Biathlon at the 2002 Winter Olympics – Women's sprint
| Women's biathlon sprint at the XIX Olympic Winter Games
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| Venue | Soldier Hollow | ||||||||||||
| Dates | February 13 | ||||||||||||
| Competitors | 74 from 27 nations | ||||||||||||
| Winning time | 20:41.4 | ||||||||||||
| Medalists | |||||||||||||
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Kati Wilhelm |
 Germany
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Uschi Disl |
Germany
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Magdalena Forsberg |
 Sweden
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The Women's 7.5 kilometre sprint biathlon competition at the 2002 Winter Olympics was held on 13 February, at Soldier Hollow. Competitors raced over two 2.5 kilometre loops and one 3.0 kilometre loop of the skiing course, shooting two times, once prone and once standing. Each miss was penalized by requiring the competitor to race over an 150 metre penalty loop.
Two of the medalists from the women's Individual race were also strong challengers in the sprint, led by Magdalena Forsberg, the five-time defending World Cup overall champion, as well as the defending World Cup winner in the sprint. Kati Wilhelm was the defending world champion and Galina Kukleva was defending champion from the Nagano Games. The test event at Soldier Hollow in 2001 saw Uschi Disl take the win, ahead of Liv Grete Skjelbreid-Poirée and individual champion Andrea Henkel. Entering the Olympics, the sprint World Cup standings were closely contested, with Disl, Olena Zubrilova, Forsberg, Olga Pyleva and Wilhelm separated by just 7 points. Skjelbreid-Poirée was further behind, but was coming in on a winning streak, having taken each of the last two World Cup sprints.
Henkel, the first of the above to go out, was unable to recapture her shooting form from two days before, missing once on each shoot, and finishing well back, in 25th. Her team-mate Wilhelm, starting shortly behind her, had no such problems, shooting clear and leading at each of the time checks. France's Florence Baverel-Robert also shot clear, but ended up 45 seconds behind Wilhelm. Pyleva and 1998 Olympic individual champion Ekaterina Dafovska were with in 7 seconds of Wilhelm after the first shoot, but both lost out on the second shoot, Pyleva missing once and finishing 8th, while Dafovska missed twice and ended up 15th.
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