Less than three years remain before the start of the next Winter Olympic Games, which will be held in Beijing. As it often happens, the receiving party will try by all means to show the maximum result in front of its fans and use all possible means for this. One of the areas in which China works for the sake of winning medals is to attract the strongest sports coaches, some of which can be called real stars in their field.
The Chinese biathlon team managed to bring under its wing the most famous and successful married couple - Daria Domracheva and Ole-Einar Bjoerndalen. The four-time Olympic champion from Belarus and the eight-time winner of the Games from Norway will soon begin to prepare athletes from the Middle Kingdom for biathlon competitions at home games. Bjoerndalen will be responsible for the entire team, and Domracheva - only for women.
“This is a young, ambitious team with great potential for improvement and growth. Starting today, we are joining the daily training process and will be happy to share our many years of experience. We are motivated to give our best advice to athletes, the team and everyone who works with us on the path to achieving a good result. Our focus is on building a highly professional team, supporting and helping every athlete to realize their own potential. And of course, we are glad to use this chance and help further develop our beloved sport around the world, in countries where biathlon and all winter sports have great potential, ”wrote Domracheva in her Instagram.
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Posted by Darya Domracheva (@dadofun) Sep 11, 2019 at 11:59 am PDT
Newly-trained coaches who completed their sports career only in 2018 will have to make a lot of efforts to succeed in their new positions and lead the wards to medals at home Olympics. Nowadays, the Chinese biathlon team is not even included in the extended circle of teams that could qualify for awards. Last season, girls from the Middle Kingdom took 20th place in the Nations Cup, and men - 27th. The best in the individual standings Zhang Yang scored only 37 points and became the 78th among women. In men's races, no one has ever taken a place in the top 40.
However, the Chinese team was not always so inconspicuous. Ten years ago, biathlon fans could seriously believe that athletes from the Middle Kingdom would become leaders in this sport. In the 2008/09 season, the women's quartet managed to win the bronze medal in the relay at the World Cup stage, and Wang Chunli even won the sprint race in Ostersund, ahead of the stars of those years, Tur Berger and Magdalena Neuner.
Earlier, in 2005, Liu Xianying became the silver medalist of the World Championship in the pursuit, and two days later Sun Zhibo repeated her result, finishing second with two misses in the individual race. Yu Shumei won another silver in the World Cup five years earlier.
She owns the best result of the Chinese team at the Olympic Games. In 1998, Yu Shumei accurately shot at the sprint, unlike most of the favorites. She had excellent chances for a medal, but still, the young athlete, whose finger was amputated due to frostbite, lost 1.9 seconds in the argument for bronze.
However, there is still a lot of time left before the Olympic Games in Beijing, and the paramount task for Domracheva and Bjoerndalen will be to prepare the Chinese team for the 2021 Asian Winter Games, which will also be held in the capital. At this level, the biathletes from the Celestial Empire are more competitive - in 2017 they managed to win three silver medals in a dispute with Kazakhstanis and Japanese.
According to the four-time Olympic champion Alexander Tikhonov, the biathlon star pair should first try their hand at Belarus, and not try to immediately raise the Chinese biathlon to a new level. But he noted that he respects the choice of former athletes.
“Domracheva and Bjoerndalen deserved to manage their fate the way they want. Few great athletes become great coaches. This is hard, hellish work, especially in biathlon. God forbid, let them try themselves. In the Middle Kingdom they will not make a bad choice, they always try to attract the greatest. But on the other hand, there are many problems in the Belarusian biathlon. Belarus has done a lot for Dasha. They are wealthy people, and the country needs them. I am for them to be here. In Raubichi there is a wonderful complex that is preparing for the World Cup, there are all conditions for work, but there are not enough experienced trainers. But, of course, they have the right to make their choice, ”said Tikhonov RT.
For the first time, fans will see Domracheva and Bjoerndalen as coaches at the World Cup stage in Ostersund, which starts on November 30.