Norway's young gun Tarjei Bø redeemed a challenging season with perfect shooting and a World Championship gold in Sunday's mass start. Lowell Bailey shot clean through three stages but missed the podium with two final penalties. Tim Burke crashed early and was knocked out of contention.
What does it feel like to have Tora Berger breathing down your neck? Ask Germany’s Andrea Henkel, Ukraine’s Olena Pidhrushna or Italy’s Karin Oberhofer, who started the final leg of the 4 x 6-kilometer women’s relay with a mere 40-second head start.
For Tora Berger, it just keeps getting better. Norway’s leading female biathlete took control at the IBU World Championships on Wednesday, cruising through the 15-kilometer individual race to not only defend her title by nearly a minute, but do so without error in Nové Město, Czech Republic.
Nine American and Canadian athletes competed in the 10/12.5 k pursuits at IBU World Championships on Sunday. Here are some photos of the action.
Photos from the women's 10 k pursuit at biathlon World Championships, where Tora Berger of Norway took home gold.
Photos from the men's 12.5 k pursuit.
Starting in the mid-30's, Lowell Bailey and Jean Philippe Le Guellec didn't let disappointing sprint results keep them down. Bailey cleaned a four-stage race for the first time in his career, placing 13th; Le Guellec had just one missed target to end up 15th.
Tora Berger didn't have her best day, but after a quick and clean last standing stage, she was headed for gold. The other leaders weren't so lucky: after a disastrous crash, Ann Kristin Flatland broke a binding and Olga Zaitseva lost valuable time. In their places, Krystyna Palka of Poland earned silver and Olena Pidhrushna of Ukraine bronze.
When Martin Fourcade used a formidable uphill sprint to take the lead with a kilometer to go, it looked like Emil Hegle Svendsen was out of the picture, relegated to silver. But the Norwegian somehow managed to drag himself back onto Fourcade's tails and slingshot around him into the finishing lanes, then win one of the closest World Championships photo finishes in recent memory.
Despite three errors on the range, Jean Philippe Le Guellec felt great on his skis and finished 36th, leading the Canadian team; Scott Gow had a great World Championships debut, placing 45th. He and Audrey Vaillancourt told FasterSkier about what it's like to race their first Championships in front of such large, loud, and enthusiastic crowds.
Across both the men's and the women's teams, six of the eight Americans qualified for the 60-person pursuits on Sunday. Tim Burke was the lone man to make the top 30, while Annelies Cook led the women's squad in 45th. All six are ready to improve in the pursuit.
Olena Pidrushna has twice finished second in World Cup racing this season, but she's never won a competition - and she fell ill after the last World Cup races in Antholz, Italy. She was as surprised as anyone else to find herself atop the podium in the women's sprint, beating Tora Berger of Norway by six seconds. Ukrainian teammate Vita Semerenko was third.
Although he said he wasn't thinking about last year, when Martin Fourcade of France bested him in race after race and took home three World Championships titles, Emil Hegle Svendsen of Norway certainly seemed like he was on a mission, notching the fastest ski time to earn his second gold in Nove Mesto.
In the timespan of just two seasons, Nove Mesto has transformed itself from a ho-hum IBU Cup venue to an exhilarating superstadium for biathlon - one where, as several athletes claim, the fans are even louder and more enthusiastic than those at the traditional capitals of Ruhpolding and Oberhof in Germany.
Rosanna Crawford started her very first World Championships race; Jean Philippe Le Guellec had his first healthy one in several years. He called the team's 15th-place finish "okay, but nothing phenomenal."
Susan Dunklee's single spare round and third-fastest ski time combined to be the best race by any woman skiing the second leg of the mixed relay. But while it may have been a highlight of the U.S. team performance, each member skied a strong race, culminating in a historic eighth-place finish, their best ever at a World Championships.
While Norway had seldom a worry en route to another mixed relay title, France and the Czech Republic capitalized on a late-stage meltdown by Russia's Dmitry Malyshko to earn their spots on the podium. The Czech medal was especially exciting to the home crowd, and the racers struggled to express how special the moment was.