Bjoerndalen’s Brilliance Buried

Ole Einar Bjoerndalen’s Norwegian teammates were itching to help their struggling star win his first gold medal of the Turin Games.

Instead, they buried him.

Bjoerndalen’s brilliant finish, in which he made up an astonishing 54.8 seconds on the leaders, wasn’t enough to keep Germany from winning the men’s 4x7.5-kilometer biathlon relay Tuesday at Cesana.

Russia took the silver and France the bronze, and the Americans were thrilled to take ninth, led by Jay Hakkinen, who dispatched his demons from his epic collapse in the 10-kilometer race by giving the United States the lead after the first of four legs.

The Norwegians trailed the U.S. by almost one minute after the first leg and had fallen behind surging Germany by more than two minutes when Bjoerndalen began the final leg for the pre-race favorites.

With a dazzling race in which he blazed across the glazed snow and feverishly knocked down all 10 of his targets, Bjoerndalen gave the Norwegians a respectable fifth-place finish.

“It was hard to start from two minutes behind,” said Bjoerndalen, who began 2 minutes 6.9 seconds off the lead. “I’m very satisfied with my own race. I went out to get on the podium.”

He simply couldn’t make up for his teammates’ poor performances and catch the Germans -- Ricco Gross, Michael Roesch, Sven Fischer and Michael Greis -- who covered the San Sicario course in 1 hour 21 minutes 51.5 seconds for their fourth Olympic gold in the event.

Biathlon’s biggest star and a five-time gold-medalist, Bjoerndalen is 0 for 4 in Italy after sweeping all four gold medals at Salt Lake City in 2002.

He has one last chance with Saturday’s finale, the mass start, which is making its Olympic debut and features the top 30 competitors.

The U.S. team of Hakkinen, Tim Burke, Lowell Bailey and Jeremy Teela met their goal in the relay by cracking the top 10. The race marked Hakkinen’s return to competition after his fiasco in the men’s 10-kilometer race, when he missed all five of his prone shots for the first time in his life.

This time, Hakkinen had clean shoots in the prone and standing stages and gave the Americans the lead at the first handoff.

“It was a huge thrill to come in first,” Hakkinen said. “One of the Olympic dreams is down. A couple more to go.”

In the relay, competitors get eight bullets to hit five targets on each of their shoots. If they don’t knock down all the targets, they have to ski a 150-meter penalty loop. After their five-bullet magazine is emptied, they have to hand-load .22-caliber bullets from their rifle stock, which takes eight to 10 seconds for each.

Hakkinen avoided any penalties by knocking down his 10 targets in 13 shots.

Russia finished 20.9 seconds behind Germany, and France edged Sweden for the bronze in a photo finish in which Carl Johan Bergman stumbled near the finish line, allowing Raphael Poiree’s right boot to cross just ahead of his.

Austria, the subject of a surprise doping raid over the weekend, finished last in the 17-team field.

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NORDIC COMBINED

Gottwald Leads Austria to Eighth Gold Medal

Felix Gottwald used a powerful sprint to rally to victory in the nordic combined sprint at Pragelato, giving Austria its record eighth gold medal of the Turin Games -- a bright spot for a country caught in the middle of a doping scandal.

Gottwald earned his second gold medal of these Olympics by making up a deficit of nearly a minute from the morning’s jumping portion of the event.

Gottwald’s winning time of 18 minutes 29 seconds was 5.4 seconds ahead of silver medalist Magnus Moan of Norway. Germany’s Georg Hettich took the bronze after having the best jump earlier in the day.

American Todd Lodwick was ninth, and teammate Johnny Spillane was 10th.

Gottwald, who started 12th after the jumping portion, completed the 7.5-kilometer cross-country portion of the race in 17:35. He skied down the final stretch through the stadium alone, then raised his arms as he crossed the line. Moments later, he lifted a ski in each hand and blew a kiss.

Gottwald, a member of Austria’s winning foursome in the large hill team event, won his sixth Olympic medal.

The Austrian cross-country skiing and biathlon teams are the focus of a drug probe by Italian police and the International Olympic Committee.

The country’s previous high for gold medals in a Winter Olympics was six.

Hannu Manninen of Finland placed a disappointing 12th, missing out on what might have been his last chance at an individual Olympic medal. He had won four of the seven World Cup sprint events this season, including three in a row. But he was 16th after the jump and started 1:10 behind Hettich. Manninen hasn’t finished out of the top 10 in a World Cup sprint event all season.

The Americans go home empty-handed in Nordic combined and have yet to win an Olympic medal in the event.

For the 29-year-old Lodwick, this was his fourth and probably final Olympics. He plans to retire after a World Cup event next month in Oslo.

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FREESTYLE SKIING

Cook, Lindsey Fail to Qualify for Finals

Emily Cook’s comeback story ended a day earlier than she’d hoped after another disappointing outing for the American freestyle team on the Olympic aerials course at Sauze d’Oulx.

Cook and Jana Lindsey, the only other American entered, failed to qualify for tonight’s finals. That left Jeret “Speedy” Peterson as the only one of the six U.S. aerialists, men or women, to advance to the finals. The men’s medal round is Thursday.

Aussie Jacqui Cooper set a world record with her qualifying score of 213.36.