TESERO, Italy (AP) — Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo used a trademark burst of speed late in the race to pull away for a sixth Olympic gold by winning the men's skiathlon Sunday at the Milan Cortina Games.
His latest win puts the 29-year-old Norwegian just two gold medals away from equaling the Winter Olympic record, and he still has five more chances to add to his haul in Italy.
Click to Gallery
Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, of Norway, and Harald Oestberg Amundsen, also of Norway, right, compete in the cross country skiing men's 10km + 10km skiathlon at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, of Norway, and Harald Oestberg Amundsen, also of Norway, left, compete in during the cross country skiing men's 10km + 10km skiathlon at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, of Norway, poses after winning the gold medal in the cross country skiing men's 10km + 10km skiathlon at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, of Norway, poses after winning the gold medal in the cross country skiing men's 10km + 10km skiathlon at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, of Norway, approaches the finish line to win the gold medal in the cross country skiing men's 10km + 10km skiathlon at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)
Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, of Norway, and Harald Oestberg Amundsen, also of Norway, right, compete in the cross country skiing men's 10km + 10km skiathlon at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, of Norway, and Harald Oestberg Amundsen, also of Norway, left, compete in during the cross country skiing men's 10km + 10km skiathlon at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, of Norway, competes in the cross country skiing men's 10km + 10km skiathlon at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Klaebo was in the lead pack throughout and then shifted into another gear just before coming into the stadium for the final time, quickly leaving his four remaining rivals in his wake. He could cruise to the line after that to finish in a time of 46 minutes, 11 seconds, ahead of Mathis Desloges of France and Norwegian teammate Martin Loewstroem Nyenget, who were 2.0 seconds and 2.1 seconds behind.
Desloges escaped disqualification earlier in the race after skiing through the cones to cut a corner. Judges cleared him after reviewing the incident.
After leaving the rest of the pack behind, Klaebo eased up in the final meters and waved to the crowd and traveling Norway supporters before crossing the finish line at the Tesero cross-country stadium in northern Italy.
He carries the massive expectations of his cross-country mad home nation at these games after a clean sweep of all six events at last year's world championships.
“(There were) a lot of nerves before this race. And I really felt like I wanted to do well here," Klaebo said. "And my body feels good. We had good skis. And it was an amazing day.”
Klaebo won three golds at the 2018 Olympics and added two more four years ago in Beijing, but all five came in either sprint of relay events.
“It’s my first (gold) on distance race so it for sure means a lot,” he said. “I just wanted to try to stay in the pack and have some energy left for the last uphill.”
Three other Norwegians, Marit Bjoergen, Bjoern Daehlie (both cross-country skiing) and Ole Einar Bjoerndalen (biathlon) share the Winter Olympic record of eight golds.
Race challengers Edvin Anger of Sweden and Norway's Harald Oestberg Amundsen suffered falls on the icy course.
Klaebo entered as the clear favorite in the 20 kilometer skiathlon, which splits the race between classic and freestyle techniques, with athletes switching skis midway. This year marks the first Olympic Games where both men and women race an equal 20 kilometer distance, with men reducing the distance from 30 kilometers. Sweden's Friday Karlsson won the women's race on Saturday. Nyenget made the podium despite taking a knock from Savelli Korostelev of Russia who finished fourth, 3.6 seconds behind the leader, and later apologized. “I didn’t see him. I was a little surprised about it. I’m so sorry,” said Korostelev, who is competing as an independent due to a team ban on Russia.
On a good day for France, outsider Hugo Lapalus place fifth, 4.3 seconds behind the winner. Nyenget, who led the pack at the front for much of the race, said he felt great to to recover from the collision. “It’s tough to latch back onto a group of the world’s best skiers. On the plus side, I felt really strong today,” he said. “I’m a little relieved to get a medal. The course was rock hard and a little icy," Nyenget said, adding that there wasn't much to do about his star teammate.
“He’s pretty good at skiing,” he said.
——
AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, of Norway, poses after winning the gold medal in the cross country skiing men's 10km + 10km skiathlon at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, of Norway, poses after winning the gold medal in the cross country skiing men's 10km + 10km skiathlon at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, of Norway, approaches the finish line to win the gold medal in the cross country skiing men's 10km + 10km skiathlon at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)
Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, of Norway, and Harald Oestberg Amundsen, also of Norway, right, compete in the cross country skiing men's 10km + 10km skiathlon at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, of Norway, and Harald Oestberg Amundsen, also of Norway, left, compete in during the cross country skiing men's 10km + 10km skiathlon at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, of Norway, competes in the cross country skiing men's 10km + 10km skiathlon at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Hold on to those Thanksgiving turkeys! WKRP is coming to Cincinnati — for real this time.
“I cannot, by contract, tell you when. I cannot tell you who. But I can tell you, direct to the camera, WKRP, after 48 years, is coming to Cincinnati,” D.P. McIntire, who runs the media nonprofit that is auctioning the famous call letters, told The Associated Press. “Book it! It’s done!”
