Norway’s greatest hope was Ingrid Landmark Tandrivold at Hochfilzen Thursday in the absence of Terrell Eckhoff and Mart Olsbo Roseland. However, the 26-year-old wasn’t the best Norwegian, it was Caroline Knuten.
The latter fired ten strokes, and finished a solid eighth. Tandrifold delivered a home run shooting while having one failure to stand, and finished 13th.
The victory went to Denise Herrmann-Wick, who, like Knotten, shot a full house. Marketa Davydova was second at 18.1 seconds, one behind. France’s Julia Simon took third place.
Lambique was very impressed
One of the riders feeling more excited in Thursday’s race was Slovenia’s Annamarija Lambic. She gave up cross-country skiing after last season and switched to biathlon.
Thursday’s sprint in Hochfilzen was her Biathlon World Cup debut, and she showed that she had come a long way indeed with a bag on her back.
Lambeck went really fast down the fairway, and somewhat surprisingly managed to shoot a full house on fire. And so I got into the lead.
– It was a wonderful false series by Lambik, as Ola Lunde boasted about the former cross-country runner.
She continued her high speed on the track, but while standing up, had more difficulty with her three counts. However, she crushed competitors on the track in the final round and finished fifth, 35.8 seconds behind Hermann Wicke, with three rounds of penalties.
– I am incredibly impressed with this race. That was really powerful, Solmdahl said of the Slovenian.
Lambek entered the fastest cross-country clear. The closest of the teams was Sweden’s Elvira Oberg, with a lead of 27 seconds. All Norwegians were more than a minute behind the newly minted athlete in the pure cross-country race.
Tough day, Leanne
Thus Knotten and Tandrevold became the best of the Norwegians at a gallop. For the rest of the Norwegians at first, things were different.
Emily Kalckenberg managed one miss, and finished 28th. For Ida Lien, it was a tough podium. She missed it three times while lying down, and was No. 39.
Caroline Erdal fired ten strokes, but she just didn’t really get the speed into the groove. She was 24th. Ragnhild Femstinevik was 47th and missed twice.
Thursday’s sprint is the starting point for starting the chase on Saturday. Before that time, the guys will go off on Friday.
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