Canada's Mark Arendz strikes gold in men's standing Para biathlon event
CBC
Canada's Mark Arendz struck gold in the men's standing 10-kilometre biathlon race at the Beijing Paralympics on Tuesday in China.
The Hartsville, P.E.I., native crossed the finish line with a time of 31 minutes 45.2 seconds, and was the lone competitor to not commit a shooting penalty throughout the race.
Grygorii Vovchynskyi of Ukraine grabbed silver, finishing in 32:18.0, while Kazakhstan's Alexandr Gerlits claimed bronze in 33:06.5.
"It's amazing. I wasn't quite sure what my body would react to after yesterday's hard effort, but this was amazing," Arendz said.
"In lap four I was starting to wonder if I had anything left, but once I saw the guy who was with me almost the whole lap, Grygorii [Vovchynskyi], go into the penalty loop, I knew that I had to now take the opportunity to go for that win.
"I wasn't quite sure if I could out-ski him in that last loop if we were coming out together, but my focus was on the range. It always had to be clean on the range for me today, and then use the rest of the energy I had to go and ski a really good race."
WATCH | Arendz races to gold in standing Para biathlon:
The podium finish gives the 32-year-old Arendz his 10th career Paralympic medal, having already won bronze earlier in these Games in the standing biathlon sprint event. It's also his second career gold.
Arendz was coming off a fourth-place finish in the standing 20km classical technique cross-country event just a day prior, ending a medal streak that saw him finish on the podium just days ago and in all six events he competed in at Pyeongchang 2018.
It was the first time he had missed out on a medal since the 10km cross-country event at Sochi 2014.
Rather than slowing him down, competing on back-to-back days allowed Arendz to pull more from within to emerge victorious.
"I think I would regret it more not doing those races. I have strengths in these races, I enjoy the racing. Sometimes, you've just got to dig a little deeper for that extra energy."
Graham Thomas sees a calm confidence and a deep hunger in his team.
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