Biathlon 2016 - 2017 Discussion Thread

[dcro 10,210]

8 minutes ago, hckosice said:

 

well, he just run 12.5km at full gaz. what you expected of him to jump 2 metres high

 

Nah, but punching the air would be just fine

[hckošice 14,829]

10 minutes ago, dcro said:

 

Nah, but punching the air would be just fine

 

[Gianlu33 4,568]

I continue to say that it isn't biathlon but completly another sport  

[dcro 10,210]

2 minutes ago, hckosice said:

 

 

I must have forgot that. But anyway, I do remember that he didn't celebrate like some winter world champion

[Xander 53]

4 hours ago, heywoodu said:

That's sort of a sad reaction from Pidhrushna. Not very respectful to the competitors for who this is sort of a semi-big deal.

Direct quote: "It's not my first summer championship so I don't think it will leave some psychological trace on the end of the season. We end the summer season and begin preparing for winter from scratch. It's totally different things, especially when we have only a few top sportsmen here..."

 

Not disrespectful at all. Not being hypocrite like certain biathletes who say that they love everyone [/end of gossip]

Almost all best biathletes skipped this event. There's nothing bad about saying that. If somebody's star disease is hurt, she's sorry.

Moreover she was very sober by rating her own performance - she sets for herself enormous standards... like when she didn't end the season after losing consciousness/having heart problems right during the race. Or training with a broken foot etc. Or competing & winning Olympic gold when her husband was wounded at the Maidan events 2 years ago. Diva, disrespectful? It's definitely not about her.

 

 

Btw, she praised Kaisa and said an obvious thing once again: "she was unbeatable today".

Edited August 28, 2016 by Xander

[Xander 53]

Official info: Valya Semerenko will skip this season.

After numerous continuous diseases (it started 1 year ago) she's going to a health resort and she will join the team in spring. 

It seems Pidhrusna's come back inspired her and she chose do not end her career.

[heywoodu 15,141]

13 hours ago, dcro said:

 

Nah, but punching the air would be just fine

Like a certain Brazilian did 

 

 

 

[heywoodu 15,141]

Alright, back home after a weekend for Formula 1 and, which partly existed of looking at my phone constantly especially during Gabi and Bruna's races in Otepää. Eating up my MB's for internet outside of the Netherlands  but I was able to "follow" each and every of their shooting bouts live, shot by shot, so thank you IBU for a good mobile live website and thank you Belgium for finally having decent mobile internet  

 

Time to take a look at the Brazilians there.

 

First off was Gabi in the women's junior sprint. In very windy conditions she managed to hit 7 out of 10 targets, putting her around the top half of the field in terms of shooting. I had told her I thought she could keep Etxeberria (Spain), Tsakiri (Greece) and Mkhitaryan (Armenia) behind her, but man, Tsakiri seems to have improved immensely! Either's she's a real rollerskiing specialist or she has gotten incredibly much faster, well done to her! Gabi meanwhile managed to keep the other two girls behind her, but to also set a faster time than both Latvian Matvijenko (by far the slowest on course except for Mkhitaryan) and Estonian Uha, so she kept four girls behind her and that's a very good result. She was happy with it and rightly so

 

Next up it was time for Bruna in the women's sprint and that ended up a little bit below her expectations. She started faster than the two German girls, which is a very promising sign, but missed three shots in the first shooting bout. With those conditions though, missing some shots doesn't automatically mean the end of your chances to reach your goals, so she pulled together and managed to hit four targets in the standing shooting. In the end she finished only 6 seconds behind Latvian Muizniece and half a minute behind German Otto, not bad at all! In skiing time she was faster than both Germans and despite them definitely not being the top-Germans, that's still very good  

 

Sunday morning and time for Gabi's pursuit. Live timing was a bit hard to follow there, because there were "wave starts" after 4 minutes and after 4:10 minutes, but apparently the times from the sprint still counted (so you could pass the finish together with someone but still be 30 seconds behind her). Gabi started off very well and missed only one shot in each of her first three shooting bouts, only 6 girls shot better! In the last shooting bout, she hit her first three shots...only to realize she was shooting on the wrong target  She only had two shots left for her own target and hit one, so that counted as four misses.. She would have had Latvian Razgale behind her without that crossfire, but still she managed to fight off Etxebarria on the finish line and keep three girls behind her, so she should definitely be proud of especially her shooting results in Otepää, which have been excellent all week (also in training). 

 

Last but not least, it was time for Bruna's pursuit. It didn't start off so well in terms of shooting though, missing three shots each in the two prone bouts. Later she told me it was because of some problems with the "clicks" (where you adjust for wind conditions) and basically all six misses were right on the line...5mm higher and they would have been hits...sometimes luck has to work a bit in your favour and this time it didn't. She did miss two shots in the first standing shooting, but then managed to pull everything she had together for her last shooting bout in Otepää and did what she hadn't done even once in the entire week, including training...hit all 5 targets! Great way to end the championships and an impressive bit of mentality to manage to do that  

 

 

If I had to make some conclusions, even though I know the winter season is of course the real target, for the Brazilians as well:

 

- Gabi shot amazingly good all week, it's a shame she crossfired in the last shooting bout, but apart from that, it was really promising.

- Bruna shot less good, but showed some very strong will power to shoot clean in the last bout. Also, she was relatively close to the rest in terms of skiing speed in what was by far the strongest competition she's ever been in, so now I'm even more sure of what I already knew: she improved her skiing speed immensely during the past few months  

 

 

[Gianlu33 4,568]

Anterselva  will host the 2020 world championship  

 

Tyumen  will host the 2021 world championship. They won against Nove Mesto na-Morave, in Czech Republic  

Edited September 5, 2016 by Gianlu33

[heywoodu 15,141]

It looks like biathlon races at the 2018 Olympics will be held at night, starting 21:00 local time to accomodate European tv-markets (13:00 CET). Not bad, night races are cool