Eliseev's flowers and Latypov's seven misses

Initially, five Russians were selected for the Sunday mass starts, but just an hour and a half before the start of the men's race, the representation of the national team was reduced.

Sprint World Champion Alexander Loginov withdrew from the 15 km race.

The head coach of the team, Valery Polkhovsky, said that the reason for the refusal to participate was poor health.

“Alexander did not feel very well.

We decided to save him, since, according to his feelings, he cannot fight in full force today.

He has no injury, ”said the specialist to the press service of the Russian Biathlon Union.

Matvey Eliseev and Eduard Latypov remained in the starting list from the Russians.

In the Friday relay, Eliseev could not prove himself either in shooting or at a distance, which earned criticism even from the head coach Yuri Kaminsky, while Latypov, thanks to his performance at the last stage, almost became a contender for a medal in the last race in Oberhof.

But in Sunday's race, the Russian biathletes seemed to have changed places.

At the first shooting, Eliseev quickly closed all targets and remained in the leadership group, which did not allow mistakes.

Latypov went into one penalty loop and was 24 seconds away from the Italian Lucas Hofer.

Johannes Boe also made one misfire, but the Norwegian quickly pulled himself up to the leaders, while Latypov got stuck behind other people's backs.

After the second lie down, one Russian continued to move forward, while the other rolled back.

Eliseev, thanks to another accurate series, ended up in the first eight, composed only of perfect shooters.

Latypov closed only two targets and dropped to the penultimate place.

On the way to the next line Eliseev showed that he can run at the pace of the leaders, and this inspired optimism before the second half of the race.

The third shooting cut off Frenchman Emilien Jacquelin's leadership group.

Six people remained contenders for the medals, and Eliseev was still among them.

On the penultimate lap, Tarjei Bo broke away from the group, and the Russian, feeling confident in his abilities, led the remaining five biathletes.

The Norwegian did not come forward in vain - this reserve came in handy after a miss to stay in the fight for medals.

Eliseev did not have such an airbag, and when he also entered the first penalty loop, he returned to the track already seventh in 20 seconds from Swiss Benjamin Weger and Austrians Felix Lightner and Simon Eder, who closed all targets in the mass start.

Eliseev often fizzles out to the last circle and stops running, but this time he still has strength.

The Russian managed to get around the German Eric Lesser and keep Johannes Boe behind his back, who had a miss at every shooting range.

Eliseev finished in sixth place and became the first representative of the Russian men's team of the season who took part in the flower ceremony after the race - before that, the best result for himself and his compatriots was tenth place.

The victory in the mass start was won by Tarja Bo.

On the last loop, he won back an eight-second gap from three snipers and won the race with four firing lines for the first time in almost eight years.

Lightner finished second and achieved the best result in his career.

Weger closed the top three - for the Swiss this podium was the first since February 2012.

Latypov became the worst mass start shooter with seven penalties, but escaped the last place, overtaking the Swede Peppe Femling.

# OBE21 mass start victory for @tarjei_boe.

First podium for Felix Leitner!

First podium since 2012 for Benjamin Weger!

😍



🥇🇳🇴 @ tarjeiboe @ NSSF_Biathlon


🥈🇦🇹 Felix Leitner @OESVbiathlon


🥉🇨🇭 Benjamin Weger @swissskiteamhttps: //t.co/bk5aBBso9Qpic.twitter.com/fueWFflPhi

- IBU World Cup (@IBU_WC) January 17, 2021

Mironova's third move and Kaisheva's interrupted streak

In the women's mass start, the Russian team was represented by Ulyana Kaisheva and Svetlana Mironova, who performed well the day before in the relay.

At the beginning of the race, they tried not to get on the rampage and ran in the tail of the peloton, especially since they still needed to take the farthest positions at the firing range.

Almost half of the participants worked cleanly, and among them was Kaisheva - taking into account the previous races, she has already closed 20 targets in a row.

The Russian woman went to the track ninth, and Mironova had to be delayed because of the penalty loop.

But this punishment forced the athlete to join the work at a distance.

With each kilometer of the second round, she won back five seconds from the leaders, keeping at the end of the second ten.

Kaisheva did not run so well - before the second shooting, she was the slowest among the most accurate biathletes.

Both Russians have already coped with the second prone, which allowed them to be in ninth and tenth positions.

The leading trio by that time was formed by Italian Dorothea Wierer, Norwegian Caroline Knotten and Swedish Hanna Oeberg, whom Kaisheva and Mironova lost 20 seconds to.

Mironova continued to run the fastest in this race and led the pursuit together with the Belarusian Dinara Alimbekova.

Kaisheva, on the other hand, could not hold on to her rivals and dropped to 14th place, yielding even to Estonian Tuuli Tomingas.

Standing shooting has become a problem for all biathletes except Wierer.

She single-handedly led the race with zero misses, and Mironova, after passing one penalty loop, was 35 seconds away from the Italian.

The Russian woman climbed to fifth place, 12 seconds behind Eberg-senior and quite a bit Czech Market Davidova and Austrian Lisa Theresa Hauser.

Kaisheva made two penalties, dropping into the third dozen.

Mironova, Davidova and Hauser accelerated so hard on the penultimate lap that they caught up with Oeberg, so they could already fight for two medals.

And after Wierer's two misses, all the pursuers even had a chance to win.

However, no one took advantage of it.

All the girls made mistakes, and Mironova had two of them at once, while delaying the last shot.

On the last lap, she already fought not for the podium, but for the top ten, and lost quite a bit in this dispute to Davidova.

The gold and silver were played by the Frenchwoman Julie Simon and the German woman Franziska Preuss, who came to the last shooting later than the leaders, but closed all the targets and left behind the other participants of the mass start.

Hannah Oeberg won the bronze medal dispute.

Mironova lost a little over 20 seconds to her, that is, without at least one penalty loop, she could well bypass the Swedish biathlete.

Without taking into account the shooting, the Russian woman showed the third result, which could not but rejoice.

Kaisheva did not find the strength for the final spurt and the race ended in 19th.