Biathlon 2018/Women's pursuit

Women's pursuit
General information
Sport	Biathlon 2018
Date	12 February 2018
Competitors	60 athletes
Venue	Alpensia Biathlon Centre
Previous medalists
Gold	Darya Domracheva
Silver	Tora Berger
Bronze	Teja Gregorin
Conditions
Temperature	-10°C / 14°F
Length	10186 metres
Height	36 metres
Medalists
	Laura Dahlmeier
	Anastasiya Kuzmina
	Anais Bescond

The women's pursuit of Biathlon 2018 during the 2018 Winter Olympics was held on 12 February 2018 in the Alpensia Biathlon Centre. With 60 athletes competing, the event was won by Laura Dahlmeier from Germany, with Anastasiya Kuzmina from Slovakia taking the silver medal and Anais Bescond from France taking bronze.

Format

The competition exists out of five rounds of 2.0 kilometres, broken up by shooting at five targets. The athletes started after each other, based on the time differences in the sprint event, each missed target causing an additional round of 150 meters. The competitor with the fastest time after 10 kilometres (or additional rounds) is the winner.

Preview

Sixty athletes qualified for the event, as the top 60 of the sprint event of the day before, which was won by Laura Dahlmeier, who would start in front, and was one of the big favorites to win the pursuit, especially since she remained without mistakes in the shooting in the sprint. However, there were quite a few other athletes who would want to win gold in this event, for example Marie Dorin Habert, the world champion of 2015. Dorothea Wierer and Kaisa Makarainen stood high in the World Cup rankings, just like the defending Olympic champion Darya Domracheva, who won the silver medal at the world championships. The biggest challenger for Dahlmeier would probably be Anastasiya Kuzmina, who won the silver medal in 2010, and was the leader of the World Cup standings. Other potential outsiders included the other medalists of the sprint Marte Olsbu and Veronika Vitkova, fifth-placed in the sprint Vanessa Hinz, and Lisa Vittozzi. However, there was a lot of wind, which made shooting quite difficult, and anything could change in an instant.

Results

The weather conditions were similar to the day before, with temperatures far below 0 degrees Celsius and very difficult wind conditions. With the athletes starting based on the time differences in the sprint event, Laura Dahlmeier had an immediate head start of almost 30 seconds. However, she had a rough start, already losing 7 seconds on Marte Olsbu and Veronika Vitkova after less than a kilometre, and 11 seconds when she arrived at the shooting range. With her fifth consecutive shooting round without misses, Dahlmeier retained a lead of 18 seconds over Vitkova, and 32 seconds over Anastasiya Kuzmina. Olsbu, who started third, missed a shot and fell slightly back, just like many of the other athletes who started early in the field, including Marie Dorin Habert, Vanessa Hinz, Lisa Vittozzi, and Hanna Oeberg. This also meant that Irene Cadurisch, the fastest shooter of the sprint event, and Justine Braisaz were the only other competitors from the original top 10 of the start list to stay within 40 seconds. The fastest skier of the first lap was Denise Herrmann, who climbed from the 21st position to 19th, despite missing one of her shots, while Tiril Eckhoff climbed from 24th place to just outside the top 10 after a single lap.

Halfway through the second lap, Kuzmina was able to catch up to Vitkova, 17 seconds behind Dahlmeier, and another 20 in front of Braisaz and Olsbu. Arriving at the shooting range for the second round of shooting prone, the lead of Dahlmeier was decreased to only 10 seconds to Kuzmina and 20 seconds to Vitkova. With the leader missing her first shot in Pyeongchang, after remaining faultless in the shorter event, there was an opportunity to catch up and take the lead. However, both Kuzmina and Vitkova also missed a single target, and suffered the same fate of a penalty round of 150 metres. Braisaz, who was the first chaser behind the three, missed two of her shots, just like Olsbu. This meant that Dahlmeier still retained her lead, and was now only 9 seconds in front of Kuzmina, and 12 seconds in front of Cadurisch. Another 14 seconds behind Cadurisch were Bescond and Vitkova as the only other athletes within 50 seconds of Dahlmeier. Hinz had the second-fastest lap of skiing, behind Kuzmina, and was able to go from 12th place to 7th, just behind Dorin Habert.

Almost halfway through the race, Dahlmeier lost the lead for the very first time in the event, but she was able to hang on to her challenger. Bescond was 20 seconds behind them, and tried to accelerate away from Cadurisch. The leaders arrived at the shooting range for the first standing round of shooting around the same time, but Kuzmina lost valuable time by missing two of her shots, while Dahlmeier hit all five. The athletes immediately chasing them did not fare much better either, with Cadurisch missing three out of five and Bescond also missing once. This lead Dahlmeier to lead with a new 38 seconds over Kuzmina and 50 seconds over Vitkova. Bescond was the only other athlete to stay within a minute of Dahlmeier, followed by Olsbu, Vittozzi, Oeberg, and Herrmann, with two laps to go.

Kuzmina was not really able to close the gap to Dahlmeier, only winning 3 seconds in the entire lap. However, the pressure on Dahlmeier was still high, with any mistake being able to make a huge dent in that lead. Continuing her excellent shooting in Pyeongchang, she shot without mistakes once again, leaving the range just as Kuzmina arrived. With Kuzmina also missing her first shot, the gold medal seemed secured for Dahlmeier. However, with that miss, the battle for the remaining medals was on. Bescond was faultless, while Vitkova missed twice, leaving the battle for silver between Kuzmina and Bescond, especially after their first chasers Olsbu and Oeberg were over 30 seconds behind. Domracheva, one of the pre-event favorites, saw her chances fade definitively after missing four times out of the last five shots.

