The mixed relay of Biathlon 2018 during the 2018 Winter Olympics was held on 20 February 2018 in the Alpensia Biathlon Centre. With 20 teams competing, the event was won by the team from France, with Norway taking the silver medal and Italy taking bronze.
Format[]
The competition exists out of two male athletes conducting three rounds of 2.5 kilometres and two female athletes conducting three rounds of 2.0 kilometres, broken up by shooting at five targets. Each athlete has up to three additional shots for each round, and each missed target afterwards causes the athlete to have to conduct an additional round of 150 meters. The team with the fastest time after 2x6 and 2x7.5 kilometres is the winner.
Preview[]
Twenty teams qualified for the first relay event of the biathlon program, with Norway as the leader in the current World Cup standings, and all four athletes having won individual medals in Pyeongchang. Italy was seeded second, but the team had only won a single medal in the previous weeks. The two-time individual gold medalists Martin Fourcade and Laura Dahlmeier were part of the teams of France and Germany, and both would have a good chance for a medal. Darya Domracheva from Belarus and Anastasiya Kuzmina from Slovakia were the fastest skiers of the women's side and would need a good team to support them. Other outsiders included the defending silver medalists Czech Republic, Sweden, and Finland.
Results[]
With the women starting off the competition, Marte Olsbu and Vanessa Hinz for the top seed and third seed Norway and Germany started off in front, but there were no real positional changes at the start, except for Magdalena Gwizdon for Poland, who slipped in the front few of the bunch halfway through the lap. With a sustained high speed, four teams were already behind when the group arrived at the shooting range for the first time. Lisa Vittozzi of Italy was then the one who shot clean the fastest, and had no less than 5 seconds on Galina Vishnevskaya of Kazakhstan, Marie Dorin Habert of France, and Hinz. Others were also close behind, with eight other teams within 15 seconds of the leader, while Lithuania was suddenly over 40 seconds behind, despite missing "only" twice, and Slovakia's Paulina Fialkova was already over 4 minutes behind Vittozzi, after missing seven out of eight times.
Vittozzi retained a small lead, but the group behind her was split after Dorin Habert, Hinz, and Mona Brorsson of Sweden were the only ones to follow her and almost closed the gap before the second shooting round. Vittozzi once again remained clean, but so were two of her chasers Hinz and Dorin Habert. Due to the impressive speed of the Italian, the gap to Hinz was back to 7 seconds, and to Dorin Habert over 15 seconds, the latter of who now had to watch out for Iryna Varvynets of Ukraine and Susan Dunklee of the United States, with another group of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Poland forming behind them.
With one lap before the first changeover, Vittozzi would not be caught before she would hand over to Dorothea Wierer, and similarly, Germany would retain their second position with double Olympic champion Laura Dahlmeier as the second athlete. Dorin Habert won over 15 seconds in a single lap over the others in her former group, while Czech Republic's Veronika Vitkova had an excellent final sprint to hand over in fourth place, but just in front of the United States, Kazakhstan, Poland, and Belarus. The twelfth team Olympic Athletes from Russia were only 37 seconds down on the leader after the first leg.
Dahlmeier quickly joined her direct opponent Wierer in their first lap, but Anais Bescond for France also came closer and caught up before their first prone shooting. Darya Domracheva was also over 10 seconds faster than the leaders in her first lap, and arrived at the shooting range as fourth. However, the Italian skier once again shot flawlessly and retook the lead, and once again, the German athlete could do no more than catch up. France lost almost 15 seconds by only missing once, and Belarus stayed within 30 seconds of the leader, as well, with plenty of teams just behind her.
Dahlmeier closed the gap fast, and followed Wierer in her tracks, but Bescond also came closer, just like Domracheva. Coming onto the shooting range for the second time with the two athletes in front, both Dahlmeier and Wierer missed their first shots, after which the latter also missed her last, and some of her additional shots. Dahlmeier took a strong lead, almost 25 seconds over Wierer and 35 seconds over Domracheva. Some misses from Bescond also set her back, and was now just behind the Belarusian athlete, and followed by Yuliia Dzhuma of Ukraine and Kamila Zuk of Poland. The Olympic Athletes of Russia already followed on over a minute of Dahlmeier and the rest of the field was only further behind.
In the last lap of the women's half, Dahlmeier more or less retained her lead over her chasers, with Italy and Belarus changing over to their men 30 seconds behind the leaders. With France following another 18 seconds later, and a group of Finland, Ukraine, and Poland at the brink of a minute, the field was pretty spread out at the halfway point.
The German Erik Lesser quickly lapped the unfortunate Slovakian and Lithuanian teams, but the rest of the field wasn't able to get much closer. With the first prone shooting, Lesser made excellent use of his time by shooting clean, and just left the range as the Italian Lukas Hofer arrived. Hofer followed a similar rhythm as his direct opponent Sergey Bocharnikov, but the latter missed once and lost valuable time. Lesser now had a lead of over 30 seconds to Hofer, and over 50 seconds to Bocharnikov (Belarus) and Simon Desthieux (France). Poland followed on over 70 seconds, but was also quickly followed by Ukraine, Norway, Czech Republic, Finland, and the Olympic Athletes from Russia.
