– It is a special situation to go out and hunt and I tried to stay calm and not stress and I succeeded well in that. I didn’t get anything for free in the track, but you have to fight for every meter, says Öberg to SVT Sport.
Elvira Öberg passed Switzerland and Bulgaria on the final stretch after a failure in the prone shooting.
In the first prone shooting on the first stretch, Anna Magnusson missed her first two shots and had to take extra shots. She was there twelve 31.5 seconds behind France’s fast-shooting Julia Simon who gained a gap of 15 seconds.
After the second standing shoot, Simon was still in the lead despite two extra shots. Magnusson had then advanced to fifth place 14.1 seconds behind the lead after full shooting.
Penalty round for Heijdenberg
In the second leg, the relay debutant Anna-Karin Heijdenberg burned her first four shots standing up and went on a penalty round.
– I had cold fingers and didn’t really feel the trigger, but of course I have to handle it better than that, but in any case I put the extra shots so somewhere there is luck in the bad luck, says Heijdenberg.
– It is respect that she puts the three extra shots because it was close to a total failure and it was only one round, says expert Björn Ferry.
Lying hit in standing by Halvarsson
Sweden finished seventh 54 seconds behind the lead after the second shooting. By the change before the third stage, the distance had grown to 1.18 and eighth place for a tiring Heijdenberg. The distance to the podium was then 48 seconds.
The other relay debutant Ella Halvarsson showed her newfound star status with full shooting. In the standing shooting, she had five lying hits. However, Halvarsson got tired in the track and switched to fifth – 47 seconds up on the podium.
– I am satisfied with shooting fully but was a bit tired, says Halvarsson.
Germany with Franziska Preuss as the finisher with the flag in hand won before France where Lou Jeanmonnot went on a penalty round in the last shooting where they were together. It was the first German victory in four years.