Belarus' Darya Domracheva clinches pursuit gold at Sochi Olympics

Belarusian biathlete Darya Domracheva has won the women’s 10km pursuit gold, which is Belarus’ first medal at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, BelTA has learnt.

The leader of the Belarusian biathlon team put up a perfect performance in terms of both speed and shooting. She missed only once and clocked 29:30.7. Darya Domracheva started from the ninth position, with almost 40 seconds between her and winner of the 9 February 7.5km sprint race Slovakia’s Anastasiya Kuzmina. After the first stage Darya Domracheva moved into first place, which gave her even more confidence. So it did not come as a surprise that she shot clean at the second and third stages. The Belarusian missed only once at the last standing stage. However, her advantage was so big that one penalty loop was not a problem. Norway’s Tora Berger won silver, 37.6 seconds behind Darya Domracheva. Slovenia’s Teja Gregorin bagged bronze, 42 seconds back with one penalty.

Darya Domracheva won her first Olympic medal in Vancouver in 2010 when she claimed 15km individual bronze. The 27-year-old Belarusian also won two IBU World Championships (in 2012 and 2013) and took first place in many IBU World Cup events. For her achievements in the field of sport Darya Domracheva was awarded the title of Honored Master of Sports. This is the second gold medal Belarus has won at the Winter Olympics in its history. The first gold came after aerial skier Alexei Grishin’s successful performance at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

Other Belarusians took the following places in the 11 February pursuit: Nadezhda Skardino was 13th (1:13.01, 1 penalty), Lyudmila Kalinchik finished in 33rd (3:24.2, 2 penalties) while Anastasia Duborezova was 56th (11:31.1, 12 penalties).

The biathlon events at the 2014 Sochi Olympics include seven more races:

13 February
Men 20km Individual

14 February
Women 15km Individual

16 February
Men Mass Start 15km

17 February
Women 12.5km Mass Start

19 February
Mixed 2x6+2x7.5km Relay

21 February
Women 4x6km Relay

22 February
Men 4x7.5km Relay