Golden motivation Pavlova
The European Biathlon Championship started with a pleasant event for Russian fans. Evgenia Pavlova won the super sprint - a new discipline that replaced the traditional individual race in the competition program. For the 26-year-old biathlete who failed to gain a foothold in the main team of Russia this season, this is the second victory in the European championship. The Russian team also became the silver medalist in the mixed relay.
This season, the European Championship, which is actually an extended stage of the IBU Cup, takes place at an unusual time. Usually this tournament is organized before the world championship and serves as preparation for the main start or a kind of talent fair, with which you could be at the last moment in the main team of your country. In the same year, those who gathered in the competition in Raubichi did not wait for their chance in Anterselva or retained their strength for another crucial start.
The Russian team mainly consisted of athletes of the first category. The exception was only three representatives of the men's team - Matvey Eliseev, Eduard Latypov and Nikita Porshnev. Instead of having a rest and getting ready for the next stage of the World Cup in Nove Mesto, which will begin on March 5, they should have gone skiing on the third day after the World Cup.
This decision of the coaching staff did not justify itself. Eliseev and Latypov on the first day took part in the super sprint - a race from qualifications and the main round, in which shooting is much more important than speed. Eliseev, who ran off almost the entire World Cup, was unable to pass even the first stage because of two unclosed targets. Latypov passed the selection, with the second result, but two misses at the last line threw him to 13th place. The best result among Russians was shown by Said Karimulla Khalili, who took seventh place.
Pavlova had a completely different attitude to the first race of the European Championship. After a relatively successful last season, at the end of which the International Biathlon Union recognized her as the rookie of the year, she spent only one race in the World Cup and was sent to the second team. The European Championship was her only opportunity to recall herself, and the 26-year-old athlete took advantage of it. That qualification, that Pavlova’s race itself did not have a single miss, and it turned out to be faster than the Ukrainian Elena Pidgrushnoy and the Frenchwoman Kloe Chevalier, who took places with the Russian on the podium.
Zhenya Pavlova won the super sprint at the European Championship in Minsk.
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1. Evgenia Pavlova (Russia) - 16: 31.8 (0)
2. Elena Pidgrushnaya (Ukraine) +2.8 (0)
3. Chloe Chevalier (France) +5.5 (0)
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In the men's race, the best of the Russians Karim Khalili took seventh place.
📷 Denis Kostyuchenko pic.twitter.com/E4CAithjqv
Salvation from Khalili
True, the next day Pavlova was no longer able to repeat her success in the single-mixed. She performed in tandem with Kirill Streltsov and handed him his stage 21 seconds from first place. The recent World Cup debutant not only did not clear the gap, but also increased it by another half a minute. As it turned out, he lost a clip on the track, and this led to the loss of precious seconds for such a fleeting race.
At her second stage, Pavlova was not able to win back something - she couldn’t shoot absolutely clean, and she didn’t have the same speed as the day before. Before Streltsov returned to the distance, the Russian duo was only seventh, and only one position was won to the finish line.
“We set up as usual: to fight. But it was hard to do it. It seemed to me that yesterday the track was terrible. It turned out that it was still nothing. Today everything is simply broken, ”the biathlete justified herself in a conversation with Match TV.
The second day of the European Championship was closed by a mixed relay. The first stage in the Russian national team went to Reztsova, who, like Eliseev, could not even get to the main stage of the super sprint the day before. The biathlete also started the baton unsuccessfully, having spent all the extra cartridges already at the first frontier. The Russian team immediately fell out of the top ten, and neither after a more accurate shooting standing, nor after the stage of Victoria Slivko, they could not get to the medal positions.
Correct the situation had the male half of the team. Latypov managed to ensure that the chances of being in the first three became real again, and Khalili brought the matter to an end. For two, they used only two additional cartridges, and at the same time, in comparison with their rivals, they showed decent time on the track.
The failure of the Belarusian Sergei Bocharnikov played into the hands of the Russian team - the European champion in the super sprint at the last shooting went into the penalty loop. By that time, the Ukrainian team could not be caught up, but it was possible to fight the Norwegian for silver. Khalili, who forever rescued his partners in junior relay races, did not allow Alexander Andersen to encroach on second place and arrived at the finish line a little earlier than his opponent.
The Russian team took second place in the mixed relay at the European Biathlon Championships in Minsk. The team included Kristina Reztsova, Victoria Slivko, Eduard Latypov and Karim Khalili.
1. Ukraine - 1: 11: 32.1 (0 + 9)
2. Russia +32.3 (0 + 9)
3. Belarus +40.4 (1 + 10) pic.twitter.com/6KucpZQH9s