Laura Dahlmeier looked at the diopter at a loss, the black discs simply didn’t fall over: 29 days before the start of the Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, the Biathlon queen has weakened and experienced a bitter disappointment. At the Heim-Weltcup in Ruhpolding, the 24-year-old finished on Thursday in the singles over 15 km only 48th place. In the classic car, it was four times too imprecise.
“I can’t figure it out. I don’t know exactly what happened there,”said individual world champion Dahlmeier on ZDF about her third shooting, in which she lost all her chances of winning with three mistakes:”You can’t do anything about it. Now it’s time to check off and focus on the next races.”
This time Dorothea Wierer stood at the top of the podium. The flawless Italian won ahead of the Finnish Kaisa Mäkäräinen (1/+12.7 seconds) and the Canadian Rosanna Crawford (0/+21.2). Dahlmeier was 3’58.8 “behind Wierer, the best German was Maren Hammerschmidt (Winterberg/2) on 15th position. seat
In front of 13,000 spectators in Ruhpolding, the race had started according to Dahlmeier’s taste. Both in the first lying and standing shootout all cartridges landed at the finish line, little surprisingly Dahlmeier, who still has a lot of air in her run, was on course for victory at the halfway point.”I felt very good at the beginning,”said Dahlmeier – but then the third attack came:”We’ll analyse this”.
Last year’s five-time world champion from the first race in the Chiemgau had been swirling about. After finishing seventh and thirteenth at the World Cup in Oberhof, which had supposedly failed to live up to the increased expectations of the public in particular, even women’s national coach Gerald Hönig defended his exceptional runner.
Dahlmeier himself, on the other hand, accepted the cautious criticism of her achievements with great ease:”It will be all right,”she said, saying that, according to Bayer’s own statements,”all things considered are back on track” and that she spoke of an “ascending form” after the infection at the turn of the year. On Thursday, however, she only hinted at this for about half an hour.
Things didn’t go really better for the other German athletes. Behind Hammerschmidt, Franziska Hildebrand (Clausthal-Zellerfeld/17.) convinced in the cross-country skiing trail, but with three mistakes she also allowed herself too many tickets. The same was true for the two-time season’s winner Denise Herrmann (Oberwiesenthal/40th), who shot five times next to her, but shone with the best runtime.
“I don’t know why we all couldn’t handle the shooting today. This was not our shooting day,”said Vanessa Hinz, who finished 31st.
The women now have one day of rest, on Friday (14.30 o’ clock in the LIVETICKER) the men’s relay will start. The DSV quartet will perform there in the usual formation with Erik Lesser, Benedikt Doll, Arnd Peiffer and Simon Schempp. Roman Rees, who had stormed to fourth place on Wednesday and fulfilled the Olympic norm, lost out.
After Dahlmeier and Co. on Saturday (14.30 hrs.), the mass start races will close on Sunday (from 12.15 hrs.) the second home world cup of the season. Next week, the Olympic dress rehearsal will take place in Antholz/Italy.