France secures the first relay win of the season. Not with a full minute of advantage, not easily, and certainly not without nerves — but they get the job done.
Sweden and Norway opened the race poorly. For the Swedes, this was somewhat expected even before the start — Johanna Skottheim is known for unstable shooting, and Emma Halvarsson is still too inexperienced. But Norway’s troubles came from where no one expected: Ingrid Tandrevold left three targets standing.
The Swedish team managed to recover quickly — they dropped out of the leading group but stayed relatively close. Norway, however, completely collapsed and ended up battling Ukraine and Latvia at the back of the standings.
For most of the race, France, Austria, Czech Republic, Italy, and Germany took turns at the front. Italy had their own ups and downs: Michela Carrara missed one target, but Lisa Vittozzi covered for her, erasing the entire deficit to the leaders in just one loop.
On the final shooting stage, Lou Jeanmonnot got through her series not without problems, but still left the range with a 10-second advantage over Italy’s Hannah Auchentaller. Meanwhile, Marketa Davidova and Anna Gandler got stuck on the range. The Czech athlete recovered, while the Austrian was forced onto the penalty loop, giving up fourth place to Hanna Öberg.
But Öberg is clearly not in the kind of form to recover 20 seconds from Davidova in a single loop, so the bronze went to the Czech Republic. Two misses from Selina Grotian erased Germany’s remaining hope for the podium.
At the exchange after leg three, Italy and France were in the lead, Austria trailed by only three seconds, while Czech athlete Tereza Vobornikova lost a massive 27 seconds on the last loop, causing her team to temporarily fall out of podium contention.
But there was a problem — on the anchor leg, France had Lou Jeanmonnot, while Italy and Austria fielded Auchentaller and Gandler. The difference in strength was obvious from the first meters of the course: Lou immediately began to break away. After prone shooting, the gap ballooned to 25–35 seconds. Meanwhile, Davidova caught up to the Austrian, and 30 seconds behind them was Hanna Öberg — still a dangerous presence.
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