If Megan Heinicke keeps this up, she might have to change her name to Quick Draw McGraw.
Heinicke was the fastest shooter in four rounds on the rifle range in Sunday's World Cup women's 10-kilometre pursuit in Annecy, France and missed only two of her 20 targets on the way to 33rd place finish.
The 25-year-old from Prince George, a product of the Caledonia Nordic Ski Club, gained 17 positions after starting the pursuit 50th. Heinicke stopped the clock in 30 minutes 30.6 seconds, 2:25 off the winning pace of Valj Semerenko of Ukraine (28:08.4 with one miss). Heinicke has been pushing herself in training to speed up the time it takes to shoot and that paid off Sunday when she needed just 1:38 to reel off 20 shots, tied with Dorothea Wierer of Italy for the fastest shooting time of the race.
In pursuits, each racer's start time is based on how far behind the winning time they were in the sprint race and Heinicke's start was delayed by 1:41, the gap between her and 7.5 km sprint winner, Selma Gasparin of Switzerland, at the finish of Saturday's race. It was too much time for Heinicke to make up Sunday.
"I went into the sprint not too worried about pacing myself too much, I wanted to be fast and efficient on the mat and it obviously didn't work out too well," said Heinicke, from her hotel room in Geneva, Switzerland. "I was the third-fastest shooter but had three misses.
"I knew starting 50th in the pursuit, I'm not going to win no matter what I do, so I should just be happy for the opportunity for another World Cup start and went in aggressive again and it worked out much better. If I could shoot that quickly with 90 per cent [accuracy] every race that would be amazing. I was surprised when they announced it was that fast."
Heinicke, Canada's top female biathlete in the 2010 Olympics, began the weekend still seeking a top-30s individual finish needed to qualify for the Canadian team for the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia in February. She accomplished that on Thursday while helping Canada to a fourth-place finish in the 4X6km relay and her sprint result Saturday was also good enough for her to make the team. The relay finish was the best for a Canadian women's biathlon team since a bronze-medal result in the late 1980s and it got them to the awards podium Thursday for gifts of cheese and flowers.
"That was so much fun, and the best thing about it was it wasn't a miracle race," said Heinicke. "It wasn't like all four if us had the best race of our lives all at once. Megan Imrie and Rosanna Crawford both did an excellent race and Zina Kocher and myself just did a normal race. The cool thing is with everyone doing a solid performance that was good enough [for fourth] and its realistic for us to repeat that performance. We knew we had that potential at the beginning of the season."
Rosanna Crawford of Canmore moved up seven positions to finish 19th as the top Canadian (29:52.9, three misses) in the pursuit. In other Canadian results, Megan Imrie of Falcon Lake, Man., was 41st (31:10.1, four misses) and Zina Kocher of Red Deer, Alta., was 52nd at (33:38.2, seven misses). Irina Starykh of Russia shot clean to claim silver (28:09.6), while bronze medalist Tiril Eckhoff of Norway had one miss (28:20.9).
Heinicke qualified for the 60-skier pursuit after finishing 50th out of 97 racers Saturday in the 7.5 km sprint. In the sprint, Heinicke missed one target in her prone shooting round and missed two in the standing session, finishing in 22:32.6, 1:41 off the pace of gold medalist Selma Gasparin of Switzerland (20:51.4).
In the men's 12.5 km pursuit, Nathan Smith of Calgary capped a successful weekend with an eighth-place finish in 32:41.7 after placing 16th in Saturday's sprint. With that sprint result, Smith met his Olympic-team qualifying criteria in France.
Sprint winner Johannes Thinges Boe of Norway missed one shot and won the pursuit (31:43.7), followed by Erik Lesser of Germany (32:21.2) and bronze medalist Anton Shipulin of Russia (32:22.8). Jean-Philippe Le Guellec of Shannon, Que., finished 33rd while shooting clean to post a time of 34:02.7, while Regina's Scott Perras had five misses and was 48th (35:12.9).
Heinicke, the mother of a three-year-old son, plans to return to her home in Germany to relax for the next few days before she resumes training. There are three World Cup stops -- all in January -- leading up to the Sochi Games. Heinicke said the Canadian B team will likely take up the four spots in Oberhof, Germany, but she will be part of the next two events in Ruhpolding, Germany and Antholz-Anterselva, Italy. Canada has four World Cup spots for women and three for men.
Heinicke's parents in Prince George, Ed and Heather Tandy, told the Citizen last week they wouldn't be attending the Sochi Olympics due to the high cost of the trip (an estimated $15,000). As Heinicke explained Sunday, the tight security in Russia would leave very little opportunity for athletes to mix with family members and she would rather them spend that money on two or three trips to Europe, which would allow more quality family time together.
