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On Wednesday, January 27, the 2021 European Open Championship begins in Duszniki-Zdroj, Poland. Unlike most other sports, in biathlon, the European championship is not a very prestigious competition, similar to the IBU Cup stages. Even points earned in European Championship races count towards the overall IBU Cup score.
It is therefore not surprising that most European teams bring reservists to the Euro Biathlon, who compete with the top teams from the post-Soviet space year after year. This season, the Ukrainian national team is represented only by half of the main team, as the main start of the season is still ahead – the World Championship.
Interestingly, for our state, the European Championship has a much higher status than the World Cup stages, almost on par with the World Championship and the Olympic Games. But if it is very difficult to win at least one medal at the World Cup and the Olympics, then it should not be difficult to win several awards at the European Championship. The athletes and their coaches will receive scholarships to obtain medals and the federation will receive good funds for the next season.
Ukraine national team squad
mens: Artem Prima, Ruslan Tkalenko, Artem Tishchenko, Bogdan Tsymbal, Taras Lesyuk, Andrey Dotsenko, Ruslan Brigadier.
Woman: Vita Semerenko, Ekaterina Bekh, Anastasia Merkushina, Anna Krivonos, Irina Petrenko, Nadezhda Belkina.
Four biathletes arrived at Dusniki-Zdroj at the same time, performing in the seventh stage of the World Cup in Antholz, Italy. These are Artem Prima, Ruslan Tkalenko, Artem Tishchenko, and Vita Semerenko. Additionally, Bogdan Tsymbal, Taras Lesyuk, Yekaterina Bekh and Anastasia Merkushina also had experience of performing at the elite level this season, but they failed to establish themselves in the main team and recently raced in the IBU Cup.
Dmitry Pidruchny, Julia Dzhima, Anton Dudchenko, Elena Pidgrushnaya, Valya Semerenko and Daria Blashko after Anterselva left for the Slovenian Pokljuka, where they will prepare for the World Championship. Later, those who will show themselves best in Poland should join them. Obviously, one of them should be one of the men’s team leaders, Artem Prima. He too could have trained in Pokljuka already, but decided that the additional competitive practice would only be beneficial, and he himself asked to be included in the European Championship.
Irina Petrenko
It will be especially interesting to see Irina Petrenko on the case, whom Ukrainian fans know best by the name of Varvinets. This biathlete in 2017 became the world runner-up in the relay race, and in 2018 she represented our country at the Pyeongchang Olympic Games. Then Irina suspended her career for two years, managed to marry and become a mother. I also thought about ending my career, but still decided that I hadn’t had the last word in professional sports yet.
At the end of December last year, Irina won the sprint race at the Championship of Ukraine in Bukovel and also finished second in the chase. In the IBU Cup, the first two races were unsuccessful, but last week in Arber, Germany, he managed to hit all the targets in the sprint and take ninth place. Only two tenths of a second then her teammate Nadezhda Belkina was ahead of her, who was included in the Dushniki-Zdroj composition literally at the last moment.
The point is, Belkina recently experienced health problems. Fortunately, apparently, Nadezhda is in normal form and will be able to compete for a medal. But Anastasia Merkushina is only disappointing this season. In personal races, he didn’t even run in the top 15. Perhaps the 26-year-old biathlete’s problems are related to the fact that she trains separately from the national team, under the guidance of her father, coach Oleg. Still, the rest of the Ukrainian women on the track look much better …
For Vita Semerenko, the next competition will be decisive in many ways. In the first part of the season, he showed very weak results, never ran into points in the World Cup. It is clear that on the one hand it will be somehow strange to send such a titled athlete to the IBU Cup, but on the other hand Ekaterina Bekh herself and Anna Krivonos should replace her in the future. So why delay this process if they are not much worse now? They will be able to be shown in the context of Vita this week.
The rest of the world
Even though the best biathletes did not attend these competitions, the competition will continue to be at a very decent level. Many athletes have experience participating in the World Cup, including this season. Among the men, especially the German Johannes Kühn, the Russian Evgeny Garanichev, the Bulgarian Vladimir Iliev, the Norwegian Erlend Bjontegord, the French Emilien Claude and the Latvian Andrei Rastorguevs. They all won medals in elite races.
Erland bontegord
Women with such big names have fewer names, but this does not mean that there will be no one to look at other than Ukrainian women. Through a successful performance in Poland, the experienced Franziska Hildebrand will try to return to the top German national team in the future. Also, the traditionally strong lineup was brought in by the Russian national team. And the teams from Estonia and Poland will act as a base. But in the case of polkas, this is not surprising, because the championship hosts always try to fill the medal table as much as possible.
Well, we must remember that even the reservists of the best teams can offer serious competition to both the Ukrainians and the most eminent rivals.
2021 European Championship Program
01/27/2021 – 11:30 – Individual race, women
01/27/2021 – 15:15 – Individual race, men
01/29/2021 – 11:30 – Sprint, women
01/29/2021 – 15:00 – Men’s Sprint
01/30/2021 – 11:30 – Women’s Pursuit
01/30/2021 – 14:00 – Male pursuit
01/31/2021 – 11:00 – Simple mixed relay
01/31/2021 – 14:00 – Mixed relays
At Duszniki-Zdroj, biathletes will compete for medals in five disciplines: individual races, sprints, chases, as well as individual and classic mixed relay races. On January 28 they will have a day off.
Noteworthy is the return of individual races to the European championship. Last year, as an experiment in the Belarusian Raubichi, super sprints were held instead of the classic biathlon.
Recently, our Anton Dudchenko and Yulia Dzhima were pleased with their successful performances in individual races at Antholz. We hope that the first day of the European Championship will bring the Ukrainian team a medal, or better, several at once!
2020/21 biathlon season: schedule, announcements, broadcasts, results
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