Cape Elizabeth’s Clare Egan placed 38th in the women’s biathlon 10-kilometer pursuit race at the Beijing Olympics on Sunday.
The 34-year-old Egan was the second-fastest of the three Americans in the race and trailed gold medalist Marte Olsbu Roeiseland of Norway by 5 minutes, 30.1 seconds in the field of the top 60 competitors from Friday’s 7.5-kilometer sprint event.
In the pursuit, skiers started based on the time they finished behind the winner of the sprint race, with Egan beginning 2:32.1 after Roeiseland left the starting line.
Egan began the race with two clean five-shot stops, but had two misses on each of her last two stops that resulted in penalty loops on the National Biathlon Centre course, which was made slower by a layer of new, heavy snow that had covered much of the man-made course.
Joanne Reid of Grand Junction, Colorado, led the American contingent by placing 29th 4:19 behind the winner, while Susan Dunklee of Craftsbury, Vermont, placed 40th, 5:31.0 back.
Each had three shooting penalties.
The 31-year-old Roeiseland missed just one shot in her 20 attempts and captured her third gold medal and fourth medal overall in Beijing with a time of 34 minutes, 46.9 seconds.
Sweden’s Elvira Oeberg followed up her silver medal in Friday’s sprint with a second-straight second-place finish in the pursuit, with Norway’s Tiril Eckhoff winning the bronze.
The pursuit was the third race in these Olympics for Egan, who also competed in the 2018 Winter Games at Pyeongchang, South Korea.
She helped Team USA to its best finish in U.S. Olympic history in the mixed relay biathlon on Feb. 5.
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.
Egan then was the second-fastest American in Friday’s sprint with her 46th-place finish. Dunklee was 27th.