Biathlete Denise Herrmann-Wick narrowly missed her tenth World Cup victory, but delivered the next top result with third place in the Le Grand-Bornand sprint.

Somewhat surprisingly, the 33-year-old was only beaten by the two Swedes Anna Magnusson and Linn Persson in the French Haute-Savoie.

Herrmann-Wick had a penalty to go 7.5km, 15.2 seconds behind the shooting-clean Magnusson, who took her maiden World Cup win. Also with one penalty, Persson was 12.8 seconds behind her teammate.

Individual Olympic champion Herrmann-Wick (33), who won the sprint race in Hochfilzen last week, created a promising starting position for the pursuit on Saturday (2:15 p.m. / ARD and Eurosport). Franziska Preuss (1 mistake) in 24th place, Sophia Schneider (1) in 28th place, Vanessa Voigt (0) in 30th place, Anna Weidel (1) in 38th place and Janina Hettich-Walz (2) in 48th place didn't make it among the top 20.