Beijing 2022’s first gold medal won by convicted doper Therese Johaug

Any hope of the controversies that have dogged the Beijing Winter Games fading into a feelgood blur of medals once the torch was lit was quickly swept aside on Saturday as the first gold of these Olympics went to a convicted doper.

Therese Johaug, the decorated Norwegian cross-country skier who was barred from competing at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics while serving an 18-month suspension for a positive drugs test she blamed on tainted lip balm, obliterated the field to win the 7.5km+7.5km skiathlon on a windblown afternoon in the tiny village of Taizicheng in the mountains roughly 120km northwest of Beijing.

Few if any of the 109 gold medals that will be handed out across 15 different sports over the next two and a half weeks will be won in more dominant fashion. The 33-year-old Johaug, who tucked herself into the leading pack from the mass start before opening a lead of nearly a minute on a chase group of four during the final lap, raised her arms in jubilation as she crossed the line in a time of 44min 13.7sec to win the 15km contest regarded as cross-country’s ultimate test.

Natalia Nepryaeva, the Russian perched atop the overall World Cup leaderboard, rallied to overtake a pair of skiers in the final kilometre to win the silver, coming in 30.2sec off the pace. Austria’s Teresa Stadlober settled for bronze after she was pipped by 0.3sec at the finish by Nepryaeva. Kerttu Niskanen of Finland finished fourth and Frida Karlsson of Sweden was fifth, eight seconds ahead of sixth-place Jessie Diggins, who became the first American to win a gold medal in cross-country in the team sprint at Pyeongchang.

The skiathlon race is designed to determine the best all-around skier. That mantle belongs to Johaug after her