2024-03-26 11:26:01
Russian biathletes were unable to maintain their leadership in the pursuit race.
Anna Sola / Photo: © Dmitry Chelyapin / Match TV
The women’s pursuit race at the Alfa-Bank Russian Biathlon Championships in Tyumen gave rise to a paradoxical situation. The leaders of our team ended up behind the representative of another state.
The organizers refused to play the anthem in honor of the winner.
“I didn’t train for 10 days”
The sprint race in Tyumen showed that many of the best biathletes of the Russian team approached the national championship in good shape. Belarusian Anna Sola might join the biathletes of the Russian national team on the podium, but one mistake threw her back to sixth position.
Moreover, such a performance can be considered a success, taking into account the changes in the athlete’s form during the season. In addition, Anna became seriously ill right before the trip to Tyumen, which caused the training process to suffer.
— After Legkov’s wonderful race, I immediately fell ill. It turned out that I didn’t train for 10 days and lay at home. Now I’m ready to fight, I always try to give 100%. While I was sick, I rested because I realized that I was tired during the season,” Sola said on Match TV.
Anna Sola / Photo: © Dmitry Chelyapin / Match TV
“Every athlete wants this”
On the difficult Tyumen track, no one began to increase the pace from the first meters. The main characters of the sprint, Victoria Slivko and Kristina Reztsova, each made one mistake at the first shooting range and lost their leading positions. Polina Shevnina rose to first place. Following her was Irina Kazakevich (+3.0 sec), and Anna Sola (10.4 sec) was third in the second round. All of them made no mistakes in the first prone.
The second shooting was once more merciless to the leaders. Now Kazakevich and Shevnina went to the penalty loops. Belarusian Sola took the lead due to accurate shooting. We corrected ourselves and returned to the fight for medals for Slivko and Reztsov. They left the line together with Kazakevich and Shevnina with a gap of regarding 25 seconds.
The leader’s curse did not spare Anna either. The Belarusian biathlete missed twice. The pursuers were not accurate either. The only one who performed accurately at the turn was Victoria Slivko. Tyumenka regained the lead before the decisive shooting. Sola was the second to leave the stadium (+21.8 sec). She was accompanied by Shevnina (+24.6 sec) and Reztsova (+25.6 sec).
It was enough for Slivko not to miss at the final shooting, but this task turned out to be beyond her. At the same time, even taking into account the penalty loop, Vika still had a chance of winning, being 8.1 seconds behind Sola. Shevnina was also located between them (+7.1 sec).
Slivko didn’t have enough time for the finishing lap, but Polina took a chance and rushed following Anna, but did it too late. As a result, the victory went to the representative of Belarus. The Muscovite was 5.9 seconds behind. Slivko finished third (+15.7 sec).
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— We managed to climb the first step of the podium. I am happy that the anthem of Belarus will be played. This is what every athlete wants,” Sola said on Match TV following the finish.
However, it later became clear that the Belarusian anthem would not be played at the Russian Championship. In a conversation with Dmitry Guberniev, Anna expressed disappointment with this attitude.
“It’s very disappointing, sometimes to the point of tears.” It seems that we should unite when we are not allowed here or there. If we want, we will give medals, if we want, we won’t. This shouldn’t happen,” Anna said on Match TV.
Dmitry, with his characteristic generosity of soul, played the national anthem of Belarus directly on the phone, which touched the winner of the pursuit race. After this, the organizers held two award ceremonies. First, they honored Anna by giving her the competition mascot, and then they presented medals to the Russian women, following which the Russian anthem was played.
Watch live broadcasts of the Russian Championship races on the Match TV and Match Arena channels, as well as on the websites sportbox.ru and matchtv.ru.
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