Werloc

Two of these things are not like the others, two of these things just don't belong

The level of women's biathlon fell off of the face of the earth. I've been seeing it for years, since I had close insight into the Lithuanian women's team falling apart, I had the time to focus on many other smaller nation developments. 24 countries at the world cup, only 17 fielded relays. Our women might regain three world cup quotas, but it's a question if someone is going to use them. A year ago, only women's teams that weren't stagnating, but quite the opposite - improving, were Sweden and Latvia that went from a single Bendika a few years ago to three world cup spots and they can field a women's relay now. There are more hopes for the likes of Slovenia and Finland that have some promising names coming up. Right now very many of these biathlon countries are suffering from rebuilding and this is why biathlon looks so meh compared to what it was a couple of years ago. Switzerland - the women's team molded around Gasparin sisters, most of the men were old faces as well. Now they have Stalder bros, Hartweg, Baserga, Meier. Bulgaria - their women were ancient, men were led by Anev and Iliev that are ancient as well. Now they're relying on Todorova, Hristova, Dimitrova. Austria - had a legendary men's team of Summann, Eder, Landertinger. Now they are slowly a team on the slow rise since they had time to develop their younger athletes. Poland lost their legendary women's team to age, Slovenia recovering from losing Mali, Gregorin, Bauer and they'll need to replace Fak soon. Ukraine is struggling, because their younger athletes are not Pidrushina or the Semerenko twins just yet, Slovakia really missing Kuzmina and Gerekova and rushing to improve their juniors to have a future after Fialkovas. Germany lost Gossner, Henkel, Neuner, Dahlmeier, Schempp, Lesser, Birnbacher, Peiffer and since they didn't let many of their juniors run world cup races, of course it took a lot of time for them to stop being bad by their standards. The entire main team of Japan were all ancient as well, Kazachstan had a lot of old names, Estonia in full rebuild mode, United States and Canada said goodbye to their biggest names in recent years, everybody is stuck in rebuild phase and biathlon is going to peak again in performance after like 4-5 years. The team can only remain strong if there's a balance of seasoned athletes and younger prospects, France, Norway, Italy seem to be doing this job the best. Lithuania is only as good right now, because we don't need to replace our veterans yet, but nearly every other team right now is in their most vulnerable transitional years.

Yup, finances are really the thing that makes the world go round, especially if you're on a smaller team. If our men didn't clutch a top 16 relay at the Olympics, we might have seen Strolia, Kaukėnas and Dombrovski retired, but because they clutched it, now we can celebrate a wonderful 8th place, whilst some other team falls apart. Over the last 10 years we lost like 14 women biathletes with 11 of them never going any further than the IBU cup or junior competitions. People want to advance further in life, but if you don't get good results, you get no money and if there's no money, good luck finding an athlete over 21 years old that will fly around the world for 7-8 months and train brutally. There will never be that many that do, but only because there are such people - we still have smaller teams. 20 years ago, Lithuanian biathlon was absolutely dead, Diana Rasimovičiūtė was one of three active athletes that went to the world cup from time to time. She had good results, attracted attention and sponsors, suddenly junior athletes were inspired to do something and LT biathlon had funding to take care of more than a single athlete. This is where Kaukėnas and Dombrovski comes in, they showed decent junior results, quickly integrated themselves and became the mainstay of team A. The team is growing even faster, we have relays of men and women, which at an earlier point in time seemed like an absolute impossibility. Kaukėnas' great results at the Olympics gave enough funding to send the entire team to training camps. It also helped fund junior programmes and then we have Leščinskaitė (and her peers that quit) and slightly later a very promising young men's team of Banys, Mačkinė, Fomin, Romanov, Aleksandrov (only Aleksandrov is innactive now). For all of this to happen and for Lithuania to be a talking point in biathlon, Diana Rasimovičiūtė kept extending her career year by year by year, convinced by the federation to keep coming back, because without her, there was no women's team, no women's relay, no world cup spots, which we had three of. Rasimovičiūtė in her late 30s decided to retire and the women's team fell apart in seconds. Now it's Kočergina and Leščinskaitė keeping the team alive, Kočergina is soon 37, Leščinskaitė - the only active female athlete that saw every single person she trained with retire to pursue other things. Now if they keep going until the Olympics, we finally attracted enough women to continue the legacy, but they still need time to get better and there's no guarantee that they won't decide to quit in a year or two. There's no good male juniors coming up either, but luckily we have 5 young men that hopefully will continue for at least another 10 years and give enough time for other talent to be born and developed. Every single year, Lithuanian biathlon is hanging on by a thread and one unfortunate incident would make the dominos tumble one by one. Right now our biathlon is probably at the best place that it ever was, but we still don't have a women's team and everything is so fragile. I can only imagine that Estonia, Latvia, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania, Kazachstan all suffer from these very same problems, USA and Canada struggles to find athletes that are willing to spend half of their year on a different continent every single year. But I can't imagine biathlon without all of these nations, but so many sacrifices have to be made for this sport to continue and even though IBU is trying to help the smaller nations, they are approaching it from a different viewpoint. For example, if you don't want to run weaker athletes in the World Cup and you don't want nations like Lithuania to field a women's relay with unqualified athletes, the least that you could do is get additional quotas for the Olympics to disperse them amongst the weaker nations, so that if those teams don't have the money, at least they can work towards a dream. Give them something at least once in four years, because a dream can be strong enough to change everything. Rasimovičiūtė's dream and all of the people that helped her rebuilt Lithuanian biathlon. Help Croatia, Hungary, Iceland, Denmark, Turkey, Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Spain, Greece, Netherlands, Oceania, South American countries, Asian countries. You will only win if the sport is available to a wider array of countries. Of course, the fact that the planet struggles to produce snow more and more with every single year, winter sport is in a whole heap of trouble that the IBU can't fix.

