Biathlon at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games:

This was a new Olympic event which consisted of the skiers going off in the order of their finish in the 10 km sprint. The leader in that event starts off, and then every skier after him would start behind by the time margin from the sprint. Only the top 60 finishers from the sprint were eligible to start, but in reality, many of the lower finishers would elect not to start this race. For the men, only 57 eventually started in Salt Lake City. The pursuit had been contested at the World Championships since 1997.

The favorite was Ole Einar Bjørndalen, who had already won the 20 km and 10 km sprint in Salt Lake City, and thus started with a 29-second lead. Also to be considered was France’s Raphaël Poirée, who had won the seasonal World Cup in 1999-2000 and 2000-01, and would win again in 2002, but he had finished a disappointing ninth in the sprint, and would start 1:06 behind Bjørndalen. Sven Fischer had been second in the sprint and started only 29 seconds behind. In the end it was a fairly easy victory for Bjørndalen, who was not seriously challenged in winning his third gold medal in Salt Lake City. Fischer shot poorly in this section, missed four targets, and dropped back to 12th place. Poirée came on very strong and gained 23 seconds on Bjørndalen to move up to the silver medal position. The deciding move came at the final shooting range, when Poirée missed only once, and German Ricco Groß missed twice.