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Interesting season for Lithuania, seems like everyone is getting into shape as we're getting closer to the European and World Championships. Karol with his best ever sprint result and his second best world cup performance of all time. Vytautas was quick, if he didn't miss, another flower ceremony was in the cards. Kaukėnas was the fastest that he's been this entire season, Fomin with his second best result. Kočergina with her best performance in years and Leščinskaitė looks to be getting better. Very intrigued how this will all pan out

That was nice to see, really gave me the Rupholding pursuit 2022 vibes, but without the miserably dying on the last lap part. Very proud of Strolia and his first flower ceremony of the season

Tomas Kaukėnas with his best important fourth shooting performance, missing only two this time to fall out of top 40. Four-five years later perhaps he'll get it down to 1. Very surprising & legit performance from Romanov, whom showed that his ibu cup performances were not a fluke and that he is also very close in the fight for Lithuania's fourth best. And to do it in an individual nonetheless... Big red card to everyone though, you can't afford to shoot this slow, especially when you're slow on the snow. 37s and 39s for Vytautas and Karol in shooting 3 is really far away from the level they should strive for.

Rupholding is providing us with the best biathlon experience of the season

A switch in the Lithuanian team as Romanov gets to start in the individual, replacing the other youngster Fomin. Also, does anybody have any info on why Seppala is missing the second world cup stop? Also, what happened to the other Invenius brother, he was a very talented junior athlete. Jacquelin is not on the start list either. To the Italian users, Lukas Hofer is out for the entire season, since he hasn't started still?

Didn't expect the Lithuanian team to come out swinging, especially in Pokljuka I guess this is our "we've rested after Christmas, but be worried about Rupholding" kind of stage

You are absolutely right, Fischer skis don't work at all on ice surfaces and this is why we saw JTB struggling as much as he did, slipping so many times. This is why some unusual faces had the best skiing times, they were not using Fischer skis, including Strolia that posted a top 10 ski time today out of nowhere.

Meilutytė is just amazing, after everything that she's overcome, I was glad with only her coming back, but I never expected her to come back this strong.

The first point absolutely matters, because it has been a problem for Lithuanian biathlon during our entire existence, with Diana and Tomas struggling with the very same problems when they were at their peaks. Dombrovski and other Lithuanian athletes struggle with this as well every single year, getting significantly worse with every ongoing race, so what if they're not amongst the leaders, the fact that Lithuanian biathletes have one of the quickest declines in form, usually being at full capacity for one world cup stage and then on survival mode till the next longer break, it is a very prominent problem. I'm not sure if I can remain positive about Dombrovski, if he is not threatening point positions with a single miss in a year with no Russians and Belarusians. As for Pokljuka, the shooting won't help, the track is probably the worst for Strolia overall. All of his worst ski speed performances come from Pokljuka. He'll probably be in the 30s with one miss just like here.

Exposed to every other national team that gets their athletes rehabilitated after the race better so that their leaders look fresh at every world cup and not at the 1st WC stop, 4th WC stop and so on, so on... He's doing better than last year, but last year he wasn't DNF'ing from exhaustion, losing ski speed drastically at the very start of the season, when they didn't even have pre-season starts in Sjusjoen this season. With the shooting getting sluggish and ski speed going down with every single race, it's actually a question if he needs to skip the pursuit to have the strength to finish the mass start. Karol, Tomas speed is dropping down with every single race as well. If this is not exposing the fact that we don't have the fortitude and stamina to run a full world cup season, then I don't know what is. I'm sure it's going to look better after the new year, but that's because of a break that everyone will get. And that's only if no one gets sick, because famously half of the team catches a cold during Christmas break Pokljuka is going to be the third venue in a row where we can say the magical words - "historically not good for Lithuanian biathletes". Really makes you wonder why we're only productive in four world cup circuit venues.

If I'm remembering correctly, Bourgeois Republique and Sanfilippo had announced retirement last season, nice to see them at the ibu cup. With Sanfilippo's case, might even be invited to the world cup team after that win.

Finishing 30th in a mass start is not what I'm looking for from Strolia. He is absolutely cooked and probably one of the top 5 athletes at the World Cup desperately in need of a vacation. Lithuanian athletes are never used to running the full world cup programme, because we never qualified anywhere and our rehabilitation team is not as big and dependable as other teams, so we are getting exposed here.

Doll on the podium is always a welcomed sight As for Lithuanian results, see you in 2023, they won't get better here at Annecy

Lithuanian record at Annecy is a 38th place by Vytautas Strolia back in 2021. I'm scared. But hoping for the best

Yes, I've told you yesterday that we've never been in the top 20 at Hochfilzen, so not getting disqualified was a record in itself :DDD

Highly reliant on the shooting, but I really doubt that there's a chance to move up the order for him tomorrow. Better conserve the energy for venues that suit him. He lost a lot of valuable time on the shooting range today as well, so I'm not too optimistic for what's left in Hochfilzen.

Nah, save yourself the disappointment and don't expect anything close to the relay performance that we got in Kontiolahti. Hochfilzen is cursed for us and the track doesn't suit us at all. We're going to lose too much time on the snow even if we manage to shoot well.

Three Lithuanian men qualify to the pursuit, first time in Lithuanian history, although slightly sluggish on the skis. Hochfilzen was never good for Strolia. And even worse for our relay, that's going to have their very first top 20 in Hochfilzen just because there'll be only 20 starters

I'm not really hopeful for many Prior to the season, I thought that Fomin was looking good, but it doesn't seem that the ski speed and shooting is translating in a world cup. Banys is way underleveled even when we compare his form to last season. Kaukėnas looks slightly better than last year, but still not good enough, still the same shooting mistakes in the stand that we've seen for a decade. Karol doesn't look too great either, Cigak looks weaker than last season, Romanov and Mačkinė look a bit better, but probably not better than Banys right now. I hoped for more improvement, I guess I'm going to hope a bit more that it will get better as the season goes on. But having these average top 70 performances with Russia and Belarus out is absolutely damning.

If you want to get even more mad, well then Tomingas and Leščinskaitė were all time rivals from a young age and they were always evenly matched. But Gabrielė had many health issues that have stumped her growth and did damage to her motivation. Last season was the first time that she trained full time and she reached all of her best performances in years. This time though she struggled again, started summer training WAY after everybody else had already trained for months. So it's not looking good at all. Wonder with what kind of form Augulytė is going to come back, but seeing DNS today in junior cup, it's going to be very bad after sickness, since she was never fast on her skis anyways. Žiurauskaitė injured, but Kresik had a sprint with 156 IBU qualifying points, so if Žiurauskaitė didn't have that fall, we might have seen a Lithuanian women's relay after all at the World Champs.

Gossner during her best season was a joy to watch. Still saddened how her career turned out post-injury

Lena Repinc crying forgotten in a corner... :/ Lampic coming to the sport is huge, especially with the ski speed she's showing, but Repinc is a very promising junior, and with how many capable athletes Slovenia is pushing through junior cup, I see a very nice improvement in your future biathlon.

Didn't help them that the first two recruited members had Norwegian and French flags under their names before turning to Belgium So we can't solely take the blame for this.

Yup, I was very happy to see the diversity, hoping that it extends past the junior years. Also, excited to see South Korea with full junior squads, they could've easily pulled a "China" after their Olympics, but they stayed invested in the sport and even stopped importing Russians.

No thanks