Maren Kirkeeide skied and shot to gold, while Team France took silver and bronze in the women’s 7.5km sprint on Saturday at Milan Cortina 2026. 

Norway's Kirkeeide shot clean and skied quickly to a time of 20 minutes, 40 seconds. France followed with Oceane Michelon, 3.8 seconds behind, and Lou Jeanmonnot, 23.7 seconds behind after missing one shot. In her last lap, 22-year-old Kirkeeide took the speed over the climb to overpower Jeanmonnot and Michelon around the corner. 

"It feels absolutely brilliant," Kirkeeide said. "I had a good day on the course and then I managed to hit all the targets, and then it was just a matter of going with everything I had on the last lap."

In her first Olympic appearance, Michelon won an unexpected silver. Her teammates were amongst the favorites for this event: Julia Simon, who won gold in the 15km individual sprint but finished 34th, and Jeanmonnot, who won silver in that event. Simon fell off the podium when she missed two shots in her second visit to the range and Jeanmonnot pushed her position to bronze with a single miss at the range. 

Other contenders were Suvi Minkkinen of Finland and Swedish sisters Elvira and Hanna Oeberg, who have won sprint races this season. Elvira won silver in this race in Beijing but wasn’t skiing fast enough to win after missing a shot. 

The Americans were Deedra Irwin (47th), Margie Freed (66th), Joanne Reid (72nd) and Luci Anderson (79th).

Snow was falling during the race as competitors skied three laps with two visits to the shooting range, one prone and one standing. Each missed shot resulted in a penalty loop. 

FULL RESULTS 

Reuters contributed to this report.