So, Tomas was the only Lithuanian to miss today What an interesting day. An absolute PB for Lithuanian men coming soon, our previous best was 13th, amazing race and brilliant accuracy for us

I wonder how Fomin will cope during the fourth leg

STOP THE RACE, Lithuania is third

Aaaaah, that 16th shot One bullet away from rewriting Lithuanian history. I wonder which position he'll finish in.

Lol, ski-orienteering athlete with spring and summer training is skiing faster and shooting better than Kresik and Urumova that have been in biathlon for years. Way to go Traubaitė, here's to hoping she'll have a swell season

But you can't replay datacenter to see what the Lithuanians were doing, which targets they were missing, etc. Plus I'm 100% going to be spoiled by Facebook, Instagram and my friend

Well, unfortunately we lost Žurauskaitė to a severe injury this season, she was showing similar strength to Leščinskaitė and Kočergina entire off-season. With her out, there's less than 1% chance to see a Lithuanian women's relay this season in WC.

Yep, the start is tomorrow, but difficult to be excited when I'll be working during both sprints and the individual It's good that I love my work, but still disappointed to miss the opening season race.

Not only that, but even starting in the first group from the get go.

Natalija Kočergina has been racing two relays a day for probably two years now and she's 37. Usually always did better in the second race.

I wonder off of what rules can Rastorgujevs just come back after a 1.5 year doping ban to start in the World Cup without racing in ibu cup for a WC qualification that is supposed to last a year max.

Lithuania Women Lidija Žurauskaitė Marija Kresik Sara Urumova Judita Traubaitė Viktorija Augulytė Men Nikita Romanov Nikita Cigak Stepan Terentjev Darius Dinda Jokūbas Mačkinė

Lithuania Women Natalija Kočergina Gabrielė Leščinskaitė Men Vytautas Strolia Tomas Kaukėnas Karol Dombrovski Maksim Fomin Linas Banys Banys and Fomin should keep swapping, unless someone from the other three should underperform.

Rough for Mona Brorsson Swedish women's team is the hardest to get into at this moment.

Vanessa Hinz quit, injured or demoted? Edit: nevermind, saw her in ibu cup thread

Only four athletes were sent to represent Lithuania to these championships: Rūta Meilutytė (50m Freestyle A, 50m Breaststroke A, 100m Breaststroke A, 100m Medley A, 50m Butterfly B) Kotryna Teterevkova (50m Breaststroke A, 100m Breaststroke A, 200m Breaststroke A) Danas Rapšys (200m Freestyle A, 400m Freestyle A, 200m Medley A) Andrius Šidlauskas (200m Breaststroke A, 50m Breaststroke B, 100m Breaststroke B) We've also had some other athletes with B marks, but probably weren't sent since Australia is far and expensive and they wouldn't have qualified to finals anyways. Smiltė Plytnykaitė - 100m Freestyle B Jokūbas Kėblys - 50m Freestyle B Tomas Navikonis - 100m Freestyle B Džiugas Miškinis - 800m Freestyle B Arijus Pavlidi - 50m, 100m, 200m Backstroke B Daniil Pancerevas - 100m Medley B Nojus Skirutis - 400m Medley B Deividas Margevičius and Simonas Bilis, both now retired, had B qualifying marks as well in a couple of disciplines. Aleksas Savickas, Smiltė Plytnykaitė, Deividas Kazilas, Daniil Pancerevas, Erikas Grigaitis, Kajus Stankevičius, Agnė Šeleikaitė and Tomas Navikonis had more B qualifying marks, but in disciplines that had an A Q mark already or an athlete with a better B Q mark.

I've scored India back in 2017, but that might've been under a different user from India

Strange that we're skipping this, our boys are also at Idre:

Biathletes that you'll see from Lithuania this following season. WORLD CUP Vytautas Strolia Karol Dombrovski Tomas Kaukėnas Maksim Fomin IBU CUP Linas Banys (one of these will join team A) Nikita Romanov (one of these will join team A) Nikita Cigak Stepan Terentjev Jokūbas Mačkinė Darius DInda WORLD CUP Gabrielė Leščinskaitė Natalija Kočergina IBU CUP Lidija Zhurauskaite Mariya Kresik Sara Urumova Judita Traubaitė JUNIOR CUP? Domas Jankauskas MIkas Vildžiūnas Lukrecija Daugirdaitė Viktorija Augulytė Viktorija Kapancova As you may notice, a surprisingly large women's team. There are small hopes of Lithuania fielding a women's relay at the end of the world cup. Zhurauskaite and Kresik are the possible options for World Cup qualification.

Not part of the original deal. I might be sleep deprived, but I ain't gonna get scammed out of my hard earned 3%

Replace Justin Bieber with Khalid, get the same result This time for only 3% of your victory Final offer.

Fuck Today is really not my day, I need to go to sleep Edit: won't edit the post so more people can see later and roast me.