Maoershan: Biathlon Mass Start

 What a Happy Technical Chair!

Was there a more happy man Saturday morning in the Harbin Universiade than our Biathlon Technical Chair Ondrej Rybar? We are not writing about the fact he could be happy about the way biathlon events were perfectly run by the IBU Delegate Ubaldo Pruckner and himself. We are just talking about the wonderful gold medal won in the 15km mass start event by the athlete he coaches: the Czech Jaroslav Soukup. After the first shooting, Jaroslav escaped with the Russian Artem Gusev, winner of the 15km and the sprint earlier this week. Soukup, who finished 11th of the 20km in the recent World Championship in Korea, made a mistake in the second prone shooting. But so did Gusev also. The two athletes arrived in the first standing shooting together. Soukup was faultless while Gusev had to go for one penalty loop. The Czech arrived for the last standing shooting around 28 seconds before Gusev. But while Jaroslav had to go for one penalty loop, the Russian missed two times the target. The Czech flew to the finish line and to victory. The final sprint for the silver medal was epic: by one tenth of second, Alewey Trusov from Russia could take the second place before Gusev. After six titles out of seven won by the Russians in the biathlon events, it was their second defeat. But many countries would be delighted to be at their place and to win a silver and a bronze medal in the same event!

And the last gold for…China!

Now that the Russian supremacy had been again broken one hour before, the women biathletes at the start of the 12,5km mass start did not have to show any complex towards the Russian favourites they could beat for the first time in the women’s competition. It would impossible to summarize this last thrilling event in a few lines. After continuous leader changes, the Chinese Chaoqing Song came out of the last shooting just behind the Russian Anna Sorokina. Her skiing ability allowed Song to emerge six seconds before Sorokina and 9 seconds before Nadezha Chastina, another Russian girl. The Chinese improvement in female biathlon was already stated in the World Cup. The gold medal of Song and the silver medal of Liu in the pursuit will assure the Chinese sports authorities that the building of this wonderful new biathlon stadium in Maoershan was the best investment they could do.