December 10, 2010 (Hochfilzen, Austria) – Tarjei Boe (Nor) and Anastasiya Kuzmina (Svk) battled tough snowy conditions to shoot clean and win the men’s 10km and women’s 7.5m sprints respectively while the USA’s Tim Burke was 23rd and Sara Studebaker in 26th scored her personal best. Canada’s Jean-Philippe Le Guellec was not far behind Burke in 27th.

Boe kept the Norwegian streak alive with fast skiing despite the snow to claim his first World Cup win. “I think I took another step this summer; no illness and very good training. I am quite confident now,” he commented. “I was pretty lucky in the first two laps, but in the third loop, it started to snow really hard. I thought that I would lose the victory because of that. Then I increased my lead from 20 to 25 seconds and knew that I could handle the conditions.”

Burke had two misses as the conditions took their toll. “If I would have started in the first group I definitively would have been one minute faster, but I had such heavy snowfall while I was on my laps that the skiing was really tough today,” said Burke. “It was an unfair race since those starting in the first group definitively had an advantage. For the ones behind it was tough both on the range and on the tracks.”

Conditions during the women’s race weren’t that much better as the heavy snowfall continued but didn’t influence the results as much as under the men’s race. For Studebaker it was a memorable day. “I am really happy with my race especially since it was so hard today. Of course it got a bit slower at the end but I wouldn’t say it was awful,” she said post race.

“For me it was especially nice to clean standing since I had some troubles during training this week. The approach to the shooting range is really hard here so I really focused on that today. After the stomach problems in Östersund it was also nice to be able to show some “normal” skiing again,” she added.

Laura Spector in 55th will join Studebaker in the women’s pursuit on Sunday as the top 60 skiers advance. No Canadian women qualified for the pursuit as Zina Kocher was 62nd, Rosanna Crawford was 70th and Megan Imrie placed 80th (29:36.4).

The 25-year-old Le Guellec of Shannon, Que. squeaked into the top-30 missing one shot in each of his two trips to the range to place 27th. “I felt a lot better skiing today than I did last weekend, but feel doesn’t mean you actually go faster,” said Le Guellec.

Joining Le Guellec in Saturday’s pursuit with the fastest 60 athletes from the sprint will be Brendan Green, of Hay River, N.W.T., who finished in 35th at 30:19.7, and Calgary’s Nathan Smith who shot clean to finish in 54th with a time of 30:50.9. Regina’s Scott Perras was the only other Canadian in the men’s race and finished 92nd at 32:39.6.

For the USA Lowell Bailey, with one miss advances, along with Burke to race Saturday’s pursuit while team mates Leif Noedgren (70th), Jeremy Teela (89th) and Russell Currier (94th) were outside of the 60 skier limit.

Results

Women 7.5km Sprint
1. Anastasiya Kuzmina (Svk) 0+0, 25:30.6
2. Darya Domracheva (Blr) 0+1, +19.8
3. Kaisa Makarainen (Fin) 0+1, 25:54.4
4. Ann Kristin Aefedt Flatland (Nor) 0+1, +25.9
5. Helena Ekholm (Swe) 0+0, +28.0

26. Sara Studebaker (USA) 0+0, +1:59.6
55. Laura Spector (USA) 1+2, +2:58.9
62. Zina Kocher (Can) 2+0, +3:20.6
70. Rosanna Crawford (Can) 1+1, +3:34.6
80. Megan Imrie (Can) 0+4, +4:05.8

Men 10km Sprint
1. Tarjei Boe (Nor) 0+0, 28:17.6
2. Serguei Sednev (Ukr) 0+1, +27.5
3. Alexis Boeuf (Fra) 0+1, +33.3
4. Emil Hegle Svendsen (Nor), 1+1, +33.8, 28:51.4
5. Dominik Landertinger (Aut), 0+1, +41.8

23. Tim Burke (USA) 0+2, 1:28.7
27. Jean-Philippe Le Guellec (Can), 1+1, +1:41.4
35. Brendan Green (Can), 1+0, +2:02.1
54. Nathan Smith (Can) 0+0, +2:33.3
55. Lowell Bailey (USA) 0+1, +2:36.6
70. Leif Noedgren (USA) 2+2, +3:16.9
89. Jeremy Teela (USA) 0+4, +4:07.1
92. Scott Perras (Can) 2+2, +4:22.0
94. Russell Currier (USA) 3+4, +4:37.5