The men's sprint at the third stage of the Biathlon World Cup in Hochfilzen did not bring the Russian team a medal, but gave a real chance to open an account with personal awards the very next day.
On Saturday, the athletes were in for a 12.5 km pursuit.
Two representatives of the national team, Alexander Loginov and Eduard Latypov, were in the top ten of the starting protocol.
The bronze medalist of the World Championship in this discipline received the fourth number in the queue.
Loginov, the last of the Russians to hit the podium in the pursuit back in 2020, was only a second behind Belarusian Anton Smolsky at the start.
The lag behind the two leaders - the German Johannes Kühn and the Swede Martin Ponsiluoma - was not critical either.
The Russian biathlete had to let go of one for 22 seconds, and the other for eight, which is nothing more than a working moment for pursuit races.
Latypov got the tenth starting number with a lag of 41 seconds from the sprint winner, and this, too, could not be called a catastrophic lag for the owner of the fifth place in the overall standings.
Finally, Karim Khalili, who still lacks speed, but due to accuracy, could hope for something in Saturday's race, guaranteed himself attention, at least in the first laps.
After the opening of the starting town, Loginov did not immediately chase Ponsiluoma, but preferred to work in a general group, in which the Norwegian Tarjei Boe and the French Emilien Jacquelin and Quentin Fillon Maillet joined him.
Behind them, the Swede Sebastian Samuelsson was rapidly catching up, who immediately managed to win back six positions.
His compatriot Ponsiluoma also turned on immediately and before the firing line was inferior to Kuehn less than four seconds.
The leader from Germany went through the first shooting for sure - this season he has not yet had a single slip while lying down. Ponsiluoma also went into the penalty loop, freeing up the second place for the pursuers. Beo Sr. climbed to the vacant position, and Loginov returned to the track right after him. Ponsiluoma dropped to fifth place, leaving Jacquelin ahead, and the rapidly advancing Samuelsson became the sixth. Latypov could have been located next to him, but the Russian missed the last shot.
Kyun's five pursuers were behind him in the second round by about 20 seconds.
Loginov had to drag the rivals on himself, but he coped with this unpleasant duty - in the second shooting, the Russian athlete again worked perfectly.
However, almost all the leaders did not experience shooting problems either.
Only Ponsiluoma missed the first shot and had already stopped persistently asking for the podium.
Fillon Maillet volunteered to replace the silver medalist in the sprint, who managed to join the pursuers in the next segment.
This time Boe and Jacquelin agreed to lead the group, and they even managed to play five seconds from Kuehn before the key standing shooting.
The German passed the third line perfectly again and retained a confident leadership.
His closest rivals, on the other hand, became clouded.
All except Fillon Maillet were left open on the target, and Beu - two at once.
Another Frenchman, Simon Destieux, managed to take advantage of this chance.
Starting 24th, he flew into third place, six seconds ahead of Jacquelin, Samuelsson and Loginov.
On the penultimate lap, Fillon Maillet decided it was better to play gold with Kuhn before the final shooting.
For 2.5 km, he won back a gap of 12 seconds and came with the German to the line.
Such a jerk did not in the least prevent the Frenchman from closing all the targets, and a misfortune happened to Kuhn - the first three shots were unsuccessful at once.
The German withdrew his claim to any medal.
Anyone who arrived at the last rack half a minute later could lift silver and bronze, it was enough to shoot accurately.
Of the main group of pursuers, only Jacquelin achieved this.
Loginov earned two penalties at once - even with one he could still qualify for bronze, but Austrian Felix Lightner, who started 32nd, and Tarja Boe, who returned from oblivion, suddenly began to fight for it.
Loginov, after the fourth shooting, dropped to the end of the second ten and missed not only Latypov, who also made three mistakes, but also Vasily Tomshin.
The 24-year-old rookie of the Russian national team was one of three athletes to hit all 20 targets.
Thanks to this, he approached the top ten from the starting 47th place and ended up in it at the finish line.
The owners of gold and silver in the pursuit were predetermined - Fillon Maillet and Jacquelin were not threatened on the last lap.
The fight was only fought for bronze, and the Frenchman also won the first victory in it.
Destieux left the shooting range in seventh and managed to surpass Samuelsson in the finish line.
For the first time since the era of Martin Fourcade, French biathletes took the first three places, but Destiux still did not climb the podium - the judges carefully examined the photo finish and gave the bronze medal to the Swedish biathlete.