updated 9:45 a.m. ET Feb. 26, 2006

CESANA, Italy - The Russians missed Olga Pyleva only in their hearts. On the biathlon course, they didn’t need her at all.

Russia upset two-time defending Olympic champion Germany in the women’s 4x6km relay Thursday, and they did it without their banished star who was tossed out of the games and stripped of her silver medal last week for using a banned stimulant.

“We dedicate this race to Olga Pyleva,” teammate Svetlana Ishmouratova said. “Even though she’s not with us, we greatly sympathize with her. We know how difficult it must have been for her to watch the race on the TV screen at home. She must feel emptiness and we really feel togetherness.

“We tried today to demonstrate by our results that we are with her, that we are all together, one strength, one power. It’s the power of our friendship.”

Pyleva, the only athlete caught so far in the tightest drug net in Winter Olympics history, was replaced by Anna Bogaliy. She gave her team a big lead at the first exchange and the Russians never trailed.

With target shooting so precise that the powerhouse Germans had no real opportunity to close the gap, Bogaliy, Ishmouratova, Olga Zaitseva and Albina Akhatova covered the San Sicario course in 1 hour, 16 minutes, 12.5 seconds.

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Germany’s star-studded team of Martina Glagow, Andrea Henkel, Katrin Apel and Kati Wilhelm — but which didn’t include Uschi Disl, second in the World Cup standings — finished 50.7 seconds behind for the silver, and France overtook Belarus on the final leg for the bronze.

“I wanted to attack but there was no chance,” Apel said. “The Russians made a perfect race; we couldn’t get close to them.”

The Americans took 15th in the 18-team field, finishing more than 9 minutes off the pace in Rachel Steer’s final Olympic race. America’s best female biathlete, Steer is retiring at age 28 after the World Cup season concludes next month.

Bringing back three of the four biathletes from the gold-medal winning 2002 team, the Germans were the favorite to capture this event again, especially after Pyleva was expelled from the games and stripped of her medal from the 15km.

“We haven’t called her, but she knows we are close to her. We just don’t want to disturb her,” Bogaliy said.

Ishmouratova even lamented Pyleva’s departure on the eve of the race, saying she felt more comfortable skiing behind Pyleva even though this was the same four who led Russia to a World Cup relay win at Ruhpholding, Germany, last month.

The Russians’ upset wasn’t a huge surprise: “No, they have a pretty deep team,” Steer noted. Nevertheless, they were uncertain about their chances after Pyleva departed Italy in disgrace.

They needn’t have worried.

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Russia was simply too good on the range for the rest of the field, needing just two extra bullets to knock down its 40 targets. The Russians train for relays with just one extra spare round in their rifle stocks instead of the usual three, Ishmouratova explained, and that’s what helps them shoot so precisely in competition.

“In fact, ideally we aim at using no spare rounds,” she said. “Our target is to shoot 100 percent.”

And they nearly did just that, which is astonishing in the relay race.

Some of the fastest shooting happens in the relay, where competitors know they have extra rounds in case of a miss — eight bullets to hit five targets. They have to reload each extra .22-caliber bullet by hand after emptying the five-bullet clip, and for every black, circular target left standing after all bullets were fired, they must ski a 150-meter penalty loop.

The Germans needed eight extra shots, and Apel had to ski a penalty loop on the third leg, ruining any chance for Wilhelm, who won gold in the 10km pursuit, of catching Akhatova on the final leg.

“I think we are all really happy with the silver,” Wilhelm said, “because there were also really good teams behind us.”

And one great one in front of them, even with Pyleva watching from home.

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