Germany’s Magdalena Neuner claimed her second medal of the Vancouver Olympic Games, winning gold in the women’s 10km biathlon pursuit on Tuesday morning at Olympic Park.
Neuner, who won Germany’s first medal on Saturday narrowly losing to Slovak Anastazia Kuzmina in the 7.5km sprint to take home the silver medal, would hold off Kuzmina finishing 12.3 seconds ahead of her.
Kuzmina, who was coming off a historic performance on Saturday winning Slovakia’s first gold medal, lost a chance of being a two-time gold medalist.
The two favourites heading into the competition were neck in neck through the early going until the second stage of prone shooting where Neuner pulled away.
Not taking a penalty on the second stage while Kuzmina missed, would be all that Neuner needed, never losing the lead from that point.
France’s Marie Laure Brunet finished third with a time of 30:44.3. Brunet was a medal favourite coming into the Games and with the win she gave France its second bronze in women’s biathlon in Vancouver.
Prince George B.C. native Megan Tandy moved into 36th after starting 46th out of the 60 competitors. Tandy had a final time of 34:02.2 and used her pin point shooting to gain on the competition, moving higher in the standings after each shooting stage.
However, with her 36th place finish, Tandy missed the qualifying cut-off for the 12.5km biathlon mass start event, scheduled for Sunday.