Olympic Sprints and Pursuit Done and Dusted!

The Men's and Women's sprint competition with their following Pursuits have been completed with 24yr old 2016-17 World Cup Crystal Globe winner Laura Dahlmeier (GER) wining both events for the Women. In the Men's, it didn't take World Champion Martin Fourcade (FRA) long to erase an "extremely disappointing" Sprint result........

A little over 24 hours, to be exact!

Fourcade erased a 27.8 second deficit at the first shooting bout to convincingly win gold in the men's 12.5km pursuit at the Alpensia Biathlon Centre. 

"I'm very satisfied because it was a big disappointment  yesterday for me," Fourcade said. "The sprint race was the one I wanted to win. It was the one that I have never won at the Olympics. 

"I will probably miss my career without the Olympics in the sprint. I wanted gold yesterday and I missed, so I was really disappointed. And today, I am so satisfied I left it as a champion."

Australia’s Road to PyeongChang Qualification

The qualification road to PyeongChang was very difficult for small nations like Australia with top biathletes from bigger biathlon nations changing citizenship and racing for other small nations and taking up the few wildcard positions available to nations who did not qualify as one of the top 22 World Cup nations.

Damon Morton was the only Australian to meet the IBU Individual qualification but was unable to secure one of the 6 wildcards.

The 6 male wildcards went to:

1. Korea - Biathlete Timofey Lapshin changed from Russia to Korea and is ranked in the top 15 in the world)

2. Belgium - Biathletes from Germany and France changed to Belgium with Belgium achieving two wild cards positions.

3. Poland - is a regular World Cup nation just outside of top 22 ranking

4. Japan - is investing heavily into Biathlon and has a very big biathlon budget.

LAPSHIN Timofei KOR 32.65

ROESCH Michael BEL 35.00

CLAUDE Florent BEL 53.58

GUZIK Grzegorz POL 68.01

TACHIZAKI Mikito JPN 77.28

NEDZA-KUBINIEC Andrzej POL 77.63

For the Men there is no representative from the Southern Hemisphere at the Olympics for Biathlon.
The female wild cards:

BENDIKA Baiba LAT 43.24

LIGHTFOOT Amanda GBR 75.16

ZHANG Yan CHN 76.02

TANG Jialin CHN 80.40

TALIHAERM Johanna EST 81.55

TOFALVI Eva ROU 90.41

For the Women there is no representative from the Southern Hemisphere at the Olympics for Biathlon.