The Frenchwoman Julia Simon also won the second pursuit race of this biathlon season.

The 26-year-old remains the leader in the overall women's World Cup rankings.

Denise Herrmann-Wick, who started the race as the favorite as the sprint winner with a lead of 18 seconds, finished fifth with three penalties.

They were 42.7 seconds behind Simon, who finished the race in 29:56:7.

Julia Basic

sports editor.

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The conditions in Hochfilzen, Austria, had changed completely compared to the start of the World Cup weekend last Thursday.

While the sun was still shining in the sprint, it began to snow during the night leading up to the pursuit race on Saturday.

However, the few centimeters of fresh snow would have been good for the track, said Denise Herrmann-Wick after the race: "It wasn't easy to run, but not as slow as expected."

Not a good feeling on the track

However, because she has had problems with similar conditions in the past, she approached the race more defensively.

There was no good feeling on the track: “In the second lap I felt a slight tension in my muscles.

It wasn't easy to coordinate because I couldn't move as I would like."

Although Hermann-Wick shot clean in the first prone stage, their lead melted down the track.

In each of the other three shooting stages she made one mistake.

The chance for a podium finish was there until the last standing stage.

"I noticed that mistakes were being made next to me and I wanted to seize this opportunity," said the 33-year-old Olympic champion.

"But if the last disc fails, then of course it's not enough for the podium." Nevertheless, she is satisfied with her result and is now hoping for a good relay race this Sunday (11.30 a.m. on ZDF and on Eurosport).

France's Simon and Norway's Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold, who went from 13th to second, kept their nerves at the fourth and final standing stage.

Both had previously only made one shooting error at the third stop.

Third was Czech Marketa Davidova with two penalties.

Simon achieved the seventh World Cup victory of her career in Hochfilzen.

Hermann-Wick's teammate Vanessa Voigt moved up from 30th on the grid to 14th place with three clean shooting bouts. The Thuringian only had to go into the penalty loop after the fourth shooting.

Despite the light snowfall, the athletes were again able to rely on the support of the local spectators, who were not allowed to attend the World Cup last year due to the corona pandemic.

A prominent visitor also mingled with the audience: Julian Nagelsmann, coach of FC Bayern Munich, who had to deal with bad news because he had to do without his goalkeeper Manuel Neuer until the end of the season.

The German men's relay meanwhile secured its second podium finish of the winter in the second race.

Despite one penalty loop and five spare rounds, the quartet of Justus Strelow, Johannes Kühn, Roman Rees and Benedikt Doll finished third.

The gap to winner Norway with superstar Johannes Thingnes Bö was 28.6 seconds on Saturday.

Second place went to Sweden after 4 x 7.5 kilometers.

At the start of the season, the DSV relay had already taken second place in Finland last week.

Start runner Strelow had some problems on the snowy track and was only able to hand over in ninth place.

A perfect performance at the shooting range was of little use to the Saxon, on his final lap alone he lost more than 20 seconds to the leading Norwegians.

After that, Kühn made a promising start and got close to the leading group, but his standing didn't work well and he even had one penalty loop.

“It wasn't the first and last penalty loop.

That happens,” said Kühn.

Rees took over as the snow continued to pile up in seventh, 45.1 seconds back from leaders Italy.

While Bö quickly secured the lead one day after his sprint victory, Germany moved up in fourth place.

Rees acted flawlessly before Doll was allowed to start.

After his first shooting, the Black Forester moved up to third place and confidently held this position to the finish.