(dpa) - Ekaterina Iourieva of Russia shot clean in difficult wind conditions to claim her biggest biathlon career win on Thursday, the 15-kilometres world title.
Iourieva, 24, won from German Martina Glagow and Oksana Khvostenko of Ukraine, adding the gold to pursuit silver from last weekend in a race moved to Thursday due to strong wind at the original date Wednesday.
Her only previous World Cup victory also came in the 15km event (two months ago in Pokljuka), in which each miss in the shooting range brings with it not a penalty loop but one penalty minute to the overall time.
"I always wanted a big win and I did expect a good result today. There was not much time between the wind gusts, so most of the time I had to shoot fairly quickly," said Iourieva.
Iourieva hit all 20 targets to win in 44 minutes 23.8 seconds for Russia's second Ostersund title, following Maxim Tchoudov's success in the men's sprint. Germany lead the way with three titles but fell short of victory on Thursday.
Glagow missed one target to trail by 1:13.3 minutes for second place in the event like at the 2006 Olympics. Khvostenko got her second Ostersund bronze, following the sprint, 2:24.4 seconds off the pace with one penalty minute.
"It was very windy. You could never be sure in the shooting range, you needed luck there," said Glagow.
Glagow's room-mate Andrea Henkel, the sprint and pursuit champion, missed six targets to finish outside the top 20. Norway's Tora Berger had to swallow a fourth-place finish yet again after also missing the sprint and pursuit podium in this position.
The men's long distance race over 20km was scheduled for later Thursday.
