Team USA’s Campbell Wright started the men’s 12.5 km pursuit biathlon race at the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics in 12th position, 70 seconds behind the leader. He finished eighth, and was gaining on the podium with every stride.
Wright’s final time of 32:25.4 left him just one minute and 13.5 seconds behind gold medalist Martin Ponsiluoma of Sweden, but the margin had been considerably larger for most of the race. What made the result historic was how Wright closed it: he posted the fastest final lap of all 60 competitors, the second-fastest overall course time of the day and tied the best Olympic result ever recorded by an American man in biathlon.
The checkpoint data tells the story of a race that nearly got away from Wright before his legs brought it back.
Entering his first prone shooting stage in 12th position, Wright missed two of five targets. The penalty loops pushed his section time to 1:36.6, the 52nd-slowest first shooting split in the field and dropping him to 15th place. It was the low point of his afternoon.
Wright responded immediately. His second prone stage was nearly flawless, with a shooting time of 49.0 seconds on clean targets—the second-fastest in the entire field at that stage. He climbed back to 12th and began pressing forward on the ski course. His 1:42.9 split to the 5.6 km checkpoint was the fifth-fastest in the field, and his 2:51.9 to the 7 km mark matched that ranking.
The third shooting stage, standing this time, cost him one more target and bumped him to 10th. But his approach speed into that stage was remarkable, a 43.1-second approach time that ranked second among all 60 pursuers. Wright was skiing into the range faster than nearly everyone and shooting quickly enough to stay in contention despite the miss.
Everything came together over the final loop. Wright cleaned his fourth and final standing stage in 48.2 seconds, the seventh-fastest mark in the field, and moved from 10th to ninth exiting the range. Then came the closing kilometers that will define this race in his memory. His 1:39.1 split to the 10.6 km checkpoint was the fastest of any competitor in the pursuit. His 2:46.0 through the 12 km mark was third-fastest. By the time he hit the finishing straight, Wright had climbed from ninth to seventh on the course and was locked in a sprint finish with France’s Quentin Fillon Maillet, the men’s sprint gold medalist.
Fillon Maillet held on for seventh by a fraction, but Wright’s finishing kick—and his 1:19.4 final section split, the 12th-fastest in the field—cemented an eighth-place result that sets a new standard for U.S. men in Olympic biathlon pursuit.
As Wright told U.S. Biathlon after the race, he loved every meter of that final loop and relished the chance to throw his hat in the ring against Fillon Maillet and Italy’s Tommaso Giacomel in the closing stretch.
Martin Ponsiluoma won gold with a time of 31:11.9, missing just one target across four shooting stages to deliver Sweden’s first biathlon medal at Milan Cortina 2026. Norway’s Sturla Holm Laegreid took silver for his third medal at Milan Cortina, 20 seconds back, while France’s Émilien Jacquelin claimed bronze after two costly misses in his final standing stage undid what had been a commanding race.
Wright’s teammate Paul Schommer finished 48th after battling through four shooting penalties.
The U.S. men are back at Anterselva on Tuesday, Feb. 17 for the 4x7.5 km relay, with the 15 km mass start on Friday, Feb. 20. All Olympic biathlon events are streaming on Peacock, with some broadcasts aired on NBC and USA Network.
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