January 07, 2012 (Oberhof, Germany) – Local German star Magdalena Neuner topped the field with perfect shooting to claim the women’s 7.5km sprint to the delight of 18,000 fans in Oberhof, Germany on Friday as conditions improved with clear skies.

Neuner had a comfortable margin over Darya Domracheva (Belarus) who suffered one penalty finishing 37.3 seconds behind. Domracheva challenged Neuner after the first prone shooting range where both shot perfectly, but a miss by the Belarus biathlete in the final standing range gave the German the win. In third was Olga Zaitseva of Russia who also shot clean to finish at 43.4 seconds behind Neuner.

The top North American performance came from Susan Dunklee (USA) tied for 35th, while Sara Studebaker (USA) finished 56th, Megan Heinicke (CAN) placed 64th, and Annalies Cook (USA) was 76th.

“I really enjoyed racing in front of such an energizing crowd. The fans here help carry you up the Bergsteig,” said Dunklee. “My shooting was solid today, although I struggled with a jammed bullet in prone. Coming off a long break, I’m satisfied with this result as a launching off place for the next phase of the season.”

Meanwhile Heinicke was the lone Canadian racing. “She is living in Germany right now so did that race while the rest of our team is planned to leave this weekend for WC5 in Czech Republic this coming week,” Joanne Thomson Executive Director of Biathlon Canada told us.

Neuner was happy with her victory telling Biathlonworld.com, “It was important for me to delete that last race (relay). In biathlon, you have good and bad days, and today I just pushed that delete button and had a great day.”

Men’s Sprint
With snow falling heavy at times, Germany’s Arnd Peiffer gave local fans even more to cheer about as he ran down Simon Fourcade (France), who also had a perfect day on the range, with half a kilometre to go to claim his fifth World Cup victory in 25:57.5 winning by just over a second. Peiffer had one penalty but skied tenaciously for the win.Third went to Russia’s Evegeny Ustyugov, the Vancouver 2010 Olympic 15km mass start champ.

Lukas Hofer (ITA) was the early race leader after shooting clean but succumbed to Ustyugov who also shot clean and overtook his Italian rival. The France’s Fourcade pounced to take over the lead but was unable to fend off Peiffer who was determined to give the Oberhof fans what they wanted.

The USA’s Jay Hakkinen suffered only one penalty to finish 28th but his teammates had a tougher day on the range with Tim Burke missing three shots to place 36th, Lowell Bailey missing four shots to end up 45th, and Leif Nordgren was 70th with three penalties.

“It was a rough day as shooting didn’t go so well for our team,” said U.S. Biathlon High Performance Director Bernd Eisenbichler. “It was just one of those days you have in biathlon. We will move on and go to Nové Mesto (CZE) with fresh power, and we know we can be up there as we showed in December.”

Women 7.5 km Sprint results HERE.
Men’s 10km Sprint results HERE.