Translated material
Big party
Biathlon veteran 40-year-old Hanevold celebrated his anniversary on the ski track
On Thursday, men entered the fight for the Biathlon World Cup on the Swedish Ostersund track. The winner of the 20 km individual race with four shooting ranges, where each miss is punishable by a minute of penalty time, was the Norwegian Emil-Egle Svendsen. On the second step of the podium with a lag of 35 seconds. American Tim Burke was sensational, Austrian Christoph Sumann was third (49 seconds deficit). The best of our team was Maxim Chudov. With one misfire, like all the winners, the biathlete nicknamed Russian Rocket took fourth position in the final protocol. Moreover, he was only 0.8 seconds short of getting into the top three. The Austrian Friedrich Pinter had the same time as Chudov.The mood in the Norwegian team yesterday was initially festive. On this day, veteran Halvard Hanevold celebrated his 40th birthday. As befits a great athlete, he celebrated his anniversary on the ski track, without even thinking about asking for a day off. Hanevold, known in the biathlon world as the Crab, has been involved in this sport for a quarter of a century, that is, since he was 15 years old. He began his professional career in the 1991/92 season. During his performances at the top level, Viking became an Olympic champion twice (1998, 2002) and received gold at world championships five times. Svendsen's victory was a great gift for Hanevold, who is always concerned about the team result. The hero of the day should hardly be judged strictly based on yesterday's race. He finished in the ninth top ten, with six penalties. It is likely that he could have violated the regime even before the start - he has every moral right to do so.
Halvard's friend and colleague, six-time overall World Cup winner and five-time Olympic champion Ole Einar Bjoerndalen, due to his fast pace, can win individual races with a three-minute penalty time, but yesterday he chose this limit too. The Norwegian “shot himself” in the second half of the distance, making two misfires at the third and fourth firing line.
As in the opening women's race on Wednesday, Germany was in the shadows. The best of the Bundesteam, Mikael Greis, finished ninth. It is clear that the Germans are not pushing their form before the Olympics. In the Russian national team, the second behind Chudov was Evgeniy Ustyugov (14th place), then in our internal ranking are Anton Shipulin (22nd), Nikolai Kruglov (50th), Viktor Vasilyev (72nd), Ivan Tcherezov (77th) th). Let us remind you that the first 40 participants receive points for the individual World Cup competition. The huge number of race participants is one of the hallmarks of the Olympic season. Yesterday there were 136 names on the starting list. This has never happened in the last three years.
Pre-Olympic starts of the World Cup are not qualifying for Vancouver 2010. All quotas for countries have already been distributed according to the number of points scored at the 2008 and 2009 world championships. The doping scandal with Dmitry Yaroshenko, who was disqualified for using banned recombinant erythropoietin, is haunting our team this season. Due to the deduction of points in the relay races in which Yaroshenko participated last winter, the Russian men's team did not enter the top four in the Nations Cup standings, and therefore at the stages of the 2009/10 World Cup in individual races, coaches have the right to enter not seven biathletes, but six. Maximum representation is assigned to Norway, Austria, Germany and Sweden. In the second echelon, together with Russia, are France, Ukraine and the Czech Republic.
Our biathletes arrived in Östersund on November 27th. Head coach Vladimir Aliki took seven shooting skiers to the starting stage. Yesterday, 21-year-old debutant of the national team Alexey Volkov turned out to be the odd one out, not included in the application for the individual race. As for those who still have candidate status, Andrei Makoveev and Artem Gusev were sent to the Swedish stage of the European Cup, which took place at the end of November. No more than six biathletes will be able to compete at the White Olympics in Vancouver, but the delegation will include two more official reserves.