ANTERSELVA, Italy \u2014 In an upset for the French men\u2019s biathlon team, Martin Ponsiluoma of Sweden dominated on the shooting range Sunday to take the gold medal in the 12.5-kilometer pursuit biathlon race at the Milan Cortina Winter Games, while Norwegian biathlete Sturla Holm Laegreid won silver \u2014 six days after making an unexpected personal confession during a post-race interview.<\/p>\n
Emilien Jacquelin of France led the field coming into the last shooting stage, after cleaning his targets using his characteristic but risky rapid fire technique. But the speed got the best of him and he missed two, allowing Ponsiluoma, who hit all his targets, to exit the range first. Laegreid also cleared his targets and left the range in second place, leaving Jacquelin with bronze.<\/p>\n
Ponsiluoma, winning the first medal in biathlon for Sweden in these Winter Games, crossed the finish line with a time of 31 minutes and 11.9 seconds. Laegreid was 20.6 seconds behind him while Jacquelin was 29.7 seconds back.<\/p>\n
The Swede said he feared getting caught on the last lap.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was really afraid of the chasers,\u201d he said. \u201cI was nervous, but I felt (safe) on the last part of the loop, so I just tried to enjoy it. Doing this at the Olympics is really big. I\u2019m super proud of the race today. I did everything I wanted: I was skiing really fast, shooting fast, the focusing was amazing. So, it was my day today.\u201c<\/p>\n
Laegreid said he took the race one step at a time.<\/p>\n
\u201cSki one meter at a time. Shoot one shot at a time. Do my best with what I can right now and, in the end, we can count the results,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
At the post-race press conference, Laegreid applauded Jacquelin\u2019s aggressive tactics and the two men addressed comments both have made in the media this week.<\/p>\n
Laegreid drew national attention on Tuesday after the men\u2019s individual race when during an tearful interview with Norwegian television, he revealed on camera that he had been unfaithful \u201cto the love of my life\u201d in an apparent attempt to win her back. He released a statement the following day, saying he regretted sharing his personal story, which detracted from teammate Johan-Olav Botn \u2018s gold medal.<\/p>\n
After Friday\u2019s sprint race when Laegreid finished third and Jacquelin fourth, the Frenchman joked to VG Sport that he \u201cwas beaten by an unfaithful guy,\u201d and vowed to strike back during the pursuit race.<\/p>\n
When asked about it on Sunday, Jacquelin said he says what he thinks, but that may not always be wise.<\/p>\n
He said after he saw Laegreid\u2019s interview, he felt sad for him \u201cbecause honesty sometimes is not the best thing in our society. Sometimes we should say nothing. In a way you can think what you want. Is it good or not. It\u2019s on your mind what you think. But having honesty and say what you say, what I say after the sprint, it\u2019s part of a duel.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said they have since discussed it and \u201ceverything is fine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Laegreid said he took Jacquelin\u2019s comment \u201cwith a sense of humor.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course we talked about it later when I met him at the hotel and there was no hard feelings but even though we had squared up I think he used it a bit for energy today,\u201d Laegreid said. \u201cFor him to be in the mode he was today, if this was what he needed and then attacking like he doing it is for me really impressive.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I told him after the race, the way he attacked today, the way he was giving a show was really honorable to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n
Olympic biathlon pursuit champion Quentin Fillon Maillet, having won the sprint race days before, started off 14 seconds ahead of the field, but missed three shots during his two prone shooting stages, dropping him down to eighth place. He finished seventh, 1:13.5 behind the Swede.<\/p>\n
The pursuit biathlon start list is based on how the racers finished in the previous sprint race, with the sprint winner going off first, and all others starting in the seconds-back order based on their sprint finish. Biathletes must ski a 150-meter penalty lap for each missed target.<\/p>\n
Bellisle writes for the Associated Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ANTERSELVA, Italy \u2014 In an upset for the French men\u2019s biathlon team, Martin Ponsiluoma of Sweden dominated on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[79173,83417,1043,83418,48,52,51,3556,47,50,49,63,100,6213,36690,83419,46429,83416,83414,83415,42022],"class_list":{"0":"post-179120","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-competitor","9":"tag-consecutive-gold-medal","10":"tag-event","11":"tag-halfpipe","12":"tag-la","13":"tag-la-headlines","14":"tag-la-news","15":"tag-live-update","16":"tag-los-angeles","17":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","18":"tag-los-angeles-news","19":"tag-los-angeles-times","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-status","22":"tag-switzerland","23":"tag-torn-labrum","24":"tag-total-number","25":"tag-training-run","26":"tag-u-s-athlete","27":"tag-winter-games","28":"tag-winter-olympics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}