Megan Heinicke of Prince George helped Canada to a top-10 finish Friday at the biathlon world championships in Kontiolahti, Finland.
Heinicke took on the lead leg in the women's 4x6-kilometre relay, missed just one of 20 targets, and posted the fastest ski time of the four Canadians. But by the time Heinicke tagged Rosanna Crawford of Canmore to begin the second leg of the relay, Canada trailed Franziska Hildebrand of Germany by 33 seconds.
The German team (Hildebrand, Franziska Preuss, Vanessa Hinz and Laura Dahlmeier) had just six misses in 80 attempts at the range and won gold in one hour 11 minutes 54.6 seconds, a minute ahead of second-place France, which had 10 misses. Italy missed nine targets and claimed bronze.
The Canadians finished 10th out of 25 teams.
They had a total of 11 misses at the range and stopped the clock in 1:15:34.1, 3:39.5 behind the victorious Germans.
In today's 4x7.5km men's relay, Canada will start in the second row.
Christian Gow of Canmore will take the lead leg, followed by Nathan Smith of Calgary, who made history last week in the sprint as the first Canadian male ever to win a World Cup biathlon medal.
Scott Gow of Canmore will ski the third leg and hand off to anchor Brendan Green of Hay River N.W.T.
Heinicke finished 21st out of 41 women in the 15km individual race Wednesday and 23rd in the sprint and has qualified for Sunday's 12.5km mass start race, the final women's event at the world championships. The race is limited to the top 30 racers.
Smith and Green will represent Canada in the 15km men's mass start race Sunday.
Competition resumes today at the Canadian national biathlon championships in Hinton, Alta, with individual and mass start races, followed on Sunday by team relays.
Emily Dixon, Sarah Beaudry, Matt Neumann, Arthur Roots, Claire Lapointe, Bobby Kreitz, Logan Sherba, Colton MacDougall and Mark Hartley are representing the Caledonia Nordic Ski Club of Prince George on Team B.C.
Caledonia Nordic club members Pippa Roots and Kaia Andal begin competition today at the Haywood Ski National cross-country championships in Thunder Bay, Ont.
