Three Russians in the top five

For many Russian biathletes, the European Championship in the Polish city of Dusniki-Zdroj is not just a tournament where you can compete in the company of strong athletes and compete for medals, but also the last chance to qualify for the main national team for the world championship in Pokljuka.

The final composition has not yet been determined, and it may well include both young reservists and experienced athletes who did not manage to show a decent result in the World Cup.

On Wednesday, Larisa Kuklina made an application for a trip to the World Championship.

She won the bronze medal in the individual race with one penalty.

Kuklina lost only to Pole Monika Hojnisz-Starega and Ukrainian Anastasia Merkushina.

But other Russian women also managed to prove themselves - 21-year-old Anastasia Shevchenko became the fourth with perfect shooting, and Valeria Vasnetsova showed the third result in pure speed.

True, because of seven shots missed the target, she became only 56th.

The sprint race took place on Friday, and the dispute between these three athletes over the opportunity to be in the main team continued.

Shevchenko was the first to start.

Thanks to high-quality work on the bench, she immediately became among the leaders, but lost to some of her rivals in speed.

She also had the second shooting clean, after which she already took the first intermediate place.

But the course of the 21-year-old athlete was still slightly inferior - on the last lap Shevchenko missed the Latvian Baibu Bendiku and the Norwegian Karolin Erdal.

Kuklina, on the way to the first shooting, showed the best move among the Russians, but made one mistake, due to which she was 22 seconds behind Bendika, who was leading at that time.

Vasnetsova managed to shoot to zero, and she already became the main contender for the victory - in front of the stand Valery was the second, losing quite a bit to Bendike.

The girls carried out the second shooting in different ways.

Kuklina closed all targets and rose to fourth place, behind the third by only 0.1 seconds.

Vasnetsova still allowed one misfire and lagged behind Shevchenko by 12.5 seconds.

The Russian women needed to quickly run the last lap, but both of them never reached the medals.

Shevchenko remained in third position and became the owner of the bronze, Kuklina and Vasnetsova followed.

The dispute between the three Russian women will continue in the pursuit, where all of them will be less than 13 seconds behind Bendike at the start.

# OECH21, Duszniki-Zdroj 🇵🇱


The winners of women's 7.5 km sprint:


🥇 Baiba Bendika 🇱🇻


🥈 Karoline Erdal 🇳🇴


🥉 Anastasia Shevchenko 🇷🇺


📸 Stancik / IBU pic.twitter.com/5eEeezfhvI

- IBU Cup Biathlon (@IBU_CUP) January 29, 2021

Khalili's lost gold

For men, the situation with the selection to the Russian national team was even more complicated.

In the individual race, none of the potential contenders for the World Cup showed themselves.

Said Karimullah Khalili, although he worked cleanly on all four lines, ran mediocre and was left without a medal.

Evgeny Garanichev made four mistakes and also did not impress with his speed.

The rest of the Russians also had enough problems, none of whom made it into the top ten.

Garanichev decided not to participate in the sprint - he himself understood that mistakes in shooting could not be quickly corrected, and the coaches wanted to check in the case of Daniil Serokhvostov.

The 21-year-old biathlete attracted attention at the last stage of the IBU Cup and expected to prove himself at the European Championships.

However, Khalili has not yet said his last word.

He started the sprint first of the Russians and immediately set the bar high not only for teammates, but also for the rest of the participants.

He put on speed and kept accurate shooting.

Just like Shevchenko, the young athlete in the second race in a row closed all the targets and became the intermediate leader of the race for a long time.

However, on the counter, everyone who hoped to move Khalili suddenly had a real failure.

Streltsov earned two penalties, and Porshnev, Bientegor and Suchilov - three each.

The 22-year-old biathlete had to wait to see if someone would challenge him from the "dark horses".

One such, unfortunately, was found.

Experienced Swiss Martin Yeager also managed to clear both firing lines, and the last lap ran 11 seconds faster than Khalili.

The Russian dropped to second place and eventually became the silver medalist.

As for Serokhvostov, his participation in the race was more than justified.

Although he made two penalties, he ran better than most of the sprints and finished tenth in his debut European Championship.

Apart from him and Khalili, none of the Russians were in the top twenty.