LILLEHAMMER / ’94 WINTER OLYMPICS : NOTEBOOK

Speaking of most-decorated athletes, cross-country skier Manuela Di Centa of Italy claimed that title for these Games when she won her fifth medal, the gold in the women’s 30-kilometer classical race.

Di Centa, 31, who had won the first gold medal of the Games on Feb. 13, led all the way, beating Marit Wold of Norway by 16.2 seconds. She finished with two golds, two silvers and a bronze, having won a medal in every race she skied in.

Lyubov Egorova of Russia, who was trying to win an unprecedented seventh Olympic gold medal, finished fifth in the women’s longest race, breaking her Olympic streak. She had earned medals in nine consecutive races.

Di Centa skied the race in 1 hour 25 minutes 41.6 seconds.

Marja-Liisa Kirvesniemi of Finland, competing in her sixth Olympics, took the bronze in 1:26.13.6.

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Japan put its big ski-jumping lead to good use and beat Norway easily in the cross-country portion of the team Nordic combined, earning the country’s first gold medal here.

“This gold is the beginning of our challenge for the Nagano Olympics,” team coordinator Yushiro Yagi said. Nagano, Japan, will be the host city for the Winter Games in 1998.

Japan’s three-man team started the 30-kilometer relay 5 minutes 7 seconds ahead of Norway, thanks to Wednesday’s jumping points, and won by 4:49.1.

Switzerland was third and the U.S. team--John Jarrett, Todd Lodwick and Ryan Heckman--had its best finish in Olympic history, seventh.