The Russian Biathlon Championships in Khanty-Mansiysk ended with a women's mass start and a men's relay. For some athletes, the season is over, although next week in Uvat there will be two more marathon races with eight firing lines: 30 km for women and 40 km for men. But not everyone was ready for a difficult test after a long series of tournaments.
The race with the general start of the biathletes began at a measured pace. No one rushed forward, we walked in a fairly large dense group. As a result, on one of the slopes, Polina Shevnina fell after a small contact with Irina Kazakevich. Fortunately, there was no massive blockage and consequences for the athlete herself and her equipment. Moreover, despite the downed pace, the Moscow region biathlete confidently joined the fight for medals.
The weather on Sunday was windless, so the girls had the opportunity to fully demonstrate their skills on the firing lines. Immediately 11 participants worked out the bed for zero, and Ekaterina Noskova, Tamara Derbusheva and Anastasia Batmanova coped with the task the fastest. Three-time national champion Natalia Shevchenko made two mistakes, Victoria Slivko, Anastasia Goreeva and Kazakevich missed once. Irina also led the group of pursuers, playing about 10 seconds behind in a lap.
A good move was again demonstrated by Elizaveta Kaplina, who pushed Batmanova out of the top three before the second lie. Yugorchanka began to shoot before her rivals, but made a mistake with the first shot. Meanwhile, Noskova, Derbusheva, Shevnina and Batmanova managed to zero both at this milestone and at the next. Kazakevich did without a penalty on the bench, but on the problematic rack she again misfired, and after the penalty lap Irina lost to the leading Noskova for more than half a minute.
It seemed that Ekaterina was confidently going to the first personal victory in this tournament, but with the final firing line, the Ugra woman could not cope. She tried to shoot as fast as possible, but first she did not pass the size of the second shot, and then the fourth cartridge went far into the milk. Shevnina and Batmanova made one mistake each, twisting the intrigue in the race.
In this situation, she did not flinch and closed all derbushev's targets, but Kazakevich, who had come to the shooting range by that time, surprisingly coped with the rack and rushed after a friend in the coaching group. On the way out of the stadium, they were separated by 10.2 seconds, but Irina had only half a lap to catch up with her opponent. For a while, they walked side by side, but on the final climb, the silver medalist of the Beijing Olympics rushed forward and gnawed out such a long-awaited gold medal.
"I really wanted to win today. I haven't had that in a long time. The season was quite difficult for me, I don't know what it is connected with – the lack of international starts or such a period. And I really wanted to prove to everyone that, as my coach says, I'm Kazakevich, I can win and I have to win. And today, when I came to the counter, I said, either now or never. And she coped with this milestone. It's such a nice ending for me. In today's race, I proved to myself and everyone that I can," Irina said on Match TV after the finish.
In the fight for bronze, Noskova and Batmanova met, but Anastasia, although she had an eight-second reserve after shooting, could not oppose the Ugra woman, who recently became the silver medalist of the national championship in cross-country skiing. On the last climb, Ekaterina gathered all her strength in a fist, bypassed her opponent and replenished her collection of awards of this tournament.
"Of course, it was possible to compete for gold, but today I am glad to be in third place and win a medal. I've already run a few races here and realized that if you stand on the line for a long time, then the tremor begins. I, like yesterday in the relay, quickly tried to work out so that this tremor would not begin. But, apparently, I was a little not ready for such a rhythm and there were mistakes, "Ekaterina admitted.
The men's relay race was also fascinating. The first stage was brilliantly conducted by Tyumen Evgeny Garanichev and Belarusian Nikita Lobastov, who provided their teams with a small lead on the pass. Following them, almost simultaneously, the baton was passed by St. Petersburg resident Vasily Tomshin and the representative of Tatarstan Evgeny Emerkhonov, and Dmitry Ivanov from Ugra closed the top five with a lag of half a minute. But it was his partner Petro Pashchenko who became the main hero of his stage. The 32-year-old biathlete, although he used two additional cartridges, demonstrated enviable speed and managed to pull the team to the first place in the last lap.
"There is a certain sense of under-realization at this tournament, so today I wanted to show the result, to support the team. Initially, I saw how hard the athletes moved around the track, and I understood that I needed to save energy on the first lap. So I did," the biathlete said about his finishing snatch.
Alexey Vagin did not let the team down at his home stadium, who passed his stage almost as a standard: he used only one additional cartridge on each of the firing lines and demonstrated good speed, thanks to which he increased the gap of the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug team to 1 minute 16 seconds. Of course, opponents also helped, to whom shooting was not without problems. Well, all questions about the winner were removed at the last stage by Nikita Porshnev, who needed only one spare cartridge on the rack for two shootings. For the 27-year-old athlete, this gold was the third at the current championship: earlier he won the sprint and the mixed relay.
The second place for most of the race was confidently occupied by the national team of Belarus, but at the final stage there was no shooting from Anton Smolsky, which breathed intrigue into the struggle for silver. The problems of the Belarusian began already on the bed, where he missed three times, but still managed to close the targets with additional cartridges. Even then, Eduard Latypov could have joined the fight, but he made two misfires and remained in fourth position, skipping ahead of Andrei Vashchenko from St. Petersburg.
With the rack, Smolski could not cope at all and earned a penalty lap. Latypov, meanwhile, was in no hurry, tried to shoot for sure, but still missed the last shot and lost important time to reload. Nevertheless, at the exit from the shooting range, he was separated from the Belarusian by only 10.5 seconds, which, with his speed qualities, was quite playable. And that's what happened. Eduard gradually caught up with the opponent, and as a result, the athletes arranged a showdown in the finish line, which remained for the Russian.
After the race, Smolsky admitted that he did not find the strength to resist Latypov's attack.
"The end of the season, the final race after all. I think Edward also had a minimum of strength. Maybe I was nervous somewhere. Of course, such shooting is unusual for me. Today was the final start of the season, I will not go to Uvat. Next month we have a rest, "the championship quotes the athlete.