December 08, 2012 (Hochfilzen, AUT) – Norway’s Synnøve Solemdal claimed the first World Cup victory of her career while teammate Tora Berger was second in the women’s 10k Pursuit.  The 23-year-old Solemdal had one penalty and finished with a time of 31:13.4.  Berger with two penalties was 30.2 back. Third went to Kaisa Mäkäräinen of Finland who suffered four penalties and finished 33.3 seconds back.

Race conditions were near ideal, with overcast skies and light snow with a temperature of -6.8 °C and very little wind.  The difference today came in the final round of shooting, and Solemdal was perfect, while Mäkäräinen missed two shots, allowing the Norwegian to pull away and for Berger to take over 2nd place. A surprised Solemdal explained to biathlonworld.com “I have never hit more than 18 targets and today I hit 19. The standing targets looked so big today! I just do not know what happened.”

Solemdal was inspired by her teammates dominating performance last weekend in Oestersund, as Berger won three times in a row. “Just watching Tora last week win three times was a great inspiration,” added Solemdal. “This summer, I trained very hard and watched Tora and tried to copy what she did.”

Top North American today was Canada’s Rosanna Crawford.  Crawford has had a career-best race weekend, finishing 24th in yesterday’s Sprint and 25th in today’s Pursuit.

“I am very happy with this weekend.  I’ve worked really hard this summer and it’s great to be able to make the top-30,” Crawford told SkiTrax.  “Today was by far one of the most fun I’ve had racing. I’ve never really done a pursuit where there was people around me because I was always fighting for last place so this was great to be able to ski with a pack and move up.”

With these solid results, Crawford anticipates spending the rest of the season on the World Cup circuit and plans to race the World Championships in Nove Mesto this February.

Fellow Canadian Megan Heinicke was not far behind, finishing in 29th place, which pleased Crawford.  “It’s exciting to have both of us in the top 30 and making World Cup points. We know our team is really strong and Zina [Kocher] had great races last weekend,” said Crawford.

Americans Sara Studebaker and Susan Dunklee finished in 47th and 52nd place respectively in today’s Pursuit.  “Today’s race was fun.  There were so many people out in such a short amount of time that I was skiing with a big group for most of the race,” said Studebaker in a team release.

“I felt pretty solid skiing and was happy to move up a little in the placing with decent shooting.  We’re all really looking forward to tomorrow’s relay – we’ve had really good team spirit the last couple weeks, so it will be nice to use that towards a good result!”

Racing in Hochfilzen continues Sunday with the Men’s 4×7.5 km Relay and the Women’s Women 4×6 km Relay.

Full results here.