1-2. Golden Quartets of Russia
To create difficulties and overcome them with brilliance is purely Russian fun. In Austria, our girls ran surprisingly mediocre sprints and pursuits. In both races, they did not even make it to the top twenty. Anxiety before the first relay of the season tormented the hearts of coaches. At first, they assured that they would give a chance to the young: Anastasia Shipulina and Ekaterina Yurieva. But in the end they made a bet on experienced cup fighters: Anna Bogaliy-Titovets, Olga Anisimova, Irina Malgin and Natalya Guseva. As the race showed, only Germans really competed with the Russians. It was they who led the baton from the first to the last stage. And if it were not for the fatal mistakes of the immensely talented, but still too impulsive and unstable Magdalena Neuner, the German team would have won the baton. The denouement of this wonderful race came at the very finish. Natalya Guseva confidently and easily dealt with Katie Wilhelm, the owner of the Big Crystal Globe, on the track.
Men won the race, too, not without adventure. At the first stage, in front of the firing line, Ivan Cherezov got lost in skiing and fell; at the last, captain Sergei Rozhkov made him nervous, having made two misses while standing. Annoying accidents did not affect the result. Russia is the best in the relay after almost four years. The last time our men won at the World Cup in January 2003, in Oberhof.
3. Weather disasters
340 trucks delivered snow from the Tyrolean Alps to Hochfilzen during the week. The whole blame for the triumph of warm weather in Europe. On the first day of the race, the sun was beating (the temperature reached + 12), the grass was green, and the participants, as they could, struggled with a broken track. In the second, they took refuge from the snowfall that covered the Austrian village exactly in the pause between the women's and men's pursuit races.
4. The Chinese invasion
In Hochfilzen, recognized leaders - Germans, Norwegians, and Russians - watched in surprise as shooting skiers with hard-to-pronounce names and surnames closed targets and overtook them on the ski track over and over again. Never before in the history of biathlon have three Chinese women finished in the top ten. The historical result was recorded in the sprint. Sensational in Ostersund, 24-year-old Yanchao Kon (8th in the individual race) went up to the podium with Andrea Henkel and Magdalena Gwizdon. For Cohn, this is the third major career success. Prior to that, she was twice second at the World Cup in Pokljuka. Among the best companies, Kon was Ksyu Don (7th place) and Xianin Liu (10th place). The total superiority of Chinese women is the result of work in the Celestial Empire of a German trainer, world champion Klaus Siebert.
5. Russian pursuit
The Russian men's team in full force rushed in pursuit of Ole Einar Bjoerndalen in the pursuit race. If the handicap after the sprint was not so catastrophic (about a minute), Ivan Cherezov and the company could well have caught up with the Norwegian who was walking alone to his next victory. And so ... The Russians occupied the second to fourth places. The best of ours was Dmitry Yaroshenko - now this is his third silver in individual races. For the first time, the 26-year-old world champion in the mixed relay, the Olympic silver medalist Ivan Cherezov, was among the medalists. Sergei Rozhkov had a special alignment. The captain of the Russian national team started in the thirtieth, yielding to the leaders about three minutes. But grandmaster shooting brought him to fourth place.
6. Ole Einar Bjoerndalen: five wins out of five possible
The endless victories of Ole Einar Bjoerndalen cast doubt on the unpredictability of biathlon. The Norwegian, as in the first stage in Ostersund, won all individual races. He could help in the relay, but he hurried to Antholz to get ready for the next ski starts.
7. The first winning sprint in the career of Andrea Henkel
Last season, against the background of Katie Wilhelm, her friends remained in the shadows. The new season is designed to correct obvious injustice. The German team has too many strong biathletes who can regularly take the lead. One of them is Andrea Henkel, 28, a girl from a sports family. Her sister Manuela is an Olympic champion in cross-country skiing. Andrea has won no less awards. She is a two-time world champion in individual races, a silver medalist in the Olympic relay race. Now, the first victories at the World Cup stage in sprint and pursuit have been added to the enviable collection of awards. Plus such a nice yellow leader shirt.
8. Daria Domracheva - a new symbol of the Belarusian biathlon
The national team of Belarus, like the Russian team, is undergoing a painful change of milestones. In the offseason, the winners of the world championships Oleg Ryzhenkov, Vadim Sashurin and Vladimir Drachev completed their careers, Olympic medalist Alexei Aidarov changed his sports citizenship, and Ekaterina Ivanova and Olga Nazarova are preparing to become mothers. The multiple world champion Elena Zubrilova wanted to leave the big sport, but at the last moment she was persuaded to stay. The resulting void was filled by Daria Domracheva, two-time world champion among juniors. Until this season, almost nothing was known about her, except for the dry information of the official profile. After fourth place in the sprint race, the biathlon world is aware that the girl comes from the Russian hinterland of Nyagan, potentially running along the track no worse than Henkel or Wilhelm. It remains to tighten the fire.
9. Training experiments Katie Wilhelm
The richest biathlete on the planet (last season earned more than 300 thousand euros) decided not to speed up preparation for the main starts. At the first stages of the World Cup, Wilhelm went with a margin, did not bother herself, and, as it seemed from the side, she could add at any moment. Katie began preparing for the new season a little later than the others, trying to combine training with study at the correspondence department of the University of Management. Results faded into the background. However, being not even in optimal shape, Wilhelm breathes in the back of the leaders.
10. The sensational catwalk of Matthias Simman
The 34-year-old veteran brought Switzerland the first medal in ten years. Prior to this, the results of Simman, a fan of extreme sports - skiing and mountain biking, balanced between the second and fourth tens. His main achievements were participation in two Olympics and 9th place at the World Championships in Oberhof. Climbing the podium, Simman smiled, like a child who received a welcome toy for his birthday. In an interview with news agencies, he sincerely marveled at his agility: “Third place is a result beyond my reach in my career. I never thought that I could climb the podium after two misses while lying down. ”