ANTERSELVA, Italy (AP) — France dominated the second half of the mixed relay biathlon race at the Milan Cortina Olympics on Sunday with fast skiing and strong shooting to take gold ahead of Italy and Germany.

Julia Simon hit her final five targets and left the range alone, taking her team of Eric Perrot, Quentin Fillon Maillet and Lou Jeanmonnot to a solid win at a time of 1:04:15.

Italy’s Lisa Vittozzi also cleaned her last targets, left the range in second place and held the Germans off to take the silver medal, to the great delight of the roaring capacity crowd. Italy’s Tommaso Giacomel, Lukas Hofer, Dorothea Wierer and Vittozzi finished 25.8 seconds behind France.

The German team of Justus Strelow, Philipp Nawrath, Vanessa Voigt and Franziska Preuss secured bronze, 1.05 behind France.

Racers each skied three, 2-kilometer (1.2 mile) loops and shot twice, once prone and once standing, at the Südtirol Arena Alto Adige, which sits at 5,200 feet (1,600 meters) above sea level, before tagging off to their teammate. The men went first on a bluebird day with mild temperatures and little to no wind.

While Simon was the anchor for France for this win in Italy, Fillon Maillet anchored the team when they won silver in the mixed relay at the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022. Norway took the gold that time and the Russian Olympic Committee team won bronze.

France also won gold in the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics and Italy took bronze with a team made up of Vittozzi, Wierer, Hofer and Dominik Windish.

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AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

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