Werloc

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

Very nice to see that our B team can still produce good enough results to get into top 40 at an IBU cup. Really shows that the Lithuanian men's team has some depth and that there's barely anything separating our 4th and 7th best. The only thing that Banys, Fomin, Romanov and Mačkinė need is to be able to challenge Kaukėnas and Dombrovski. Hopefully the future of Lithuanian biathlon will be safe in their hands.

Really refreshing to finally have a Lithuanian biathlete that is actually elite level after so many years of wondering if we'll score points this season, now you're expecting points every single race and mass starts a plenty. Diana Rasimovičiūtė was excellent, but she didn't have the resources that Strolia has right now. One of the biggest what ifs in Lithuanian sports history, because she went toe to toe with Makarainen in her junior years. Tomas Kaukėnas only really showed up during the majors, which are somewhat easier due to the limited country quotas during the competition. So Vytautas is pushing Lithuanian biathlon to a place where it never was before and it's a question if things are going to look this good ever again. Still, happy that after 16 years of following biathlon, I can also enjoy some glory days

Perhaps I'm more lenient with the time frame of the transition. I believe that Bionaz, Giacomel, Passler and others are making a nice transition. I much more prefer my athletes start peaking at 25-ish, less chance of burning out and fading away quickly and better for character growth. I think they are in a very good place for their age, seeing as it is only their second world cup season. And only the very start of it.

Italian men will be doing great too, Italy really had very many successful junior years, now they need a couple more years to develop the youngsters in the World Cup. I stand by my statement still.

I was laughed at when I said this a year or two ago, but give it three years and Italian women's team is going to be as big as Sweden.

Partying, video games and books are for losers, I spend my Friday nights stacking firewood.

Preuss and being sick, name a more iconic duo At this point, Germany should be used to it and travel with an additional athlete on hand so they'd always start with 6.

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