The last lap seemed to be like a victory lap for Dahlmeier, who even almost lapped Dunja Zdouc and Emilia Yordanova. However, behind her, the race for silver was very close, with Kuzmina and Bescond staying within a second of each other throughout the last lap, over 40 seconds behind the leader. In the final sprint, Kuzmina narrowly took silver, by only two-tenths of a second in front of Bescond, with another sprint for fourth place between Olsbu and Oeberg, the former taking the win of the two, 10 seconds before Herrmann finished. Vitkova finished seventh, with Lena Haecki taking eighth place. Eckhoff and Mona Brorsson completed the top 10. None of the competitors remained without misses in shooting, with only six out of 58 having a single miss. Uliana Kaisheva received a penalty of 2 minutes after she did not complete her penalty loops after missing one or several shots. Valj Semerenko and Megan Tandy had not started the race.

Laura Dahlmeier won her second Olympic title in the second event in Pyeongchang, after she also won the sprint event a few days prior. Anastasiya Kuzmina won her fourth (individual) medal at the Olympic Games, and her second silver medal in the pursuit event, after winning one in Vancouver. Anais Bescond took her first Olympic medal, after she narrowly missed the podium in the individual event in 2014 and the sprint event in 2014, both finishing 5th. Marte Olsbu just missed her second Olympic medal, after winning a silver medal at her Olympic debut in the sprint event earlier in the week, while Hanna Oeberg reached her best result out of the two events.

Result	Athlete	Nationality	Misses	Time
	Laura Dahlmeier	Germany	1	30:35.3
	Anastasiya Kuzmina	Slovakia	4	31:04.7
	Anais Bescond	France	1	31:04.9
4	Marte Olsbu	Norway	4	31:42.6
5	Hanna Oeberg	Sweden	3	31:44.2
6	Denise Herrmann	Germany	2	31:54.7
7	Veronika Vitkova	Czech Republic	3	32:12.6
8	Lena Haecki	Switzerland	3	32:16.8
9	Tiril Eckhoff	Norway	5	32:23.1
10	Mona Brorsson	Sweden	1	32:29.8
11	Lisa Vittozzi	Italy	4	32:34.6
12	Franziska Hildebrand	Germany	3	32:36.5
13	Vanessa Hinz	Germany	4	32:41.4
14	Nadezhda Skardino	Belarus	1	32:42.7
15	Dorothea Wierer	Italy	5	32:48.4
16	Irene Cadurisch	Switzerland	4	32:52.8
17	Iryna Kryuko	Belarus	2	32:54.0
18	Vita Semerenko	Ukraine	4	32:54.4
19	Rosanna Crawford	Canada	2	33:03.0
20	Galina Vishnevskaya	Kazakhstan	1	33:05.9
21	Linn Persson	Sweden	3	33:21.7
22	Kaisa Makarainen	Finland	6	33:22.2
23	Jessica Jislova	Czech Republic	3	33:24.3
24	Anais Chevalier	France	5	33:28.0
25	Marketa Davidova	Czech Republic	6	33:29.8
26	Johanna Talihaerm	Estonia	4	33:34.7
27	Marie Dorin Habert	France	7	33:37.8
28	Julia Ransom	Canada	1	33:38.3
29	Elisabeth Hoegberg	Sweden	2	33:45.1
30	Weronika Nowakowska	Poland	2	33:46.2
31	Tatiana Akimova	Olympic Athletes from Russia	4	33:50.8
32	Eva Puskarcikova	Czech Republic	3	33:53.8
33	Baiba Bendika	Latvia	3	33:59.4
34	Justine Braisaz	France	7	34:08.0
35	Elisa Gasparin	Switzerland	5	34:11.2
36	Krystyna Guzik	Poland	4	34:24.3
37	Darya Domracheva	Belarus	6	34:26.8
38	Paulina Fialkova	Slovakia	8	34:33.6
39	Selina Gasparin	Switzerland	5	34:40.2
40	Katharina Innerhofer	Austria	5	34:41.2
41	Synnoeve Solemdal	Norway	4	34:45.5
42	Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold	Norway	4	34:56.8
43	Monika Hojnisz	Poland	4	35:05.6
44	Nadzeya Pisareva	Belarus	3	35:10.3
45	Zhang Yan	China	3	35:16.7
46	Anastasiya Merkushyna	Ukraine	5	35:30.4
47	Emily Dreissigacker	United States	4	35:36.7
48	Nicole Gontier	Italy	7	35:37.6
49	Magdalena Gwizdon	Poland	5	36:07.0
50	Anna Frolina	South Korea	8	36:14.2
51	Anja Erzen	Slovenia	7	36:22.6
52	Uliana Kaisheva	Olympic Athletes from Russia	5	36:33.6
53	Emma Lunder	Canada	4	36:52.1
54	Sari Furuya	Japan	5	37:02.1
55	Emilia Yordanova	Bulgaria	6	37:04.3
56	Fuyuko Tachizaki	Japan	7	37:07.9
57	Darya Klimina	Kazakhstan	8	38:00.0
58	Dunja Zdouc	Austria	8	38:39.1
-	Valj Semerenko	Ukraine	DNS
-	Megan Tandy	Canada	DNS