ANTERSELVA, ITALY, Feb 15 (Reuters) - After a miserable start to the Winter Olympics for the much-heralded Swedish biathlon team, Martin Ponsiluoma managed to shake off the dust with a perfect series of five shots on the final shoot and superb last lap to grab gold in the men's 12.5km pursuit on Sunday.
Known to his team simply as "Ponsi", the laid-back 30-year-old piled the pressure on leader Emilien Jacquelin of France, who missed twice to incur two costly penalty loops and open the way to victory for the Swede.
"I tried to not look at his targets, but I heard, I thought it was two misses, so I just tried to go in and focus on myself. And then make a fast and clean shoot," Ponsiluoma told Reuters following his golden victory.
He left the final shoot with no-one between him and the finish line but admitted to being scared of a chasing pack bristling with Olympic and world champions.
"I was nervous, but I felt it on the last part of the loop that this is fine, so I just tried to enjoy it," he said.
The Swedish team has attracted plenty of criticism back home for their inability to explain why things had not gone according to plan in the first few races, but Ponsiluoma's gold has blown away those cobwebs.
"Yeah, it feels amazing, and I hope it brings a lot of energy to the team. We have good chances in the next races also, so I hope we will take them," he said.
Jacquelin's misses caused him to slip to the bronze medal position, with Sturla Holm Laegreid sneaking in ahead to grab silver.
"It was all about what every race has been this last period - just do one thing at a time," Laegreid told reporters after picking up the silver to go with his two bronze medals from the individual and sprint races.
"Ski one meter at a time, shoot one shot at a time, do my best with what I can right now and then, in the end, we can count the results ... I never thought I could catch Martin, he's a really strong skier, and I know that he wasn't pushing his max in the last lap, so he secured the gold like a real champion."
(Reporting by Philip O'Connor; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
