Sweden’s Björn Ferry won the men’s Olympic 12.5 km biathlon pursuit on Tuesday in a time of 33:38.4.
Ferry was able to overcome a 72 second head start of bronze medalist Vincent Jay of France who finished 28.2 seconds behind the Swedish.
Jay had the head start because of his gold medal performance on Sunday in the 10 km sprint.
Austria’s Christoph Sumann claimed the silver medal, finishing 16.5 seconds short.
Lone Canadian, Jean-Philippe Le Guellec ended up in 11th place after suffering a 30 second penalty that dropped him five places.
Le Guellec left his start gate too early, causing him the penalty. He was originally supposed to leave the gate sixth after Ukraine’s Andriy Deryzemlya, but he left before the Ukrainian biathlete instead.
The penalty was especially costly for Le Guellec because he had put himself in good position for the majority of the race, climbing to as far as second place at one point in time.
The outcome of the race came down to the final shoot where Jay and Ferry had entered together with Sumann close behind.
All three men only missed one target in the shoot so they only had to circle the 150 m penalty loop once before continuing to the finish.
After the penalty loop, the three were way out in front, but Ferry was able to separate himself from Jay and Sumann because he had only missed one target the entire race, while Jay and Sumann had missed two – their other miss coming during shoot three.
Ferry’s gold medal is Sweden’s second overall.
