The two young Olympic debutants did not immediately offer any excuses afterwards.
"I'm just too bad on the slopes. It's too slow," says Alvar Myhlback, 19.
"I'm going to get home as quickly as possible. I skied too badly today to think about anything else," says Anton Grahn, 21.
The two youngest Swedes still went to their respective semifinals, unlike Edvin Anger and Johan Häggström, who were eliminated in the quarterfinals.
Like everyone else, they had no chance against Norwegian Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, who won his seventh Olympic gold medal in his career.
Klæbo was so superior that he could almost have picked up a flag to wave during the sprint.
Or, as silver medalist Ben Ogden of the USA puts it.
"Oskar (Norwegian Opstad Vike, who took bronze) and I looked at each other while he (Klæbo) was doing a completely different sport," says Ogden about the gold medal.
