December 8, 2007 (Hochfilzen, Austria) – Ole Einar Bjoerndalen of Norway and Sandrine Bailly of France each cruised to victory Saturday in biathlon World Cup pursuit races by half a second in Hochfilzen, Austria.

Bjoerndalen was immense, building such a lead – between the 10km sprint Friday and the early stages of the pursuit – that even missing five shots didn’t threaten his lead. He finished, despite the five misses, with a time of 34:57.3.

Russian Dmitri Yaroshenko, who defeated Bjoerndalen a week ago in the pursuit at Kontiolahti, Finland, also had five misses but held onto second place. His time was 28.7 seconds back. Third place went to German Daniel Graf, who shot clean.

Semi-ageless, 38-year-old Norwegian Halvard Hanevold was fourth – also shooting clean – while Carl Johan Bergman of Sweden was fifth.

Canadian Jean-Philippe Leguellec was 27th while Lake Placid’s Lowell Bailey was 48th and Alaskan Jeremy Teela 49th. In the pursuit, the field is chopped to 60 from the sprint, and those survivors race a 12.5km course.

Leguellec was 23rd Friday in the 10km sprint, qualifying for his first World Cup pursuit. “This was a really good day considering it was my first pursuit. I had no pressure at all and my goal was just to hang back, follow the pace and see how it’s done. I built up my objective as the race went on.”

He skied well but was fooled by the wind in his first trip to the shooting range, and missed two shots in the prone position. After completing the next two 2.5km laps and shooting clean in the range, LeGuellec missed one shot in his final set of shots standing before dashing to the finish line. Athletes complete the 2.5-kilometre course five times, and enter the range between each leg shooting twice in prone position and two more times while standing.

“This race can be won and lost in the final two sets of shots standing because you are so tired so it becomes easy to miss. The pursuit is really a hybrid between a sprint race and an individual start because you don’t want to go too hard right away so you don’t run out of energy at the end,” LeGuellec added.

Bailly missed her final shot but it didn’t matter as she rolled to victory a time of 31:37.8 with Ekaterina Iourieva of Russia second, 31.4 second back. Kati Wilhelm of Germany was another second off the pace. No Canadian or U.S. women competed.

The second stop on the biathlon World Cup tour concludes Sunday with the relays – men’s 4×7.5km and women’s 4×6 km.

Full results here.