December 14, 2014 December 14, 2014 (Hochfilzen, Austria) – Canada’s Rosanna Crawford nailed a career-best 5th place finish with only one penalty in four rounds of shooting in the women’s 10km pursuit IBU World Cup in Hochfilzen, Austria on Sunday.

Rosanna Crawford © Nordic Focus

Starting in 34th the two-time Olympian had huge ground to make up and fed off confidence gained from a strong day of shooting and good skiing in the previous day’s relay. She finished 7s off the podium as Finland’s Kaisa Makarainen took the win also with one missed target while Russia’s Ekaterina Glazyrina was second at 34.4 (1 penalty) and Anais Bescond (France) rounded out the podium in third at 46.5 also with one penalty.

“Today was a great day. Good, quick shooting really helped me today,” said Crawford, whose previous best was an eighth place finish. She also has an historic finished fourth place finish with her teammates in a World Cup relay last year.

Rosanna Crawford © Nordic Focus

“It was too bad that Friday’s skiing wasn’t that good, because I had a lot of work to do today. I felt much better than in the sprint, but hitting 10 for 10 yesterday in the relay really gave me confidence going into today’s race,” said Crawford. “My skis were great today. Our wax techs did a really good job and I can’t thank them and the coaches enough.”

“This summer was a really good period of training, and I felt like I made some big gains,” said Crawford, whose sister Chandra won Olympic gold in cross-country skiing in 2006. “I knew after last weekend that a podium is definitely a possibility. I’ve been building off each race and gaining more confidence each week.”

The USA’s Susan Dunklee finished 27th with four penalties while teammate Annelies Cook had a strong day, hitting 18 of 20 targets and moving up 17 positions from the start to place 33rd.

Susan Dunklee © Nordic Focus

In the men’s 12.5km pursuit the USA’s Tim Burke was the top North American finishing 25th with 5 penalties while his teammate Lowell Bailey was 32nd with 4 penalties. Nathan Smith was the lone Canadian finishing 49th with two missed targets.

Martin Fourcade (France) shot clean to win the men’s race with a time of 32:53.7 besting Germany’s Simon Schempp who also hit all targets to take the silver at 4.1s behind. Slovenia’s Jakov Fak also cleaned to take the final podium spot at 10.9s behind the winner.

Women’s results here.
Men’s results here.