The call sign was made famous by “WKRP in Cincinnati,” a CBS television sitcom that ran from 1978 to 1982. It made stars of actors like Loni Anderson and Richard Sanders, whose bumbling newsman Les Nessman reported on a Thanksgiving promotion gone bad when live but flightless turkeys were dropped from a helicopter.
McIntire remembers watching the show’s first episode — featuring disc jockeys Dr. Johnny Fever (Howard Hesseman) and Venus Flytrap (Tim Reid) — in the living room with his parents and older sister.
“And at the end of the 30-minute episode,” he said, “I got up and I proclaimed, `I’m going to be in radio. And if I ever have the opportunity, I’m going to run a station called WKRP.’”
McIntire said he got his first on-air job at 13 as a news anchor at WNQQ “Wink FM” in Blairsville, Pennsylvania.
Fast forward to 2014, when his North Carolina-based nonprofit acquired the call sign from the Federal Communications Commission. Stations in Dallas, Georgia, and Alexandria, Tennessee, previously bore the letters.
McIntire laughs as he recalls his chat with a woman in the agency’s audio division.
He had two sets of call letters in mind. She told him he needed a third.
“Being the jokester that I am, I said, `Well, if you need three, and if it’s available, we’ll take WKRP,’” he said. “And 90 seconds later, she came back and she said, `Mr. McIntire. Congratulations. You’re the general manager of WKRP in Raleigh, North Carolina.’”
WKRP-LP — 101.9 on the FM dial — went live Nov. 30, 2015. The LP stands for “low power,” a class of station created to serve more local audiences that didn’t want mass-market content.
“Our format is what radio used to be 35 years ago in small-town America,” he said. "There is Greats of the ‘80s, Sounds of the ’70s, '90s Rewind," as well as local news and “specialty programming.”
LPFM is restricted to nonprofit organizations like his Oak City Media, and it’s definitely local.
“Your broadcast capacity is limited to 100 watts,” McIntire said. “So, your average range is between, depending on your terrain and circumstances, 4 and 12 miles (6 and 19 kilometers) in any direction. Enough to cover a small town.”
And, by necessity, it’s a low-budget affair.
The transmitter is in a corner of McIntire’s garage, between a recycling bin and the cleaning supplies. The broadcast antenna sits atop a 25-foot (7.62-meter) metal flagpole in the backyard. The studio — microphones and a mixing board hooked up to a computer — is on the first floor of McIntire’s home.
Like the WKRP of television, McIntire and his partners set out to be “irreverent.” One of their offerings is a two-hour show called “Weird Al and Friends,” focusing on the satirical works of Weird Al Yankovic.
They even had an annual Thanksgiving turkey giveaway. But don’t call the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals — they hand out gift certificates to a local grocery store.
“We don’t toss them out of helicopters,” he said with a laugh.
This news comes hot on the heels of the decision to shutter CBS News Radio after nearly a century in operation. After more than a decade on the air, the 56-year-old McIntire decided it was time to pass the reins.
“We’re in a position where the older members like me who started the station are turning the leadership over to younger members,” he said. “They’re not interested in radio.”
They put out a call for bids to use the call letters on FM and AM radio, as well as television and digital television.
They intend to use the proceeds for a new nonprofit venture called Independent Broadcast Consultants. He said IBC will be “geared specifically toward helping these new broadcasters get up and running, get the consulting that they need in order to be, hopefully, more successful than we have been.”
Oak City Media was all set to hand off the television-related suffixes — WKRP-TV and WKRP-DT — when another group defaulted on the agreement, McIntire said. But he said the Cincinnati deal is in the bag, he just can’t legally discuss it.
“It will be radio,” he said. “But that’s all I can tell you at this time.”
Robert Thompson, who uses a season 2 episode of “WKRP” in his TV history class at Syracuse University, said it’s telling that people see real value in a fictional station whose call letters invoke the word “crap.”
“The value comes from the love of the characters for each other,” he said. “And now by buying this thing, the value comes from our love of the characters themselves.”
Whatever they do with the call sign, McIntire hopes they will be true to the show that inspired it.
“It has a special place in the hearts of an awful lot of people,” he said. “And we have been very, very, very proud to have been a steward of that legacy.”
This story has been updated to correct that the studio is on the first floor of the home, not the basement.
D.P. McIntire leans against a deck beneath the WKRP radio antenna in the backyard of his home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
D.P. McIntire points to the transmitter for WKRP radio in a corner of his garage in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
The WKRP radio antenna sits atop a 25-foot flagpole behind D.P. McIntire's home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
A photo of the cast members of the sitcom "WKRP in Cincinnati" sits in a window at the home of D.P. McIntire in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
D.P. McIntire stands beneath a WKRP banner in the backyard of his home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
