March 08, 2015 (Kontiolahti, FIN) – Nathan Smith, who became the first Canadian man to win a medal at the Biathlon World Championships only 24 hours ago, was the top North American today in the men’s 10km Pursuit finishing 13th with five penalties.

Taking the win was Germany’s Erik Lesser, who shot shot clean, giving his country its first medals of the 2015 IBU World Championships. Russia’s Anton Shipulin finished with the silver medal, with one penalty, 17 seconds back, while Tarjei Boe of Norway claimed his third medal of the week in third place, 18.7 seconds back, also with one penalty.

Nathan Smith (CAN) © Nordic Focus

Smith’s teammate Brendan Green crossed the line about nine seconds later to finish 16th with only one penalty while Tim Burke was the top American finisher in 20th with four penalties.

“I definitely felt some fatigue from yesterday. Not really from the physical racing, just from having such an exciting day yesterday. I only got about 4 or 5 hours of sleep,” said Smith. “I knew it would be extremely tough to do a repeat of yesterday’s performance; not many athletes can do that.

“Although I absolutely wanted to do my best, I went into today’s race with a perspective that I really had nothing to lose.  By the time I got to the race start and did my pre-race routine things were feeling pretty much back to normal, which to be honest was a huge relief after 18 hours of so much adrenaline and excitement.”

Greatly improved conditions from Saturday greeted the racers for the men’s pursuit, with a slight breeze and some mist in the air. Burke, who started 15th made an early run at the medals with clean shooting moving up to sixth but he faltered with two misses in both standing stages.

“I went into the race today with a goal of being very aggressive,” Burke commented. “I knew that I needed a near-perfect race to move up into the top five. In the end I was just a little too aggressive in the standing stages and it cost me. The line of being aggressive, yet in control, is so fine and today I crossed the line. It was fun to be back in the mix with the top guys. I felt better today on the ski course and I think this is a good sign for the individual race.”

American Lowell Bailey was 36th with five penalties at 3:02 behind while Sean Doherty, 19, hit 17 of 20 targets to move up 10 spots from the start to place 45th and Leif Nordgren dropped six spots to place 51st with six penalties. Scott Gow (CAN) struggled a bit on the range, but held his own to finish 52nd with five penalties.

Full results here.