Finn Niskanen takes gold in 50km mass start

Finland's Iivo Niskanen made a lung-busting early break and held off a furious challenge from Alexander Bolshunov to win the 50km mass start classic cross-country ski race and get Finland's first gold medal of the Pyeongchang Games on Saturday.

Bolshunov, representing the Olympic Athletes from Russia, took silver 18.7 seconds behind Niskanen, with fellow OAR racer Andrey Larkov beating Norway's Martin Johnsrud Sundby to take bronze.

The Olympic programme usually saves this most gruelling of races for last and because of the huge demands it places on the endurance of athletes it has previously been dogged by allegations of blood doping.

Two of the three Russian athletes who swept the podium in Sochi, winner Alexander Legkov and runner-up Maxim Vylegzhanin, had their medals stripped from them before being reinstated by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in 2017.

In a strong field, Niskanen made his breakaway attempt at around the 20km mark, gradually easing away from a group of a dozen skiers though Kazakhstan's Alexey Poltoranin remained hot on his heels.

At the halfway point the pair led with a gap of 11 seconds to the rest of the pack and the Norwegian trio of Sundby,...