France won its historic first gold in this discipline, which has been in the ZOI program since 1968, with a time of 1:19:55.2, hitting 39 of the 40 targets for which they spent a total of 49 bullets.
The silver medal was won by the defending champions Norwegians in the composition of Martin Uldal, Johan-Olav Botn, Sturla Holm Laegreid and Vetle Sjaastad Christiansen with 9.8 seconds behind, although they shot much better at the shooting range, they hit all 40 targets with a total of 46 bullets spent, while the Swedes Viktor Brandt, Jesper Nelin, Martin Ponsiluoma and Sebastian Samuelsson reached the bronze medal with 57.5 seconds behind with the same time. performance on the shooting range like the Norwegians, i.e. 40 hits from 46 attempts.
France thus became only the fifth country with gold in the men’s relay race of biathletes in the 16 competitions held at the Winter Olympic Games so far, after the USSR, Germany, Norway and Sweden, and the very beginning of the race did not indicate such an outcome.
Namely, the first French runner Fabien Claude missed as many as four times in shooting from a standing position, so he had to go to the penalty circle of 150 meters, and after that second shooting, France was last, 46 seconds behind the leading Norway.
Jacquelin then became the hero of the race, who brought France back into the game with fast running and accurate shooting, and the mistakes of another Norwegian runner, Botn, who missed three times in a prone position, also helped.
Mistakes by the French and Norwegians in the first innings kept the Swedes in the race, so before the last innings those three national teams were level, but then the leading biathlete in the World Cup, Perrot, showed his class, separated himself from the competition and relatively easily in the last 2.5 kilometers maintained his advantage over the second Christiansen, while Samuelsson completely gave up after shooting in a prone position.
(Vijesti.ba)
