Olympedia – 4 × 7.5 kilometres Relay, Men

Norway won its third Olympic biathlon men’s relay gold medal in Beijing, after winning it in 2002 and 2010. The relay was re-scheduled to an earlier start by two and a half hours to avoid the freezing cold weather. Even so, it was -15 degrees at the start. Under difficult weather conditions, of the top 10 teams, only France got away without a penalty loop.

The ROC took an early lead through Said Karimulla Khalili, with Belarus less than a second behind, and France third. The favourites Norway were 40.3 seconds behind in seventh place due to Sturla Holm Lægreid’s penalty loop. Aleksandr Loginov and Maksim Tsvetkov helped increase the ROC lead to 41.3 seconds after the second and third legs. France held on to second place with a narrow lead over Norway, thanks to Johannes Thingnes Bø bringing them back into the reckoning. Norway trailed by 1:47.6 after the second leg until Bø ran the best third leg, making up more than one minute on the leaders. Benedikt Doll moved Germany into fourth place going into the last exchange thanks to his time being the second-best of the third leg.

With Eduard Latypov running a lonely race for ROC, Vetle Sjåstad Christiansen, Quentin Fillon-Maillet, and Philipp Nawrath were fighting for second place. Drama came in the final standing shooting. Latypov had to go two penalty loops, lost his comfortable lead to Norway, and slipped down to third place. France also took advantage of Latypov’s mistakes and secured silver. Germany also had a penalty loop and could not close the gap and missed out on a medal behind ROC.