Suvi Minkkinen secured a historic bronze medal in the women\u2019s biathlon pursuit at the Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics on Sunday. The 31-year-old became the first Finnish woman to win an Olympic medal in biathlon.<\/p>\n
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She hit all 20 targets and climbed from sixth place at the start to the podium in Anterselva. Italy\u2019s Lisa Vittozzi won gold on home snow, and Norway\u2019s Maren Kirkeeide took silver.<\/p>\n
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Minkkinen started the 10km pursuit 50 seconds behind the leader after finishing sixth in the sprint. She shot clean in both prone stages and remained in contention at halfway.<\/p>\n
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In the first standing stage, she cleared all five targets and moved into fourth place.<\/p>\n
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On the final visit to the range, several leading athletes missed. Minkkinen stayed composed and delivered a fourth flawless series. She left the range in second place.<\/p>\n
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Kirkeeide, despite two misses earlier in the race, caught and passed Minkkinen on the final lap.<\/p>\n
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Minkkinen held off France\u2019s Lou Jeanmonnot, who finished 15.1 seconds behind the Finn in fourth.<\/p>\n
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\u201cSuch good feelings. I was able to make a perfect race just as I had planned,\u201d Suvi Minkkinen said after the finish.<\/p>\n
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\u201cFor four laps I focused on my own work. Today the level of focus I had was a dream state that is hard to reach. Today I reached it, and the reward is Olympic bronze.\u201d<\/p>\n
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She said the result linked back to work done years earlier. \u201cA couple of years ago I made a high-altitude training plan with these Games in mind, so that my body would work here in Anterselva. Now I can perform here at the highest level in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The bronze\u00a0delivered Finland\u2019s third medal of the Milano-Cortina Games and marks the second major championship podium of her career. She won sprint bronze at the World Championships in Lenzerheide last winter.<\/p>\n
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This is her third Olympic appearance. Before Milano-Cortina, her best individual Olympic result was sixth place, achieved in the sprint earlier in the week.<\/p>\n
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Finland has now won seven Olympic medals in biathlon. All previous medals came from men.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The last Finnish Olympic biathlon medal came 28 years ago in Nagano in 1998. On that occasion, Ville R\u00e4ikk\u00f6nen claimed bronze in the sprint.<\/p>\n
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HT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Suvi Minkkinen secured a historic bronze medal in the women\u2019s biathlon pursuit at the Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14251,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[10768,158,113,10771,10772,8814,10769,7628,10773,10770],"class_list":{"0":"post-14250","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-helsinki","8":"tag-biathlon","9":"tag-finland","10":"tag-helsinki","11":"tag-lisa-vittozzi","12":"tag-maren-kirkeeide","13":"tag-milano-cortina-2026","14":"tag-olympic-bronze","15":"tag-suvi-minkkinen","16":"tag-ville-raikkonen","17":"tag-women-pursuit"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}