Victor An is one of those great, priceless olympic stories. Wow.
When she/they had to pole while countries like France glide past it's obvious the skis were not good. Sometimes more is not more when it comes to a big team and all the technology in the world.
But there have been some indications the preparations were not that good otherwise as well, with lacking or wrong preparation for the high altitude. They tire too quickly as you say. It was bitter to see 'nobody' countries shuffle past us like nothing.
Don't think anyone could've necessarily beat Kalla anyway today. All credit to her monster race.
copy pasted from reddit:
Bjørgen won gold at the skiathlon, Weng got bronze, and Johaug got 4th. That, aside from the sprint (where Bjørgen got knocked out because of poor tactical decisions) have been the only days where Norway has nailed the ski preparations. Unless they have food poisoning or some other illness, I find it hard to believe that they will suddenly all be out of form like this. None of them have complained of feeling out of shape.
The XC skiers and the biathletes (who have acknowledged that they messed up their preparation (aside from Bjørndalen who has had his own training)) haven't had the same training schedule as far as I know, so it would be weird if both teams collectively failed in this manner. But while Svendsen felt out of shape at the start of the Games, he felt great for the 20km, but still fell way behind because of bad skis.
All that aside, Bjørgen would usually have started way ahead of the other teams for the final lap, simply catching up to Finland and Germany would not have been enough to win a gold medal if Norway had performed as they have been doing for the last 5 years. It is giving Sweden more credit than they are due in my opinion. Kalla deserves massive credit for sure though.