Deedra Irwin’s weekend at the Anterselva Biathlon Arena was a study in contrasts: flawless on the range when it mattered most on Saturday, then undone by it 24 hours later.
The Army Staff Sgt. and Vermont National Guard soldier finished 35th in the women’s 10 km pursuit at the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics on Sunday, Feb. 15, crossing the line 3 minutes and 39.7 seconds behind gold medalist Lisa Vittozzi of Italy. It was a mixed bag for the top-ranked American woman in biathlon: four shooting penalties over four stages, but ski speed strong enough to climb 12 positions from her 47th-place starting spot.
Irwin earned that start with one of the best shooting performances of her Olympic career. In Saturday’s women’s 7.5 km sprint, she went 10-for-10 on the range—five clean in prone, five clean in standing—to finish 47th and punch her ticket into the top-60 pursuit field. She was the only American woman to qualify. Teammates Margie Freed, Joanne Reid and Luci Anderson finished 66th, 72nd and 79th in the sprint, each falling outside the cutoff.
Irwin acknowledged after Saturday’s sprint that she was not feeling her best energy-wise heading into the pursuit race. She told U.S. Biathlon’s Sara Donatello that she was nervous coming into the standing stage after struggling with it earlier in the week, but the targets kept falling. When the last one went down, she said she did a double take to make sure she had actually hit the right ones.
That confidence on the range did not carry over into Sunday’s pursuit. Irwin missed one target in each of her two prone stages and then two more in her third standing stage, where her shooting time of 1:51.0, inflated by two penalty loops, was the 55th-slowest in the field and dropped her from 39th to 47th on the course. She cleaned her fourth and final standing stage, but by then the damage was largely done.
What saved the day were her legs. Irwin’s ski splits were consistently among the fastest in the field throughout the pursuit. Her 2:30.2 section time between the 2.5 km and 3.6 km checkpoints was the fastest of all 57 competitors, and her 1:39.5 split through the 8.5 km mark after the final shooting stage ranked 16th. Those efforts helped her claw back from as low as 48th after the first shooting stage to a 35th-place finish, good for the 17th-fastest overall course time of the day, according to U.S. Biathlon.
In the biathlon pursuit format, athletes begin at staggered intervals based on their time behind the sprint winner, stop four times at the range to shoot at five targets per stage and race to the finish. Unlike the individual event, where each miss adds a minute to the clock, the pursuit and sprint formats send athletes through a 150-meter penalty loop for every missed target. The first athlete across the line wins.
Lisa Vittozzi’s winning performance in the women’s 10 km pursuit race gave Italy its first Olympic biathlon gold medal. Norway’s Maren Kirkeeide, who won Saturday’s sprint, took silver in the pursuit, while Finland’s Suvi Minkkinen earned bronze, which is the first Olympic medal in women’s biathlon in Finnish history.
For Irwin and the U.S. Biathlon Team, the Milan Cortina schedule is not finished. The women’s 4x6 km relay is set for Wednesday, Feb. 18 and the 12.5 km mass start follows on Saturday, Feb. 21. On Tuesday, the U.S. men’s relay squad of Campbell Wright, Maxime Germain, Sean Doherty and Paul Schommer takes the start line in the 4x7.5 km relay. All Olympic biathlon events are streaming on Peacock, with select broadcasts on NBC and USA Network.
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