March 14, 2014 (Kontiolahti, Finland) – Canada’s Rosanna Crawford lead the North Americans in the women’s 7.5km sprint at the penultimate round of the IBU World Cup in Kontiolahti, Finland on March 13 finishing 13th with one penalty at 1:05.8 behind winner Kaisa Makarainen (FIN) with a time of 20:36.3/+1. Rounding out the podium was clean shooting Olga Zaitseva (RUS) at 6.1s in second with Mari Laukkanen (FIN), also shooting clean, in third at 22.7s.

Crawford’s teammate Megan Heinicke was close behind in 15th also with one penalty at 1:11.8 while fellow Canuck Zina Kocher was 23rd suffering two penalties at 1:31.1 behind.

Hannah Dreissigacker lead the Americans placing 28th for her top career World Cup result with teammate Susan Dunklee in 29th (22:15.2/+4), Annelies Cook in 75th (24:22.1/+5) and Sara Studebaker finishing 80th (25:18.9/+6).

“I’m psyched about today’s race, especially the shooting, since I have been joking that I have a “curse” when it comes to shooting badly in sprint races,” said Dreissigacker. “Keeping a good focus for the shooting was my biggest goal for today’s race, and I think that went well. I’m really happy to have finally scored my first World Cup points!

“I’ve known that I could do it for quite a while, but it just kept not coming together. It feels really good that it finally did. Now I hope to score points more often. I may have not paced the skiing quite right, and I felt like I died on the last lap, but luckily there is another sprint in two days so I can get that better in the next one.”

Finland’s Makarainen was on fire on home turf in front of a packed stadium and while Norway’s Tora Berger took the early lead the Finnish star claimed the gold despite a challenge by Zaitseva who had the gold but couldn’t hold it during the last lap to take second.

Full results here.