Biathlete Sarah Beaudry of Prince George skied and shot Canada into the top-10 Thursday at the Olympics in Pyeongchang.
Canada finished 10th, 1:33.4 behind the gold medalists from Belarus. Sweden took silver and France claimed the bronze medal.
On a blustery, snowy evening at the Alpensia Biathlon Centre, the 23-year-old Beaudry took the lead leg of the women’s 4X6-kilometre relay, shot clean in her prone shooting bout and got through her standing shooting bout penalty-free after using three spare rounds.
Canada was in 15th place by the time Beaudry tagged Julia Ransom of Kelowna, but was not that far behind at the first exchange, 1:10:02 behind the leaders from Italy at that stage. Ransom cleaned her prone shooting, used three spares while standing and avoided any penalties, moving up to 10th place when she made the tag in the stadium with Emma Lunder of Vernon.
The wind continued to gust and Lunder left one prone target up and was forced to ski a penalty loop. But she shot clean in her standing shooting session without using any spare rounds and had Canada in 13th place when she tagged Rosanna Crawford of Canmore, Alta., a veteran of two other Olympics. Crawford used one spare in her prone bout and one while standing and passed three skiers on the anchor leg to finish 10th out of 18 teams. Canada used 11 spare rounds.
Belarus (Nadezhda Skardino, Iryna Kryuko, Dzinara Alimbekava and Darya Domracheva) took the lead from Poland after Domracheva cleaned her prone shooting and she held it the rest of the race, stopping the clock in 1:12:03.4. They used nine spares.
Sweden (Linn Persson, Mona Brorsson, Anna Magnusson and Hanna Oeberg) also went penalty-free, using 12 spares, and finished 10.7 seconds off the winning pace. France (Anais Chevalier, Marie Dorin Habert, Justine Braisaz and Anais Bescond) also avoided penalties, using 14 spares, to finish third, 17.6 seconds behind.
Canada’s men’s team (Brendan Green of Hay River, N.W.T., Nathan Smith of Calgary, and Canmore brothers Scott and Christian Gow will start in the fourth row in Friday’s 4X7.5 km relay. The race starts at 3:15 a.m. PT Friday.
