February 15, 2008 (Oestersund, Sweden) – Ekaterina Iourieva of Russia shot clean and rolled to the gold medal by more than a minute in the 15km individual race Thursday at the Biathlon Worlds. Norway’s Emil Hegle Svendsen won the men’s 20km while Ole Einar Bjoerndalen completed his medals hat trick, finishing third.

Top North American results were posted by Tim Burke, who was 29th of 110 skiers in the men’s 20km, while Caitlin Compton survived four missed shots to finish 37th in the women’s field of 93.

One day after high winds forced a one-day delay in the women’s race, Iourieva was the lone woman not to miss a shot in the intermittent, gusting winds. She finished in 44:23.8 with German Martina Glagow as silver medalist (45:37.1) with Ukraine’s Oksana Khvostenko third (46:48.2). For the third time at these championships, Tora Berger of Norway finished fourth, this time 4.1 seconds off the podium.

Compton’s time was 51:44.1 with teammates Lanny Barnes 49th, Laura Spector 62nd and Haley Johnson 78th. Megan Imrie had the best Canadian performance, finishing 51st with Sandra Keith 63rd, Zina Kocher 69th and Megan Tandy 70th.

Svendsen, who missed a shot in his first standing stage, finished with a time of 51:51.9, putting him 31.4 seconds ahead of Bjoerndalen. It was Bjoerndalen’s third medal of the championships to go along with his pursuit gold and sprint bronze.

The winner, shrugging off any reference to being “the next Bjoerndalen,” said he was “overwhelmed” at the finish. “I just kept going and going on the track and didn’t allow myself to think about the victory,” he said. “I really concentrated on the race, used my head very hard – that’s why I won today.

Bjoerndalen called it “fantastic” that Svendsen had won. “It’s no problem for me to be No. 2 in a competition when another Norwegian is No. 1.”

Compton, who only witched to biathlon last summer – and didn’t get her rifle until September, said her range times (in her second World Cup race) were slow, but having just one penalty in her last two stages made up for most of it. “When I finished the final stage, I looked just to make sure that I was looking at the right target,” she said.

The schedule calls for another day off Friday and then a final weekend of action with men’s and women’s relays and mass starts.

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