These time differences were retained throughout the next lap, and the gap to Hofer was even extended to 40 seconds. Johannes Thingnes Boe moved into fifth place, with the Polish skier Andrzej Nedza-Kubiniec dropping back. Lesser unsurprisingly arrived first at his second round of shooting, and barely missed a shot, but Hofer couldn't win any time after missing once, as well. Instead, Bocharnikov and Desthieux were on the Italian's heels, and the gap to Boe dropped back to within a minute. The athletes from Ukraine, Finland, the Olympic Athletes from Russia, and the Czech Republic all missed once, as well, and kept their deficit to the leader.
The last lap of the last leg saw plenty of action, but maybe not directly in the front, with Germany retaining the big lead. Behind Lesser, Desthieux and Hofer were in a close battle, with Boe quickly coming up and over Bocharnikov halfway through the lap. Lesser also changed first to Arnd Peiffer, but the lead had dropped to 32 seconds, with Italy, France, and Norway all exchanging within a second from each other. Belarus followed on 48 seconds, with Ukraine another 20 seconds behind.
Peiffer started his leg strong, but the two-time 2018 Olympic champion Martin Fourcade and his compatriots brought the gap back to 20 seconds going into the penultimate shooting round. Peiffer made two mistakes, and brought the gap to Fourcade back to only 6 seconds, with Dominik Windisch and Emil Hegle Svendsen following on another 10 seconds in a close climax.
Fourcade was definitely the faster skier, and made his move before the first time control halfway through the last leg, with Italy and Norway also within 20 seconds. Peiffer could do not much more than limiting the damage and hoping for a mistake of the Frenchman, but Fourcade shot perfectly with another faultless round, and with his pursuers on over 20 seconds behind him, the gold medal seemed decided. However, with Peiffer missing four times and being forced to do a penalty loop, Svendsen missing once, and Windisch missing twice, the field behind the Frenchman was suddenly wide open. Norway had a 35-second deficit to Fourcade, but Italy and Germany were both on the brink of 50 seconds, and had to push themselves to the limits for the bronze medal.
The ultimate lap was almost like a victory lap for Fourcade, with the gap with Svendsen not decreasing fast enough for the Norwegian, who would most certainly take silver. The battle for bronze remained as the German and Italian athletes following each other on their tails, until Peiffer tried to accelerate, while Fourcade crossed the finish line for the French gold medal. Svendsen took home the silver medal, while Italy barely won the sprint for bronze in the final metres, leaving the German team devastated. Belarus finished almost a minute behind the winner, with Finland and Ukraine arriving shortly after. The Czech Republic also finished within two minutes, with the Olympic Athletes from Russia and Austria completing the top 10.
France won the second edition of the mixed biathlon relay, after Norway won the previous edition. Martin Fourcade won his fifth Olympic title, with only Ole Einar Bjoerndalen having more, with eight gold medals. Anais Bescond won her second Olympic medal, after winning bronze in the women's pursuit, while Marie Dorin Habert completed her set of gold, silver, and bronze. Simon Desthieux was the only member of the French team to win his first Olympic medal. Johannes Thingnes Boe won his second medal in Pyeongchang, after winning the 20 kilometres, while Tiril Eckhoff won her fifth medal, and Marte Olsbu her second. Emil Hegle Svendsen won his eighth Olympic medal, just one fewer than Uschi Disl and five fewer than biathlon legend Bjoerndalen. Dominik Windisch won his third bronze medal at the Olympic Games, while Lukas Hofer and Dorothea Wierer won their second bronze; they all finished third in the mixed relay in 2014. Laura Dahlmeier just missed out on her fourth medal in Pyeongchang, while Erik Lesser and Arnd Peiffer just missed out on their third. Vanessa Hinz earned her best Olympic result in her career.
| Rank | Team | Penalty | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
 France |
0 | 1:08:34.3 |
 |
 Norway |
1 | 1:08:55.2 |
 |
 Italy |
0 | 1:09:01.2 |
| 4 |  Germany |
1 | 1:09:01.5 |
| 5 |  Belarus |
0 | 1:09:29.8 |
| 6 |  Finland |
0 | 1:09:38.2 |
| 7 |  Ukraine |
0 | 1:09:46.4 |
| 8 |  Czech Republic |
0 | 1:10:13.6 |
| 9 |  Olympic Athletes from Russia |
0 | 1:10:49.1 |
| 10 |  Austria |
0 | 1:10:56.3 |
| 11 |  Sweden |
2 | 1:11:07.5 |
| 12 |  Canada |
0 | 1:11:11.0 |
| 13 |  Switzerland |
1 | 1:11:31.4 |
| 14 |  Slovenia |
1 | 1:11:55.6 |
| 15 |  United States |
3 | 1:12:05.4 |
| 16 |  Poland |
0 | 1:12:17.9 |
| 17 |  Bulgaria |
0 | 1:12:31.7 |
| 18 |  Kazakhstan |
3 | 1:14:13.7 |
| 19 |  Lithuania |
1 | LAP |
| 20 |  Slovakia |
5 | LAP |
| 2018 Winter Olympic Games | |
|---|---|
| Biathlon 2018 | |
| ← 2014 | 2022 → |
| Men | Women |
| 20 km | 15 km |
| Sprint | Sprint |
| Pursuit | Pursuit |
| Mass start | Mass start |
| Relay | Relay |
| Mixed | |
| Relay | |