Addie Byrne Sixth Place in Sprint at World Champs

Canmore, Alberta, Canada, January 31, 2009. Addie Byrne of Bovey, MN placed sixth in the Youth Women 6 km Sprint competition today. Teammate Grace Boutot of Fort Kent, ME finished in 9th place. Both women had one penalty in the ten shot race.

Addie Byrne left the range after prone with one penalty in 23rd place 54 seconds off the leader. But undeterred she kept with her race plan coming into standing just over a minute out of first. Her clean shooting moved her up to ninth after standing 36 seconds out of first. With just 2 km to go Byrne put the hammer down making up 7 seconds on the Russian winner Olga Galich and moving up to sixth place in at time 20:01.2 just 29.8 seconds out of the first place tie between Olga Galich/RUS and Individual gold medalist Yan Zhang/CHN. Byrne is well positioned for the Pursuit competition on Sunday, the start of which is based on the athletes time back in the Sprint competition.

Speaking after the race today Byrne said, "Sixth is not quite, what I wanted. I really wanted a medal, but I have two more races left." She has trained in Canmore with several US athletes for more than two weeks. "I knew I could be top 10. I spent a lot of time on this course and worked a lot on the areas that were troubling me. I can visualize it in my sleep."

 

Also well positioned for the Pursuit is Grace Boutot, the silver medalist from the Individual competition finished ninth today just 40 seconds out of first and about 27 seconds out of bronze medal position - the time it takes to ski just one penalty loop. Hilary McNamee (Fort Fairfield, ME) struggled in prone and missed four of her five shots. She hit all but one in standing finishing in 39th place.

Earlier in the day, Wynn Roberts (Battle Lake, MN) finished 15th in the Junior Men’s 10K Sprint, while teammate Leif Nordgren (Marine-on-St. Croix, MN) finished a disappointing 23rd. Both of the US biathletes had one penalty, but Roberts finished 1:36.5 back to Nordgren’s 2:12.3 back. “I had very good skis,” Roberts said. He continued, “On the shooting range, I do not remember anything in standing and they all went down. I was in the zone. I did hear the announcer keep talking about Florian Graf of Germany and that fired me up.” The youth men struggled on the range today finishing in the forties.

The competitions continue tomorrow (Sunday) with the Pursuit in all classes. The action gets underway at 10:00 AM Mtn Time - 12 noon Eastern Time.