Milan Cortina, Italy bronze medal in the men’s cross-country skiing relay

Twenty years after the historic gold medal at the 2006 Turin Games, Italy returns to the podium in the men’s cross-country skiing relay. The Italians Davide Graz, Elia Barp, Martino Carollo and Federico Pellegrino won bronze in the 4×7.5 km, winning the duel with Finland. Excellent launch of the race by Graz, who also runs a few meters in the lead, changing with Barp in the podium area: the latter has a moment of crisis on the climb, but knows how to recover and leave the baton in 3rd position. However, there is a crisis at the halfway point for Martino Carollo, with Italy slipping into fourth place, twenty-one seconds from the top-3 and the medals seeming to fade away, before the magic of the standard-bearer Federico Pellegrino: catching up and overtaking Finland, it’s bronze. The gold goes to the dominant Norway, which triumphs with a time of 1:04:24.5 and gives the historic ninth gold to Klaebo, silver to France (+22.2). Italy third, with a gap of 47.9 seconds: the Italian medals in the 2026 Milan-Cortina Games rise to 19.