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In the first stage, Annija Sabule suffered a penalty while shooting while lying down, but used up all three spare cartridges while standing and passed the baton to Sanita Buliņa as the last in the 23-country competition. Latvia lost five minutes and 5.2 seconds to leaders France, for whom Lou Jeanmonault ran the first stage.
Buliņa made it to the first shooting stage and shot all five targets, but was overtaken by one round, leaving Latvia in 23rd place.
In the fight for victory, Italian Liza Vitoci finished the second stage first, ahead of Switzerland with 8.4 seconds and Norway with 9.9 seconds.
Italy was still in the lead after the sixth shootout, with Didier Bion running the third stage, but on the way to the relay change he was overtaken by Norway’s Tarjei Be.
In the final stage, Johannes Tingnes Bae secured victory for Norway, with the Norwegian team finishing in 56 minutes and 19.4 seconds with eight shooting errors.
Jūni Arnekleiva and Karulīne Ofigstad Knot competed for Norway in the first two stages.
22.3 seconds behind the Italians, who used five spare cartridges, and a minute and 7.8 seconds – the Swedes, who made nine errors when shooting.
The Swiss took fourth place, the French fifth and the Czechs sixth.
Estonia and Lithuania were also overtaken, finishing in 13th and 21st place respectively.
It was previously reported that Baiba Bendika and Andrejs Rastorgujevs took fifth place in the mixed pairs relay on Saturday, marking Latvia’s second-best result ever in the discipline.
On Sunday the stage ends with a distance race with a common start. Rastorgujev has qualified for them, but Birkenthal is a long way off.
From January 21st to 28th the European Championships will take place on the Slovak track in Osrblí, from February 7th to 18th the World Championships will take place in the Czech city of Nove Mesto, while the next stage of the World Cup will take place in Oslo at the turn of February/ March.
The World Cup series includes nine rounds this season, with the Crystal Globes being awarded at the Canadian Kenmore circuit in mid-March.
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