Translated material
Multi-shot shooting
Bjoerndalen won all three races in Ruhpolding
The penultimate stage of the Biathlon World Cup on the track in Ruhpolding (Germany) on the eve of the world championship starting in February was marked by the absolute superiority of Ole Einar Bjoerndalen. As part of the Norwegian team, he first won the relay race, and then, solely through personal efforts, won the sprint and the first mass start this season. After the success of the women's team and the silver medal of the men's quartet in the remaining individual races, the Russians were unable to replenish their medal box. The best results were the fourth places of Irina Malgina and Ivan Tcherezov. In the sprint, Malgina was only 1.4 seconds short of bronze with one penalty loop, and Tcherezov was even less in the mass start - 0.4 seconds.The main result of the women's competition in Ruhpolding is that Swede Anna-Karin Olofsson came out on top in the overall World Cup standings. In the sprint she lost only to the Frenchwoman Sandrine Bailey, and in the mass start race, despite four misfires and, accordingly, an additional 600 m of distance, she finished first. The German Andrea Henkel missed this stage due to illness, and the Swede overtook her, scoring 382 points. The German biathlete has 371 points left. In third position is another representative of Germany, Kati Wilhelm, winner of silver in the mass start - 367 points.
Our Irina Malgina in the sprint only slightly fell short of the result of the bronze medalist, Frenchwoman Florence Baverel-Robert, who, unlike the Russian, hit all the targets. Among her compatriots, Malgina was the best (sixth place) in the Sunday race, where the participants did not fight in absentia, as in the sprint, but literally competed side by side. The beginning of the mass start was marked by several falls. Russian women were also caught in the resulting rubble. Malgina was again let down by shooting from a standing position - two penalty loops on the last shooting line. If not for them, Irina could have snagged the top three. It seems that at the World Championships, the head coach of our women's team, Valery Polkhovsky, will make the main bet on the relay. Let's not forget about the mixed relay, where the Russians' positions seem very solid.
In the men's sprint, the entire podium was occupied by Norwegians - Bjoerndalen, another veteran Halvard Hannewold and Emil Egle Svendsen. This is the second so-called “multipodium” of the season, as well as following the results of the pursit in Oberhof, when the awards went to our Nikolai Kruglov, Dmitry Yaroshenko and Maxim Chudov. Bjoerndalen showed 100% shooting in both personal races on the Ruhpolding track. For a man who runs so fast that he wins the World Cup in cross-country skiing, that's a guaranteed victory in biathlon. At a distance of 7.5 km, Bjoerndalen “brought” 37 seconds to the closest pursuer, in the 15-kilometer mass start - three quarters of a minute.
This season, Ole Einar participated in nine individual races and celebrated victory in seven of them. His only failure occurred in the sprint in Oberhof - 30th place, but in the next pursuit race the Norwegian completely rehabilitated himself, rising from this unenviable position to fifth place in the final protocol. In Ruhpolding, Bjoerndalen regained the lead in the World Cup, which he lost due to missing the stage in Hochfilzen, when he decided to compete with professional skiers. The Norwegian earned 388 points, 39 points less than the German Mikael Greis, our Ivan Tcherezov is third (330).