If you do it ongfnhjyand have a certain number of cartridges, your race can be easily called sprint one. But if you occasionally find yourself beyond your gate and your neighbors rush to help you with their own ammunition, then the sprint race will become pursuit. Though in order to reach complete resemblance with biathlon competitions your neighbors should haunt you.

We may suppose that you’re a hermit. Or, for example, all your neighbors prefer not to approach your house, knowing about your habit of shooting without warning. In this case chasing the running away target (especially with no shop and a beaten path on your way) will be easily transferred into individual race. If, vise versa you’re always in the centre of attention and everyone is ready to belt with you; if you decide to cop a drag on the porch and suddenly notice a running-buy hare, chasing it together with all your company will be a real mass-start. The only term is to begin simultaneously.

At last it should be mentioned that mostly final result is not a matter of importance for the majority of competitors. The process itself is far more interesting. Very often there emerge some obstacles on the way. For example, the booze comes to the end and it’s necessary to remember about buying some more. But everyone knows that too much booze is never enough, so the process of running and buying is permanent. Then, if you finally get all-in, break your skies, or loose the rifle, some of your less tired partners will change you. This process is called a relay race.

Well, this was a brief description of modern biathlon discipline features. Though some time ago so called patrol races were hold, but very soon they stopped their existence because of close resemblance to the police tactical operations.

It’s hard to define whether running or shooting is more important in modern biathlon. Surely attention should be paid to both. But a rational compromise should be reached. You may shoot as good as Robin Good or Tchingachguk, but if you have never seen snow or have heard about it only from your grandmother, there’ll be hardly any sense to take part in biathlon races. But there are some variants in case you’ve been skiing since early childhood. Mostly former skiers, not shooters, become biathlon athletes, although positive results emerge later, if there are any.

There are plenty of good traditions in Russian biathlon. Our great sport chiefs always plan receiving gold medals in this particular kind of sport. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s a World championship or Olympiad. The situation is different from other winter kinds of sport (for example, clean and jerk combination or cross-country skiing), the representatives of which used to show good results, but at present they are glad just to get into top-ten. Meanwhile biathlon athletes let nobody down and both women’s and men’s teams are always considered to be hypothetical winners.

Moreover, last season Olga Pyleva nearly won the World Cup, and only at the last March race Sandrine Bailly of France and Kati Wilhelm of Germany managed to outstrip her. But Russian sportswomen became the first according to general team results. The men’s select team was in a more complicated situation, as Norwegians with Ole Einar Bjoerndalen at head are absolute leaders at the moment. Ole was the best in the last year World Cup. Sven Fisher (Germany’s sport-star) became the second; meanwhile his short outstripping shouldn’t be taken into account at least because the Norwegian didn’t take part in two races at all. The reason for that was amazing! Bjoerndalen missed the competition as at that moment he was taking part in ski-races for Norwegian select team. Thus it becomes clear why Ole Einar never gets lower than first five places in biathlon even when his shooting is rather poor.

Two Sergeys – Tchepikov and Rozhkov, became the best Russian biathlon athletes. They took the fourth and the fifth places.

As there are usually no great changes just before the Olympiad, it was quite expectable that familiar characters would appear at the first competition round in Ostersund. The only difference was that no one wanted to lay their cards on the table, and some unexpected results (besides green lawns around the route track) could emerge.

Sprint and pursuit (which is held the next day after sprint, being closely connected with its results) were planned to be held in Ostersund. Already mentioned nature whims didn’t become a great obstacle and everyone’s hopes to enjoy the competitions mostly came true.

Our expectations primarily concerned stubborn struggle in the women’s part of the program, in which nearly all our leaders except Albina Akhatova (who got ill) took part. Olga Pyleva’s and Olga Zaitseva’s triumph was especially waited for. In addition to it Zaika (its Zaitseva’s a term of endearment) managed to show supreme results. But then a turn of inexplicable failures took place.

Unfortunately Pyleva failed at shooting completely. Surely it’s not a tragedy, as it’s far more important to succeed in February and win medals at the Olympiad. Besides, Olga showed better results in relay.

Zaika was a break. Together with Anna Bogaliy-Titovets she managed to overcome sprint distance and finally the girls took the fifth and the sixth places. They could have got even higher, but perfect shooting of Uschi Disl of German and Tadeja Brankovic of Slovakia prevented them from doing this. Disl’s results were quite expectable - grandmother of German biathlon is still as fast as a cheetah, but her shooting lets her down often. If it doesn’t there are nearly no chances to leave Uschi behind. Brankovic’s results were a surprise and she managed to start the second after Disl in pursuit.

Such a situation didn’t last long as Disl usually fails to shoot twice. This time it was like that. The same can be said about Brankovic. But no one could stop Zaitseva. Such an attempt was undertaken by Sandrine Bailly and nearly all the German select team, but Olga went on. The result is first Russian gold medal. Three points of lag from Disl are unworthy. Though, it’s early to sum up after two races. We’ll see.

Meanwhile it’s possible to make a first conclusion according to men racing results: if Bjoerndalen goes on in the way he does, even his absence at the half of the races won’t help the others. It’s unbelievable, but he outstripped Nikolay Kruglov of Russia bagging nearly 25 sec. in 2. 5 km. at the first round of the men’s relay, in spite of the fact that Kruglov is a very good athlete.

In spite of the fact that Russian guys didn’t show their best, three of them took places in top-ten. And if it wasn’t a problem for Kruglov and Rozhkov, Ivan Tcherezov, who managed to win the third place in pursuit, made a very pleasant surprise for everyone.

Team results of the first round look rather impressive. Russian women’s select team is the first, the men’s is the second after Norwegian one. But it’ll be as hard to overtake it, as to drive the Norwegians from the Barents Sea.
Today the second stage of the Cup starts with the individual women’s race in Austrian Hohfilzen. It’s a suitable moment to mind that Olga Pyleva won the Cup in individual races last year…

Hasta la vista. Savar.

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