At the European Biathlon Championships in Osrblie, Slovakia, the mixed relay team from Norway secured the next gold medal on Sunday. The Swedish selection came away empty-handed after a weak day. The horror shooting by Anna-Karin Heijdenberg was emblematic.
In the last standing event, the 23-year-old ruined all chances of a medal after a repeating error. When the Swede came to the shooting range, the Italian Hannah Auchentaller, in third place, had just fired her last shot.
With a perfect series, Heijdenberg could have had another sniff of the podium.
But the final runner from Sweden missed three of the first four shots and also accidentally repeated another shot from the rifle. She had to reload a cartridge by hand four times.
Heijdenberg didn’t show any nerves and scored with all four spares. The mishap ended up costing them almost a minute. The Italian relay team had long since escaped and took bronze safely.
German biathletes come away completely empty-handed at the European Championships
“It’s really a shame that we didn’t have a good day today,” said coach Johannes Lukas on the TV channel “SVT”.
Ultimately, Heijdenberg was just part of the Swedish quartet’s long chain of mistakes. Viktor Brandt and Peppe Femling had already put the relay clearly behind at the beginning with one penalty each.
Johanna Skottheim led the team from sixth place to fourth place. However, Heijdenberg was unable to take advantage of the small chance she had with her race to catch up.
The European Championship ended on a positive note for the Swedes. In the last race – the single mixed relay – Anton Ivarsson and Sara Andersson drove away from the competition and took the gold medal ahead of Norway and Austria.
In the final medal table, Norway (6x gold, 5x silver, 2x bronze) is by far at the top. The German team remained without any precious metal in Osrblie.