Norway was back in the top in men’s 20km Biathlon at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics Thursday night. Johannes Thingnes Boe won the gold medal in a strong finish that gave him a lot of room for two errors holding off Jakov Fak of Slovenia who won silver and Austria’s Dominik Landertinger winning bronze.
Martin Fourcade stood as defending champion of the individual and tried to repeat despite the difficulty of putting up the best time where he would come out to start 23rd. Sochi silver medalist Erik Lesser started 18th with American Lowell Bailey getting a chance to challenge the best of the best going third. With four laps spanning four kilometers, taking penalty laps wouldn’t be necessary but each miss would dock a minute to their final time.
Norway’s Emil Hegle Svendsen who hadn’t yet made a mark at the Olympics came out 11th to come into the first shooting range perfectly. Lesser’s first time at the range was flawless using quick accuracy to come out 11 seconds behind the current lead. Fourcade’s first appearance at the range resulted in perfection as he took his time and came out a second ahead of his teammate Simon Desthieux. Germany’s Arnd Peiffer who won the sprint was perfect in his run, hoping to make a stab at another medal.
In the second round at the range, Svendsen added two minutes to his time that took a big hit to his quest for a spot on the podium. Desthieux also missed two targets that put him away with Fourcade standing as the main hope for France. Lesser missed one that put him behind Peiffer who focused to finish the standing shooting round perfectly. Fourcade was still flawless at the halfway point looking good to put pressure on the others who followed suit.
The pressure began to rise in the second half of the race as misses were becoming a huge factor to placing out of the medal standing. Peiffer became the first of the leaders to do so missing three in the third round. Fourcade was back for the prone section remaining totally focused to take his time and finish clean to rush into his third lap.
Doing well throughout the competition was Fredrik Lindstroem of Sweden who went perfectly through the first visits to the range before missing one. His attention to holding himself together while skiing quickly through the circuit had him knocking on the door to fight Fourcade for the gold. He came to the finish line with a time of 49:25.9 having missed only one target putting the Frenchman in a tense situation. Fourcade’s fourth shoot turned disastrous as he missed two opening the door for anyone to take it.
Boe overtook Lindstroem by 82 seconds missing twice through the race which had the 24 year old in control of first. Landertinger got himself into second with no misses that kept him in a great spot to keep the silver. The margin was still large for anyone to take silver or bronze and finishing five and a half seconds was Fak who didn’t miss any like the Austrian but gained the silver away from Landertinger.
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