Biathlon news - Roeiseland holds off Dunklee and windy conditions to become sprint world champion

29-year-old Roeiseland missed once on her second shoot but skied brilliantly to beat off her rivals and seal victory.

She dealt well with extremely tricky conditions, with the fierce wind playing havoc with most of the competitors shooting.

“I don’t know what to feel this is a dream that I have had for a really long time now.” Roeiseland, who had won four team golds at the World Championships before finally lifting her first individual medal.

“This was my main goal this season. I said it out loud many times and I didn’t race in Annecy because of the world championships here,

“It was tough condition on ski because it was a bit icy and it was a bit difficult in the stadium and at the range because the wind was blowing to the left and the right.”

Surprisingly her biggest challenge came from 34-year-old Dunklee, who previously had only finished in the top 10 in the sprint world championships on one occasion.

Dunklee shot flawlessly but was unable to keep the pace with the Norwegian and in the end took an admirable silver whilst bronze went to Lucie Charvatova of the Czech Republic.

Italian duo Lisa Vittozzi and World Cup leader Dorothea Wierer, who took over the yellow bib when Roeiseland skipped Annecy, were two of the pre-face favourites but both missed twice and had to settle for sixth and seventh respectively.

“Today it was really, really hard, the wind was changing really fast,” Wierer said afterwards of the conditions.

“I didn’t know if I should shoot or not, so I was shooting really slow and of course 1+1 miss isn’t the best but even at the track I felt really strange today, I wasn’t able to stand on my skis it was really hard.”