Kuklina's leadership and Garanichev's lag
After Saturday's pursuit races at the European Championships, three athletes were identified in the Russian national team who received tickets to the world championship in Pokljuka.
The head coach of the national team Valery Polkhovsky said that Larisa Kuklina, Said Karimulla Khalili and Yevgeny Garanichev deserved the right to join the main team with their performances.
True, the latter did not manage to win a medal in personal starts - in the individual race Garanichev became 34th, and he missed the sprint and graze.
So that the athlete does not leave Poland empty-handed, the coaches announced him for a supermixt, where Larisa Kuklina became the partner of the Olympic bronze medalist.
The 30-year-old biathlete spent her first stage conscientiously.
She used only one additional cartridge on the rack and secured herself in the top three - she passed the baton four seconds after the German Stefanie Scherer and at the same time with the Frenchwoman Caroline Colombo.
Garanichev's rivals were Justus Strelow and Emilien Claude.
In comparison with them, the Russian ran a little worse and lagged behind by a few seconds on each lap.
Garanichev shot almost perfectly - he also did not close just one target at once.
True, both the German and the French avoided serious mistakes on the firing lines.
As a result, Garanichev was 14 seconds behind Strelov, but passed the baton to Kuklina at the same time as the French.
The Russian woman immediately rushed to eliminate the gap, while not forgetting to shoot accurately.
By her last shooting, she had lost less than eight seconds to the leading Colombo.
Kuklina held the stance without a single mistake, while Scherer took out one additional cartridge, and Colombo went into the penalty loop.
Garanichev got a six-second gap from Strelow, and the other biathletes lost at least 27 seconds to him.
Before the firing line, the German caught up with the Russian athlete.
They spent prone shooting at the same time and together returned to the track - both confidently closed all the targets.
At the same time, Garanichev and Strelow began to stand, but this time only the German was lucky.
The Olympic bronze medalist had two penalties and was 16 seconds behind.
Claude started the last lap 13 seconds away.
Garanichev failed to finish the race in second place.
The Frenchman still overtook him, and then the Russian was almost bypassed by the Italian Daniele Cappellari.
The Russian duo won only bronze medals.
After the race, Polkhovsky explained Garanichev's not very strong performance on the last loop with poorly selected skis and muscle acidification at a short distance.
# OECH21, Duszniki-Zdroj 🇵🇱
The best three single mixed relay teams are:
🥇 🇩🇪 Stefanie Scherer & Justus Strelow
🥈 🇫🇷 Caroline Colombo & Emilien Claude
🥉 🇷🇺 Larisa Kuklina & Evgeniy Garanichev
📸 Stancik / IBU pic.twitter.com / MuQfWEonav
- IBU Cup Biathlon (@IBU_CUP) January 31, 2021
Roller coaster of the Russian team
For the mixed relay, the coaching staff selected a very unusual line-up.
Instead of Anastasia Shevchenko, Valeria Vasnetsova or Natalya Gerbulova, who achieved certain success in personal races, Polina Shevnina and Anastasia Goreeva received the women's stages.
The men's team included Nikita Porshnev and Khalili.
Shevnina already made three mistakes at the first stage and dropped to 20th place, losing half a minute to the leaders.
At a distance, she was noticeably inferior to her rivals, and by the last lap she could no longer maintain a competitive pace at all.
When passing the relay, Shevnina was already 51 seconds behind.
At the same time, Goreeva's performance was a real revelation.
The young athlete began to rapidly catch up with her rivals, and after the perfect first shooting rose to the top ten.
On the stand, Goreeva used one additional cartridge, but it did not prevent her from being in the top five.
The Russian woman lost less than 15 seconds to the Swedish Anna Magnusson, and towards the end of her stage she was already 12 ahead of the Scandinavian. Goreeva finished second, just six seconds behind the Norwegian Osne Skrede - she became the best in the second segment of the relay both in terms of shooting and pure speed.
Piston the first two laps continued to be among the leaders.
If it were not for one misfire on the ground, the Russian team could even try on the role of a leader.
But on the counter at Porshnev there was a failure.
He got a penalty loop and dropped to eighth place.
The gap from the top three has increased sharply to 40 seconds.
It is interesting that the Norwegian national team was in the lead, in which at the first stage the athlete also did not close one target.
After his failure, Porshnev seemed to give up the fight.
He was another 20 seconds behind, and Khalili was behind the Norwegian team for more than one minute.
Taking into account that the Russian did not show decent speeds in any personal race, there was little hope for medals even with accurate shooting.
Khalili ended up using one doppatron and even moved up to seventh place, but lost almost two minutes to the winners from Norway.
Russian biathletes were never able to win a single victory at the European Championship, which was only the second case in the history of these competitions. The last time this happened was in 1995. If you do not take into account the performances of the juniors, who held their own separate competitions at several tournaments, then the Russians were left without gold for the first time since 2007.