February 15, 2018 (PyeongChang, South Korea) – The USA’s Susan Dunklee took home a top-20 result finishing 19th with two penalties in the Olympic women’s 15-kilometer individual race won by clean-shooting surprise winner, Hanna Oeberg of Sweden, who earned her first career victory and podium. The race originally scheduled on the previous day was postponed due to high winds.

Anastasiya Kuzmina of Slovakia, with two penalties, won her second silver medal of these Games at 24.7 seconds back. Sprint and pursuit double gold medalist Laura Dahlmeier of Germany claimed the bronze medal at 41.2 seconds behind Oeberg with one penalty.

American Joanne Reid also had a strong day finishing 22nd with just one penalty while Canada’s Rosanna Crawford was 26th  suffering two penalties. Her teammate Sarah Beaudry delivered a strong 29th place finish at her debut Games with one penalty as Emma Lunder (Can) was 54th, Clare Egan (USA) was 62nd, Emily Dreissigacker (USA) finished 67th and Julia Ransom (CAN) was 74th.

“I’m so bummed about Saturday’s sprint,” said Dunklee. “But I think one of the things that biathlon does is train you how to be resilient and how to pick yourself up over and over again. It’s certainly not the first day that sort of thing has happened to me. Maybe the first day on a really big, big stage like this, but I think I’ve had lots of experience over the years for refocusing. You have to let yourself be sad for a few hours, but then you kind of have to set a deadline and say okay, by this time of day I’m going to start only allowing myself to focus on the positives again and move forward.”

Reid wasn’t initially scheduled to start the race but was inserted into the start list after teammate Maddie Phaneuf woke up Thursday morning with a sore throat.

“There was a lot less wind today and it’s a lot warmer which makes it easier on the hands for shooting,” said Reid in explaining her turnaround. “I’ve actually been shooting really well in practice so I thought if I can just execute that when I came in for each bout, I had a chance at doing fairly well.”

“Today was a lot calmer during the race, we had some wind during zero, and then it was pretty calm during the race. For my first prone I came in and corrected 2 right and then changed my mind and went back two left, and my misses were on the left. So pretty disappointed I didn’t trust my self. Happy to have hit 15/15 after that, but today could have been a really great day with 20/20. I was feeling confident and focused for shooting today.” said Crawford.

“Skiing wasn’t as great as my pursuit day, the 3km is a hard course here, but I had great skis and tried my best. Other than my first shooting I am really happy how I executed my self today. Right now I am the 2nd reserve for the Mass Start, so hopefully I will have one more chance this Saturday,” she added.

Beaudry was on cloud nine. “I was so stoked to be racing and so stoked to be able to put down a good performance when it mattered. I wouldn’t say I was too nervous on the start line being put in with less notice I just really wanted to enjoy the experience and I was so stoked I had the chance to race. I the last couple of weeks my prone has been off and on and yesterday was particularly bad but I had a good zero so I felt I had nothing to loose and just to really enjoy it.

“The course has some quite hard hills but nothing crazier then we would see at other venues. The techs did a great job on skis and the course conditions were hard. I tried to go into each shooting relaxed but confident. I find when I shot nervously or cautiously is when I miss. My one miss I definitely over though it. Being an early bib I didn’t know where I would end up once everybody had finished but I was getting splits in the top 7 and I knew I would have a solid race.

“Being the spare I didn’t have any goals because I didn’t even know if I would race. I wanted to have fun and live the games experience as well as being a really good teammate. So being able to race and then putting down my best individual and second best result ever I can’t complain,” shared the Canadian.-

Full results here.