Anastasiya cruises to victory after shooting wobble
PYEONGCHANG: After two silver medal finishes in the pursuit and individual races, Slovakian biathlete Anastasiya Kuzmina finally got her gold at the Pyeongchang Olympics yesterday with a superb shooting performance in the women’s 12.5km mass start.
The 33year-old mother of two, who claimed back-toback sprint titles in the 7.5km event at Vancouver and Sochi, became the first woman to clinch biathlete golds in three successive Games, winning with a time of 35 minutes 23 seconds.
Belarusian triple Olympic champion Darya Domracheva grabbed silver, 18.8 seconds behind Kuzmina, while Norway’s Tiril Eckhoff took bronze.
“I expected to have the best chance in the gold medal for sprint here,” Anastasiya said.
“When this didn’t happen I was really sad and nervous before the next races. But it happened here... A different event from Vancouver and Sochi, so it’s an incredible feeling.”
With the 30 athletes split into 10 groups of three, Anastasiya started in the second row, battling for position all the way to the first shoot.
Her accuracy on the range laid the foundation for her victory, but despite showing nerves of steel on a chilly night, eventually even she got rattled.
Having built up a considerable lead, Anastasiya arrived at the fourth shoot and made her first four shots before taking a very long pause and then missing her final effort as the rest of the field skied in towards the range.
“In my career I never shoot clean four times, and today after three times zero, I was reaching for my last shooting, and I was worried about it,” she said.