The final races of the World Junior/Youth Biathlon Championships in Torsby, Sweden concluded yesterday with the team relays.
Summary of relays:
–Russia won Youth Men and Junior Women, while Germany won Junior Men and Norway won Youth Women.
–Canada entered teams for all events. The U.S. did not field teams for the Junior Men’s and Junior Women’s relays.
–Best American finish: Canada’s Youth Women relay team of Rose-Marie Cote, Audrey Vaillancourt, and Julia Ransom were just one place off the podium, placing 4th out of 17 teams.
Summary of Championships:
–Canada’s Rose-Marie Cote started off the week with a bronze medal in the Youth Women sprint. Known for her marksmanship, Cote entered the Championships after cleaning the range for every race during trials, and continued to shoot clean in every race of the week except the pursuit, in which she picked up 3 penalties. She was 13th in the sprint, 18th in the pursuit, and 4th in the team relay.
— Canadian Youth Women: The team of Cote, Vaillancourt, and Ransom took 4th in the relay, and each had solid individual results as well. Vaillancourt placed 26th in the pursuit, while Ransom had an 11th in the individual race, 15th in the sprint, and 23rd in the pursuit.
–U.S. Biathlete Leif Nordgren started the week with an 11th place in the individual race and then earned two top-tens with a 6th in the sprint and a 5th in the pursuit.
—-Other top-30 finishes all came from Canada: Scott Gow, 21st (sprint), Christian Gow 23rd (individual), Yolaine Oddou 23rd (ind.), David Gregoire, 30th (ind.)
Other top U.S. results: Casey Smith earned 32nd in the sprint and Eathan Dreissigacher placed 36th in the pursuit.
Monday’s Relay:
Junior Men
Germany led the whole race of this 4×7.5 km relay, and although France was close behind at times, they ended a distant 1:19.3 down to the Germany’s gold medal team of Tom Barth, Johannes Kuhn, Benedikt Doll, and Manuel Muller. Russia, 1:34.8 down to Germany, earned the bronze. In shooting, Germany was 0+12 , France was 0+7, and Russia was 2+9.
Canada’s team of David Gregoire, Scott Gow, Joel Pacas, and Matthew Neumann placed 12th out of 18 teams, 7:27.4 back with 3 penalties and 16 spare rounds.
The U.S. did not field a team.
Youth Men
The Russian team of Alexandr Loginou, Ivan Pichuzhkin, and Aleksandr Pechenkin took the gold over France and Norway in this 3.7.5 km relay, shooting 0+15. They were just over a minute up on France (0+8) and 1:43 up on Norway (0+14).
Canada’s team of Edouard Cote, Aaron Gillmor, and Christian Gow were 4 minutes off the podium; with 0 penalties and 14 rounds, they finished 8th out of 20 teams.
The U.S. team of Casey Smith, Raileigh Gossling, and Conrad Roberts took 10 penalties and 14 rounds to finish in 19th.
Junior Women
Russia took gold in the 3x6km relay, while Norway, Germany, and France dueled for second place with a sprint to the finish. Norway (0+3) beat Germany (0+6) by .2 of a second to earn silver. France (0+5) was shut out of the podium by finishing just .7 of a second behind Germany. The Russian team of Larisa Kuznetsova, Svetlana Perminova, and Anastasia Kalina shot clean with three rounds.
The Canadian team of Yolaine Odou, Carly Shiell, and Tatiana Chesham placed 10th out of 14 teams, with a time back of 7:01.0, zero penalties with five spare rounds.
The U.S. team did not start.
Youth Women
The Youth Women also raced a 3x 6km relay, and Norway’s team of Thekla Brun-lie, Marion Huber Ronning, and Anne-Tine Markset took the gold with zero penalties and four rounds. Russia was only 23.9 seconds down to Norway and 16 seconds ahead of bronze medalists Belarus (0+2), despite one penalty and a whopping twelve spare rounds.
Canada was close to the podium with the team of Rose-Marie Cote, Audrey Vaillancourt, and Julia Ransom. With no penalties and four spare rounds they finished fourth, one minute and three seconds from third place.
The U.S. team of Kelly Kjorlien, Afton Snyder, and Silke Hynes had 5 penalties with 13 spare rounds and finished in 16th place.
