Werloc

The real highlight of this race is that Poliakova is the second best Slovakian lady today

Well, she still has time to develop. Give her four years and you will see her tackling such heights as top 70!

Ana is not capable of doing much, but at 19 years old, she can go head to head with Wierer on shooting speed at least and if we want to be even more petty, she even shot slightly better

I'm sorry for all of the spectators that will have Ostersund flashbacks for the next year or so everytime they hear "The Winner Takes It All" on repeat by ABBA

YES! This is what everybody was waiting for! Literally

I'm waiting for the highly anticipated finish of Jesipionok

Hm, honestly thought about having Braisaz as one of my secret favourites for medals in Ostersund, since it's a venue that she really loves and has good results in. Since her shooting was fairly awful this season, I was not brave enough to risk it, but she can come in to get points for me since I have 1 "any other" on the podium today

Lisa Theresa is slowly, but surely getting closer to the top places with every year. Her day will come

Oeberg is brilliant

Don't say anything about Paulina, we always curse her during individual races

That pace tripped her up...

Well, I have no breaks, but the timing on the races is freakin' perfect for me. Not too early, so doesn't crossover with lectures and not late enough, so I can watch it before leaving for work

The only thing that is motivating me to do anything today is the fact that right after my lectures, I come back to the individual race

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.

Yeah, it's honestly very surprising it took them THAT LONG to actually have good younger talent coming in.

Well, yeah, that's probably one of the most ironic moments of her career, although she had a 6th in 2014 too. It seems that if she's going to have a good major championship race, she seems to get it right in the mass start most often.

Glad that Johannes didn't win today, would have lost another 4 points then for not having him in my top three Also, World Championships are just another world cup with less athletes competing (so, weaker field) and stamped with a different name. Don't get me wrong, I really love and enjoy the fact that we have Biathlon World Championships every non-Olympic year, but it also makes it less relevant at the same time when it's held that often. And to people bashing Kaisa, honestly screw you I'd rather have a three time crystal globe queen that never gives up on the track and has kept fighting for so many years despite some shortcomings in her career. She has fought head to head with Henkel, Neuner, Domracheva, Kuzmina, Dahlmeier, Berger and other toughest biathlon women for nearly two decades. Not to mention that she is the face of Finnish biathlon. I can tell you that French, Norwegian, German, Russian athletes never had the pressure of an entire nation on their backs for that many years. Even if things don't work out, there's always the relays, well, ladies and gentlemen, Kaisa never experienced a relay where she could race in a team with someone that's her equal, except Mari Laukkanen on her best days. The real losers of this world are people that undermine other people's achievements and people that look down on others when they are experiencing dire times.

Okay, I call my tagging mission successful

This was the first time in these championships when I had the chance to tune into the medal ceremony. Is it the new norm to give out boxes of beer instead of medals or is it just Sweden?

Okay, one last final stand @Belle @Gigs @MHSN @intoronto @Pabloffo @Finnator123 @MantaRaymarc you still have half a day to post the song. Also, @LDOG @dareza you can still join and vote in the contest, you never miss them.

I don't think he will retire. He was just very ill this season, though I'm highly surprised he got a start in the world championships. Kinda unfair to Ponsiluoma (unless of course he's sick himself)

Lithuania is having simply the best championships! I am so excited. Vytautas Strolia, another person that's not known for hitting all the targets, I think this might have even been the first time (second at best) when he goes clear in a race and finished with a PB of 26th place Tomas Kaukėnas after an abyssmal season actually made it in the pursuit with clean shooting as well and Karol topped it off with decent ski speed and 63rd place, but his priority is the individual race and we'll see if he shines there. Anyway, 26th for Strolia and 27th for Kočergina is more than anyone could have asked from our team, especially since we qualified like to two pursuit races this year and our only points were from Karol in an individual race at the start of the season. I'm a happy camper.

@ahjfcshfghb Yup, we needed a top 32 for that sweet sweet biathlon funding, so the federation started their celebrations already

Not individual funding, but this should add some points to the biathlon pool though Still, this 27th place and shooting is completely out of nowhere

Okay, just got caught up with biathlon. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON??????????????? Natalija Kočergina with a PB of 27th place and clean 0+0 shooting, probably in the most underwhelming biathlon season for Lithuanian women in the past 10 years I am utterly shocked and very pleasantly surprised at the same time, especially after the very mediocre start in the mixed relay. If Natalija can do it, I'll have a bit more faith in our men's team as well now. I am extremely proud of this result