March 05, 2010 (Canmore, Alberta) – Day two of the Canadian Biathlon Championships had more fast-paced action, with racers on course nearly all day long, competing in the women’s 15km and men’s 20km individual distance races. Unlike Wednesday’s sprint event, the individual race has four rounds of shooting vs two, and no penalty loop – instead, each miss adds a full minute to a racer’s time, so shooting becomes very important.

The women were out first, and Sarah Murphy, the “Caniwi”, (she lives in Canmore but races for New Zealand) had a difficult time in the range after her first lap, missing two prone targets, but they were her only misses allowing her to claim 1st. As Murphy races for New Zealand she isn’t eligible to win a medal as these are Canadian National Championships.

Alberta’s Melanie Schultz with three misses finished in 2nd while veteran skier , Zina Kocher, looking to improve on her 7.5km sprint performance, took the early lead with fast ski times and a clean first round of shooting, but had difficulty towards the end, missing 4 of 5 targets on her final trip through the range. With six total misses, Kocher was forced to settle with 3rd. Both Megans (Tandy and Imrie) opted not to race, instead focusing on recovering from an exhausting run at the Olympics in preparation for Saturday’s pursuit race. Fourth place went to Quebec’s Claude Godbout.

Murphy was extremely pleased with her performance. Having just returned from Whistler, where she represented New Zealand in her first Olympics, she had this to say about the individual race: “It’s great being back racing at home. I love that everyone cheers so hard for me, even though I race for New Zealand. Today’s was an awesome race. It would have been nice to have this race at the Olympics, but I guess you can’t have everything.” Murphy, who spent much of this season racing on the World Cup and IBU circuits, won’t get much rest yet.   She leaves Sunday for two more World Cup spots in Europe, along with a yet to be decided contingent of Canadians.

The men raced in the afternoon, and were forced to contend with the same transforming conditions the women faced in the sprint event.  By the 1:30 start time, the course had softened significantly, and skis were running much slower.  Again with the men,  Robin Clegg, arguably one of the strongest competitors, took a commanding early lead. He skied fast and shot clean through his firs round and missed only one target in his second, but on the third round Clegg ran into trouble and missed 4 of 5 prone targets, for combined penalty of 6 minutes. Shooting is immensely important in the individual race, as the results proved. Second place finisher Patrick Cote missed four standing targets and race winner Nathan Smith missed three.  Were it not for the missed targets, all three men would have finished within 20 seconds of each other.

After the race, Clegg was disappointed, but put it in perspective, saying he had considered not racing, as some of the other men had opted to sit out in preparation for the Saturday’s pursuit.  He decided to race, he said, because “these will be my last races, so I wanted to do them all.”   With Friday an official training day, Clegg is confident that Saturday’s event will be better for him.