Tove obviously had the highest maximum speed of all, but her orienteering wasn’t stable enough this time (probably at least partly due to her injury problems: It is much harder to stay focused when you also worry about your body).

To me it looks like AMHN had very high speed on the longer legs, winning several of them while running faster overall from the fifth control than the rest of the field, but she slowed down a few seconds on the shorter legs to avoid mistakes.

Ida most certainly deserved her gold medal, combining very high speed with near perfect route choices and execution!

Note also how Anne Margrethe Hausken Nordberg was in the fight for medal, but lost nearly 5(!) minutes on the long leg! Looking at the highest level of each runner, i.e. only considering the 50% of the legs with best performance, Ida Bobach (1st) showed the highest top level followed by Tove Alexandersson (4th) and Anne Margrethe Hausken Nordberg (7th).

Bobach also had several time losses; Hausken had the third best speed in the field after Bobach and Alexandersson as far as I can see.

Looking at the tracking you can easily see how she is dropping into a parallel mistake and getting everything to fit for far too long, with nearly a minute standing still before she realizes where she is.

About Tove vs Ida: I agree, she still had a chance to win with perfect execution the rest of the race. Will see if I manage to update this in the analysis.