Sarah Beaudry has her eye on the prize but on this day her rifle was not her best friend.
Skiing the lead leg of the World Cup biathlon women’s 4x6 km relay, the 24-year-old Caledonia Nordic Ski Club member had four misses and used spare rounds in four bouts on the shooting range and that dropped Canada out of medal contention on the way to a 13th-place finish Sunday in Oberhof, Germany.
Beaudry handed off to Emma Lunder of Vernon, who needed six spares to knock down all 20 of her targets. Megan Bankes of Calgary took the third leg, using just one spare, and anchor Rosanna Crawford went through two spare rounds.
Canada ended up 5:58.8 behind the winning team from Russia (Evgeniya Pavlova, Margareta Vasileva, Larissa Kuklina, Ekaterina Yurlova-Perscht), who finished in 1:18:46.3. Germany (+33.5) took silver and Czech Republic (+36.7) won bronze. The event drew 21 teams.
In the men’s 4x7.5 km relay, Canada (Scott Gow and Christian Gow of Canmore, Jules Brunotte of Sherbrooke, Que., and Brendan Green of Hay River, N.W.T.) placed 18th out of 27 teams.
Canada got lapped by the winning team from Russia (Maxim Tzvetkov, Evgeniy Garanichev, Dmitry Malyshko, Alexander Loginov), who clocked 1:20:54.3. France and Austria won silver and bronze respectively.
• In other biathlon news, Caledonia club member Emily Dickson, 21, has been named to Canada’s team for the world junior biathlon championships for the seventh consecutive year. Now in her final year of junior eligibility, Dixon has been competing this season in Europe on the IBU Cup circuit. She will meet up with the Canadian team in Osrblie, Slovakia, Jan. 21. The junior/youth world championships run from Jan. 24 to Feb. 3. Dickson resumes racing Thursday in the IBU Cup in Arber, Germany.
