Biathlete Bjorn Westervelt of Stowe knew he had one chance to win his first gold medal of the Lake Placid 2023 FISU World University Games. He had to pass Ukraine’s Dmytrii Hrushchak in the men’s 12.5K pursuit in either the shooting range or on the final lap.
While Hrushchak missed one target — sending him into the penalty loop before the final lap — Westervelt cleaned all five targets and won the first international race for the U.S. in biathlon since 2017.
“The last standing (round in the range), I knew what I had to do, and it was there,” said Westervelt, who earned a silver medal in the biathlon sprint on Jan. 18.
“It really comes down to the shooting,” he said. “Dealing with the pressure of coming into the range knowing exactly where you are at with the race, it is really awesome.”
Westervelt crossed the line 48 seconds ahead of Hrushchak for the gold medal. The American clocked a time of 35:38.3.
Lake Placid’s Lowell Bailey was the last American biathlete to win an international biathlon race. The four-time Olympian won the men’s 20K individual race at the 2017 world biathlon championships.
Westervelt is a junior majoring in mechanical engineering at the University of Vermont and scored two top six finishes in a college meet last weekend. He credited his good form this year to “just skiing with an insanely fast team all the time, being pushed in workouts,” he said, referring to his UVM teammates.
The biathlon continued Saturday with the men’s and women’s mass starts. Westervelt originally planned to leave the games to compete for UVM this weekend but as decided to stay for the mass start. He finished in eighth place overall in 41:11.1 in the mass-start event. The rest of the U.S. team was rounded out by Tim Cobb (46:53.2) in 27th and Paul Smith’s College student Nathan Livingood (46:55.6) in 28th.
The FISU World University Games is the world’s largest multi-sporting event for collegiate athletes, ages 17-25. The 11-day Lake Placid 2023 FISU Games feature 1,443 collegiate athletes from 540 universities across 46 countries.
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