyk.

Björgen, the owner of three Olympic medals, became the Olympic champion for the first time (subsequently she will win 8 gold medals and become the most titled skier in the history of the Olympic Games), and Kowalczyk added silver in Vancouver to the bronze medal at a distance of 30 km in Turin. For Maidich, the bronze medal was the first at the Olympics. This is also the first Slovenian medal in cross-country skiing and the fifth at the Winter Olympics (all five medals are bronze).