Cross-country skiing at the 1998 Winter Olympics - 4 × 5 km relay (women)

Cross country skiing 1998 Winter Olympics
5 km			women
10 km		men
Pursuit		men	women
15 km			women
30 km		men	women
50 km		men
Relay race		men	women

The women's relay race at the 1998 Winter Olympics was held on February 16th . The venue for the competition was the Hakuba ski and biathlon complex . For the first two stages, the participants went through the classical style, the third and fourth stages of the skier ran in free style. The relay was attended by athletes from 16 countries.

Olympic champions, skiers from Russia again became, the Russians did not lose the relay at the Games since 1988. The Norwegian team got silver medals. The Norwegians together with the Russians finished the classic part of the relay ( Marit Mikkelsplass won 1.0 second against Olga Danilova at the finish of the second stage), however, at the third stage Elena Vyalbe managed to break away from Elin Nielsen for almost half a minute, and Larisa Lazutina confidently passed the finish of the race, not giving Anita Moen-Guidon the opportunity to catch up with herself. Lazutina finished with the flag.

The battle for bronze was interesting. The nominal favorites of the Italian failed the classic part: Karin Moroder and Gabriella Paruzzi were not ready for the race, their efforts after the two stages of the Italians took only 12th place. After the first stage, the Swedes went in third place, the efforts of world champion Antonina Ordina , after half of the Ukrainian race (in the first two stages they put the strongest athletes: Shevchenko and Taranenko-Terelu ). After the third stage, a group of candidates for bronze was formed - Germans, Czechs and Swiss. Manuela Di Centa , who fled for Italy in the third stage, was not able to significantly improve the situation, by the third stage the Italians were in 9th place, giving way to third place for 58 seconds. It seemed that now there will definitely not be a medal. But Stefania Belmondo turned on to the maximum, at stage 4 she performed a miracle: she won 5 km a minute from the bronze pretenders, won the finish spurt, in which 4 skiers participated, thus bronze from the Italian athletes.

Belmondo showed the absolutely best time for all stages (13: 00.1), for comparison, Lazutina at the same stage had a second time - 13: 26.7, and Vyalbe ran 5 km in the third stage for 13: 39.8. The Italian was considered by experts as the favorite for the final race of the Games - the skate-style marathon .