Emma Lunder of Vernon used her passing gear to finish in the faster half of the order in Sunday’s BMW IBU World Cup women’s pursuit.
Lunder, 29, the veteran of the Canadian women’s team, started the 60-skier race 36th out of the gate and ended up 26th, after shooting 17-for-20 in four trips to the range in Hochfilzen, Austria.
Sprint winner Marte Olsbu Roeisland of Norway held the lead for the entire 10-kilometre race for her second World Cup win and fourth medal this season. Roeisland had two missed targets and crossed the finish in 29:04.6, 13.9 seconds ahead of second-place Dzinara Alimbekeva of Belarus, who shot clean. Julia Simon of France (2+1+0+0, +17.8) took bronze.
Lunder finished 2:26.6 off the winning pace. In other Canadian results, Sarah Beaudry of Prince George placed 50th with six missed targets (2+2+1+1, +4:44.9) and Megan Bankes of Calgary was 58th (2+2+2+3, 7:08.3).
Meanwhile, in the men’s 4 X7.5km relay, the battle of North America came down to a sprint for the finish and Canada’s Christian Gow got there one-tenth of a second ahead of American Jake Brown of Minnesota to claim 14th place.
Canada (Jules Burnotte of Sherbrooke, Que., Scott Gow of Canmore, Adam Runnalls of Calgary and Christian Gow) went penalty-free at the range and ended up 2:48.6 behind the pace-setting Swedes and just ahead of the 15th place Americans.
Sweden (Peppe Femling, Jesper Nelin, Martin Ponsiluoma, Sebastian Samuellson), the silver medalists in the relay a week ago in Finland, won gold in 1:16:31.5, edging Norway by 5.7 seconds. Germany (+44.1) captured bronze.
The World Cup tour resumes this week in Hochfilzen with sprints on Thursday (men) and Friday (women), followed by the pursuits (Saturday) and mass start races (Sunday).
After the Christmas break the tour will stop in Oberhof, Germany for two weeks (Jan. 4-17).
