Biathlon: Weak at the shooting range: Biathletes disappoint in mixed relay teams

After the disillusioning seventh place finish in the mixed relay, Benedikt Doll found clear words:”You couldn’t have felt like going to the start and achieved the same thing,”said the sprint world champion with a serious face. In the absence of Olympic gold medallists Laura Dahlmeier and Arnd Peiffer, the German team remained without chance at the World Cup in Kontiolahti, Finland, due to weak shooting performance and had to settle for seventh place. Previously, the single-mixed squadron had already failed.

The quartet Franziska Hildebrand (Clausthal-Zellerfeld), Franziska Preuß (Haag), Erik Lesser (Frankenhain) and Doll (Breitnau) were two penalty rounds and twelve reloaders, the gap to winners Italy (1 penalty rounds/13 reloaders) was 1:31.2 minutes. Second place went to Ukraine (0/3) ahead of Norway (0/9). Thus Italy and Norway shared the victory in the World Cup standings in the Mixed.

Without their best athletes – Dahlmeier (Partenkirchen), who had already complained about a slight sore throat after finishing fifth in the sprint on Friday evening, as well as Peiffer (Clausthal-Zellerfeld) and Simon Schempp (Uhingen) – the national coaches Gerald Hönig and Mark Kirchner had decided in favour of a piquant formation with Hildebrand and Preuß.

After the disappointing eighth place at the Olympic Games in the women’s relay, Hildebrand had publicly criticized national coach Gerald Hönig for the line-up of Preuß and Denise Herrmann (Oberwiesenthal), who were missing in Kontiolahti due to illness. And it was Hildebrand of all people who caused an extremely bad start on Saturday.

After a reloader in the reclining position, the 30-year-old did not manage to clear the five targets with eight cartridges and entered a penalty round. With 57.3 seconds behind Slovakia, she sent Preuß into the race.

Hildebrand described her appearance on the standing attack on ZDF as “rumbling”:”I wanted to make it better, but in the end it didn’t work out either,”said the relay World Champion, who missed her victory by 0.5 seconds in the sprint on Friday.

Since the 23-year-old Prussia also needed three reloaders, it was unable to take advantage of the equally poor shooting performance of its rivals from France and Italy. Lesser then took a lot of risks, but Doll was standing still for another round of punishment and ruined all hopes of a conciliatory ending.

Previously, Vanessa Hinz (Schliersee) and Roman Rees (Schauinsland) had only finished eleventh after ten reloaders in the single-mixed relay. The victory in the non-Olympic discipline went to France (0/6), followed by Austria (0/7) and Norway (1/11) with individual Olympic champion Johannes Thingnes Bö.

Hinz had also revealed weaknesses at the shooting range. The relay world champion needed eight spare cartridges and could only just barely prevent a penalty round twice. In the end, the gap to the French was 58.5 seconds “There were simply too many reloaders. I would not have liked to have given the novel so much of a backlog, but it was so,”said the 25-year-old.

The races in Kontiolahti will end on Sunday (from 1.30 pm) with the two mass starts. Then Dahlmeier, Peiffer and Schempp will also be back at the start. Afterwards, there is not much time left for regeneration: the next World Cup in Oslo is already scheduled for Thursday.