Swirling winds, cold temperature and a high-altitude course made for difficult conditions for Sarah Beaudry and the rest of the Canadian squad in Saturday’s Olympic biathlon mixed relay in China.
But the same conditions applied for all 80 competitors in the first biathlon event of the Beijing Olympics and Beaudry, a 27-year-old native of Prince George, performed admirably, as did her teammates Emma Lunder of Vernon, Christian Gow of Canmore and Scott Gow of Canmore.
On a challenging day on the shooting range, the Canadians had just three penalties and used 17 spares to race to a 14th-place finish in the 20-team event.
Norwegian anchor Johannes Thingnes Bow won a frenzied dash to the finish in a three-way race for top spot on the medal podium. Boe edged second-place French skier Quentin FIllon-Maillet by just nine-10t of second to win gold, with Russian Eduard Latypov a close third, 1.5 seconds off the winning pace.
Boe and his teammates from Norway (Marte Olsbu Roeisland, Tiril Eckhoff, Tarjei Boe) finished the 4 X 6-kilometre race in 1:06.45.6, wit three penalty loops and 13 spares. France (Anais Chevalier-Bouchet, Julia Simon, Emilien Jacquelin, and Fillon-Maillet) had three penalties and used 13 spare rounds, while Russia (Uliana Nigmatullina, Alexander Loinov and Laytypov) had just one penalty loop to ski and used 13 spares.
Loginov, who skied third in the order for Russia, was 57 seconds behind race leader Jacquelin of France when he arrived for his standing bout but left the range in the lead after shooting clean and Latypov held that until the final descent into the stadium, when J.T. Boe and Maillet made their moves in the sprint for the finish.
Beaudry had just one miss in her prone shooting bout and used all three spares to knock down her five standing targets. She had Canada in sixth place after her prone shoot and was in 15th place, 2:30 behind the leader, when she tagged Lunder at the first exchange.
Lunder duplicated Beaudry’s shooting results and was 2:35.6 out of first place when she tagged Christian Gow. The younger Gow brother used all three spares in his prone bout and when through all three reloads with two targets still up, forcing him to ski two 150-metre penalty laps. He was 3:27.1 off the pace when he made the exchange with his brother Scott. The 29-year-old cleaned his prone targets and had one penalty in his standing round.
Beaudry and Lunder will be racing each other, along with Megan Bankes of Calgary and Emily Dickson of Burns Lake, in the women’s 15 km individual event on Monday (1 a.m. start).
The next race for the Gow brothers is the 20 km individual race on Tuesday (12:45 a.m. start). Adam Runnalls of Calgary and Jules Brunotte of Sherbrooke, Que., are also entered in the men’s race.
