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Biathlon World Championships 2016 - Men's Individual 20km race

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• published: 10 Mar 2016
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BMW IBU Biathlon World Championships 2016 - Men's Individual 20km race 10.03.2016, Oslo Fourcade Comeback for Gold Number Four One Penalty; Still the Winner Martin Fourcade of France came back from a penalty in the first standing stage, with an impressive skiing performance to win his fourth Gold medal in the men's 20K individual at the IBU World Championships today. His time of 49:13.9 put him 5.1 seconds ahead of the Silver medalist Dominik Landertinger of Austria who shot clean. His teammate Simon Eder won the Bronze medal, also shooting clean, 14.4 seconds back. Local favorite Johannes Thingnes Boe finished fourth, with one penalty, 57.2 seconds back. Fifth went to Michal Krcmar of Czech Republic, who also shot clean, 1:16.4 back. Jakov Fak of Slovenia, with one penalty finished sixth, 1:40.4 back. Fog, Then Gone Heavy early morning fog finally dissipated about 2 hours before the competition started, leaving partly cloudy skies of the longest and toughest competition in biathlon. Windless; Good Shooting The men took advantage of the great windless conditions right from the start with a lot of clean shooting. Clean shooting with an extremely fast first loop gave Fourcade a wide lead of 12.5 seconds ahead of Landertinger and Johannes and another 7 seconds on Eder. Johannes took charge in the first standing, nine seconds ahead of Landertinger. Fourcade's easy route to the podium was temporarily delayed with a one minute penalty. Yet his fast skiing saw him only 30 seconds away from the leading Norwegian. Three Stages Once they hit the second prone, the crowd was in a bit of a frenzy with each shot from the leaders. Landertinger cleaned, taking the lead, with his teammate Eder matching just over 3 seconds behind. Then Fourcade moved back into contention, from eighth to fourth with a clean stage. Johannes was up next and thrilled the fans with clean stage number three. Now the young Norwegian was fully in charge. Comeback and Victory However, there was that all important last standing stage to tackle. Landertinger cleaned as did Eder, taking a six second lead over his teammate. Then the drama effectively ended as Fourcade, cool and calm cleaned. He left just .3 seconds back. Johannes had a chance to spoil this party, but with a single penalty left 49 seconds back in fourth. Fourcade flew around the last loop, gaining bits and pieces of time with each meter, until he crossed in the top spot 5.1 seconds up on the field. That set the podium, with Fourcade, Landertinger, Eder and then Johannes fourth once again. Love for 20K Fourcade called the individual the competition that "I love so much...I have won 9 of the last 11 of them. What a day! This is an amazing feeling; the same as last year. The difference is that I only won the individual last year!" Eyes Closed He continued, "I knew after the last standing, that I was in a position to win. The coaches told me that Landi was only three seconds ahead; he lied, but I knew that Landi is strong and this would be a hard last kilometer. I had my eyes closed going up the last hill; there was so much pain. I gave everything I had, probably more!" On the chance of four individual medals, he added, "I told my coach this morning that I wanted to win to be in that position. Now I am." Two Medals for Austria Eder commented on the two Austrian medals, "Two medals; this might be the best day ever for Austria." He always shoots fast, but toned it down today. "I had a good mix between fast and safe shooting today...Winning an individual medal at the World Championships has been a big goal for me. I have been close before but today I have it. I think tonight I will truly realize what happened."