Biathlon at the 2002 Winter Olympics – Men's relay
| Men's biathlon relay at the XIX Olympic Winter Games
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| Venue | Soldier Hollow |
| Dates | February 20 |
| Competitors | 76 from 19 nations |
| Winning time | 1:23:42.3 |
| Medalists | |
The Men's 4 x 7.5 kilometre biathlon relay competition at the 2002 Winter Olympics 20 February, at Soldier Hollow. Each national team consisted of four members, with each skiing 7.5 kilometres and shooting twice, once prone and once standing.
At each shooting station, a competitor has eight shots to hit five targets; however, only five bullets are loaded in a magazine at one - if additional shots are required, the spare bullets must be loaded one at a time. If after the eight shots are taken, there are still targets not yet hit, the competitor must ski a 150-metre penalty loop.
Norway, led by triple gold medalist Ole Einar Bjørndalen, were the defending World Cup winners, led the 2001/02 World Cup, and were defending Olympic champions. The defending World Champions were France, while Germany were the only other country with more than one individual medal at the Games, and had won two of the four World Cup relays.
Clean shooting had Ukraine, with Vyacheslav Derkach, and Russia, with Viktor Maigourov, out of the first shoot in the lead, with most of the top teams near them, but Norway some 25 seconds behind after Halvard Hanevold missed a shot. Ukraine's time in the lead was short-lived, as they fell out of contention after Derkach went on the penalty loop after the second shoot. That put the Russians into the lead, after Maigurov shot clear again. They left some ten seconds ahead of Gilles Marguet of France and Petr Garabík of the Czech Republic. Hanevold shot clear to pull his team back up into 4th spot. Maigurov was strong in the ski into the exchange, exteing his lead over France and the Czechs, while Hanevold and Germany's Ricco Groß both equalled Maigurov's time, coming to the exchange 18 and 29 seconds behind the Russians, respectively.
Sergei Rozhkov took over in the lead for the Russians, and while he missed two on his first shoot, so did his closest pursuer, Frode Andresen, leaving the gap the same. However, both Germany, with Peter Sendel, and France with Vincent Defrasne, missed only once, and cut the lead down to around 20 seconds. All four of these skiers missed once on the second shoot, but it was Andresen who made up ground, passing Rozhkov before the end of the shoot, and extending the lead to a full 20 seconds over the Russian, now joined by Defrasne, at the hand off.
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