Cape Elizabeth’s Clare Egan qualified for Sunday’s Olympic women’s biathlon pursuit race with her 46th-place finish Friday morning in the 7.5-kilometer sprint at the Winter Games in Beijing.
The 34-year-old Egan, appearing in her second Olympics, was the second-fastest American in the sprint.
She was in 37th place through 5.9 kilometers and 36th at the 6.5-kilometer mark and had three shooting penalties, one in the prone position and two in the standing position, to finish the competition 2 minutes, 32.1 seconds behind gold medalist Marte Olsbu Roeiseland of Norway in a time of 23 minutes, 16.4 seconds.
Roeiseland hit all 10 targets and finished the race in 20 minutes, 44.3 seconds to capture her second gold medal and third medal overall in Beijing.
The top 60 finishers among the 89 competitors in the sprint will participate in the 10-kilometer pursuit race scheduled for 4 a.m. Sunday. In the pursuit, skiers will start based on the time they finished behind the winner of the sprint race, so Egan will start 2:32.1 after Roeiseland leaves the starting line.
All three Americans in Friday’s race qualified for the pursuit, led by Susan Dunklee of Craftsbury, Vermont, who had a penalty-free sprint to finish in 27th place, 1:55.2 behind Roeiseland.
The third American, Joanne Reid of Grand Junction, Colorado, had two shooting penalties, both standing, and went on to place 34th, 2:10.6 out of first place.
Elvira Oeberg of Sweden captured the silver medal with her second-place finish 30.9 seconds behind Roeiseland. Italy’s Dorothea Wierer won the bronze medal, 37.2 seconds behind the winner.
Friday’s race marked Egan’s second appearance in the 2022 Winter Olympics.
She debuted last Saturday by helping Team USA to its best finish in U.S. Olympic history in the mixed relay biathlon.
The U.S. team of Dunklee, Egan, Sean Doherty and Paul Schommer placed seventh in the event in a time of 1 hour, 8 minutes and 58.3 seconds for the 4-by-6-kilometer race.
Each biathlete on the two-woman, two-man teams skied a 2-kilometer (1.2-mile) lap, shot prone, skied the lap again and shot standing before returning to the stadium to tag off to the next skier. Each racer was allowed to use up to three extra rounds per shooting bout.
The U.S finished Dunklee’s opening leg in 10th place, but Egan had the second-fastest time in the second leg of the relay, 17 minutes, 38.2 seconds, to leave the United States in fourth place overall at the midpoint of the event. The U.S. was still in fourth place entering the final leg before settling for seventh place at the finish.
