Crosscountry-Norway win women's relay, Sweden fight back to take silver

TESERO, Italy, Feb 14 : Norway won the women's 4x7.5km cross-country skiing relay at the Olympics on Saturday, while favourites Sweden recovered to take silver after suffering a series of early crashes. 

Finland claimed bronze for their second medal of the Games.

Norway won by nearly 51 seconds, with Astrid Oeyre Slind taking advantage of a fall by Sweden's Ebba Andersson on an uphill climb early in the race to create a wide gap. 

The Swedes started as clear favourites, having swept all the gold medals in the women's cross-country events so far.

They had a commanding lead at the start of the race, led by Linn Svahn, but Andersson fell multiple times in the second leg of the competition, at one point doing a front flip and losing a ski to cost them over a minute and 20 seconds.

Frida Karlsson, Sweden's strongest skier and twice gold-medal winner at these Games, made up significant time on the third lap, moving them into fourth position from eighth.

Anchor Jonna Sundling battled it out with Finland for much of the final race segment until pulling away near the end. 

The competition was marked by multiple crashes from the start, as skiers dealt with rain and slush, making the classic portion of the race particularly challenging.