Biathlon IBU World Championships 2019

[hckošice 13,217]

Just now, heywoodu said:

Wait what, Kuzmina is retiring? Missed that  

 

seriously ?

[heywoodu 13,540]

Just now, hckosice said:

 

seriously ?

Either missed it or forgot it, yeah  

[Monzanator 3,593]

Just now, hckosice said:

 

Retired.

Right now Slovakia has 4 athletes in the W National Team (Kuzmina already officially announced her retirement after this season, both Fialková sisters and Poliaková), a couple of juniors (Horváthová, Heidelmaierová, Machyniaková, Smerčiaková, 2 Remeňová sisters and 2 still very young girls, sadly no way any one of them can fullfil the required criteria for starting in World Cup, maybe in 2-3 years at least one of them if they´ll somehow stay involved in biathlon will be able to reach it) + 3 athletes we had currently at the Universiade Chovanová, Repková and Balogová but their level is too far even from the IBU cup. 

 

that´s all. the whole full Slovak female biathlon. So as you see the relay at the WCh will be our last relay participation for some time, hopefully the girls will achieve something interesting

 

You can always buy someone who's too weak to make someone else's A team

[hckošice 13,217]

Just now, heywoodu said:

Either missed it or forgot it, yeah  

 

Well, her plan was to finish already after past Olympic season, but our federation president succeeded to persuade her to continue one more season and help her husband Daniel, who became the head coach of the NT. She decided to continue one more season saying she still miss two goals in her career (World Champion title - done, and a perfect 20/20 shooting race). Now it´s official, that Oslo will be her last career races

[hckošice 13,217]

Just now, Monzanator said:

 

You can always buy someone who's too weak to make someone else's A team

 

for example a certain Brazilian biathlete/Cross-country skier in order to finally gain some sympathy for our biathon from a certain dutch comrade..

[ahjfcshfghb 285]

1 hour ago, hckosice said:

 

Retired.

Right now Slovakia has 4 athletes in the W National Team (Kuzmina already officially announced her retirement after this season, both Fialková sisters and Poliaková), a couple of juniors (Horváthová, Heidelmaierová, Machyniaková, Smerčiaková, 2 Remeňová sisters and 2 still very young girls, sadly no way any one of them can fullfil the required criteria for starting in World Cup, maybe in 2-3 years at least one of them if they´ll somehow stay involved in biathlon will be able to reach it) + 3 athletes we had currently at the Universiade Chovanová, Repková and Balogová but their level is too far even from the IBU cup. 

 

that´s all. the whole full Slovak female biathlon. So as you see the relay at the WCh will be our last relay participation for some time, hopefully the girls will achieve something interesting

Machyniakova scored 121.43 IBU Points. So she can start in the World Cup next season  

[heywoodu 13,540]

53 minutes ago, hckosice said:

 

for example a certain Brazilian biathlete/Cross-country skier in order to finally gain some sympathy for our biathon from a certain dutch comrade..

 

"Finally gain some sympathy"?  

 

Not many biathletes are getting more of my sympathy than Poliakova  

[Werloc 3,127]

It is extremely sad how women's biathlon is slowly dying out, especially if we take a closer look at smaller nations.

 

Lithuania had a women's relay for the past 4 years. Now we have 3 active women (only two have world cup standard) and 0 talented youngsters, so women's biathlon is going to utterly disappear.

Slovenia struggled this entire year to barely keep a team of four ladies together, so they could start a relay.

hckosice talked about the struggles that team Slovakia are going to be facing.

If anybody remembers, we had Romania in the women's relay just two years ago.

 

Women's relays from Ukraine and Belarus pretty much close to being non-factors, with Semerenko sisters being in awful shape and Belarus losing its two key athletes. Without Makarainen, there's no Finland and who knows if she'll even continue after this season. Russian women are not really a factor anymore either, they've been so unexistant these past couple of years that everyone would stuggle to name anybody from their team that's not Yurlova Or Starykh. Bulgaria in a slow decline, Poland is rebuilding, Korea's thriving as long as Frolina decides that she wants to do this.

 

The only teams on the rise that I can think of are China, Estonia and Sweden. In every other aspect Germany, France, Norway are lightyears ahead and Italy is doing great now on the women's team.

 

As much as women's biathlon is competitive at the top, the mid/low tiers of athletes are really suffering and I hope that the situation gets better. Latvia is slowly building up a team, this was their first mixed relay in nearly a decade. Hope that other teams, including Lithuania, will manage to get up back on their feet soon.

[Monzanator 3,593]

We got a little lucky Kamila Zuk & Kinga Mitoraj really excelled in the juniors so they could transfer into the seniors right away. Nowakowska retired aged 32 but Gwizdon & Guzik are still there albeit not on World Cup this season. And also Monika Hojnisz who represented the old Tomasz Sikora club. But the most important part is these girls are all listed as military athletes like they have in Russia/Germany/Italy so they have some extra support from the army. Some other juniors are not so good, Hojnisz's older sister retired while Anna Maka & Karolina Piton are mid-pack IBU Cup standard at best.

 

It also helps the Duszniki Arena is probably the best outdoor winter sport venue in the country aside from the Szczyrk & Wisla ski jumping complexes.

[hckošice 13,217]

2 hours ago, ahjfcshfghb said:

Machyniakova scored 121.43 IBU Points. So she can start in the World Cup next season  

 

Thanks for the info, that some good news then