The German biathletes fail to make their debut in the Olympic year. Due to poor shooting performance, no DSV athlete reaches the top ten at the Oberhof sprint.
Simon Schempp wiped the rain off his face and then quickly picked up his extremely weak start into the Olympic year.”There is nothing else left to do for me,”said the Uhinger after his 34th birthday. Second place in the sprint at the Heim-Weltcup in Oberhof:”Of course you wish for a different start than the race today”.
Especially at the shooting range, the German biathletes had shown considerable deficits in the Thuringian continuous rain. With two mistakes in the reclining position, the race was over for Schempp almost immediately after the first shooting “I had a good feeling yesterday and the day before, especially in the lying position. But the mistakes were left and right past, you can’t see a big hit picture,”said the world champion of the mass start, who scored another penalty round in the standing attack.
To make matters worse, things didn’t go much better on the cross-country ski run. On the Norwegian Johannes Thingnes Bö, who once again burned the fastest time in the snow, Schempp lost over 57 seconds on the track – the loss of time due to the mistakes at the shooting range was not even taken into account.”At the moment I don’t feel good at all”, the 29-year-old explained afterwards:”I had to fight quite a lot with my back over the Christmas days, which is unfortunately not yet being dealt with properly in the winter season.
The first race of the year was hardly any better for the team-mates. Arnd Peiffer (Clausthal-Zellerfeld) was ranked twelfth best German, with two cartridges missing their target.”Too many mistakes have been made. 80 per cent of hits are simply not enough,”said the former sprint world champion. The current sprint champion Benedikt Doll (Breitnau), who repeatedly weakens at the shooting range, had to go three times into the penalty round like Schempp and finished 17th.
“I always have to give a little bit of the same answer right now. It’s a very good feeling, but I don’t have the calmness to pull it off,”said Doll:”I couldn’t manage it today in a coordinative manner with regard to the rhythm of the standing shooting. And lying down, I just didn’t aim well.”
Martin Fourcade once again showed the Germans how it works. The flawless Frenchman celebrated his 64th birthday. World Cup victory, the third in this season, defending his lead in the overall World Cup. Fourcade was 8.1 seconds ahead of Norway’s Emil Hegle Svendsen, who was also clear of error. Bö (+10,2) completed the podium in third place despite two penalty rounds and took Peiffer and Doll a lot of time, too.
Due to the immense arrears – Peiffer was 1:01.9 minutes behind Fourcade, Doll (1:25.4) and Schempp (1:49.7) had even more distance – are in the pursuit on Saturday (15:00 hrs. /ARD and Eurosport) the chances of victory for the DSV men, who then have to get by again without the sick local mathematician Erik Lesser (Frankenhain) On the other hand, Franziska Hildebrand (Clausthal-Zellerfeld), who will start fourth in the hunting race, has a much better chance of a further top position with the women (12.15 o’ clock).