Germany’s Magdalena Neuner captured the women’s biathlon overall World Cup for the third time Saturday in her penultimate race before retirement, while Martin Fourcade of France made sure of the men’s title.
Neuner finished fourth in the pursuit over 10 kilometres in Khanty—Mansiysk and now cannot be caught by Darya Domracheva of Belarus, who won in 32 minutes 44.5 seconds after two missed targets.
Domracheva finished 24.8 seconds ahead of Kaisa Makarainen of Finland and 32.1 seconds up on Vita Semerenko of Ukraine.
Two—time Olympic champion Neuner, 25, who won the overall World Cup in 2008 and 2010, will end her career after Sunday’s mass start race.
Fourcade followed up his three golds at last week’s world championships in Ruhpolding, Germany by securing the men’s overall title with victory in the 12.5km pursuit.
The 22—year—old, who missed the target just once, finished in 34:47.1 to beat Germany’s Arnd Peiffer by 19.6 seconds.
The German looked strong going into the final shooting portion of the race, but missed once and had to let Fourcade pass for his eighth victory of the season.
Third place went to Emil Hegle Svendsen of Norway, who, going into the race, still had a chance of beating Fourcade to the overall title, but missed twice on the shooting range.
