PYEONGCHANG, Feb. 10 -- German biathlete Laura Dahlmeier bagged women's 7.5km sprint gold with clean shooting performance, while two-time defending champion Anastasiya Kuzmina of Slovakia finished a below-par 13th place at the Winter Olympic Games here on Saturday.
"It is so amazing and I do not know what to say. I am so happy and proud of it because it was a hard race today. We had not so good conditions, it was really cold in the evening and also on the shooting range we had a lot of wind," said Dahlmeier.
Dahlmeier became the second German to have won the event following Kati Wilhelm's success in 2002, as she clocked a best time of 21 minutes and 6.2 seconds.
Dahlmeier was quite emotional after finishing her race without shooting error, as she fisted her chest while crossing the finish line, before kneeling on the ground sobbing, although most of her rivals' race didn't come in the results.
Dahlmeier witnessed ups and downs in this season's World Cup, with two victories and worst-ever 48th position in Ruhpolding.
Despite windy condition on Saturday night, Dahlmeier held on her nerve to display flawless performance in shooting.
Norway' s Marte Olsbu took the second position, 24.2 seconds back with one penalty. The bronze medal went to Veronika Vitkova of the Czech Republic, 1.6 seconds further behind with one penalty.
However, Kuzmina, gold medalist of the event in Vancouver and Sochi, may feel much colder about the night as she suffered three penalties. Disastrous shooting performance finally decided her fate in the race.
China's Zhang Yan was placed 38th, more than two minutes adrift Dahlmeier. Tang Jialin sat 70th among 87 competitors.
Zhang, who finished 46th four years ago, expressed her satisfaction with the result.
"I wanted to move a step forward here, and now I made it," she said.
Tang admitted that a huge gap existed between world-leading biathletes and herself.
"Due to injuries, I cannot play to my best level here, which makes me a bit disappointed," she commented.