There was a warm welcome in Prince George for the biathletes, from the locals not from the weather. It’s freezing with temperatures around -20 degrees! That didn’t seem to be an issue for our six newly crowned World Sprint champions however.
The usual suspects
The top three in the women’s sitting sprint was not a surprise it was just a matter of which order they would finish in. After missing World Championships last season Oksana Masters stormed back to win gold. Hitting all ten targets was the key to her victory. She is the fastest skier in the class so when she hits all ten she is almost impossible to beat. That was the case today despite the best efforts of clean shooting Anja Wicker who took the silver medal 2 seconds back. A single costly miss meant defending champion Kendall Gretsch had to settle for bronze today.
The unusual suspects
The Chinese biathletes tend to race only at major Championships so we rarely see them on the World Cup. They showed up here in Canada and took two of the three medals on offer. It was Zixu Liu who added the World Sprint title to his Paralympic title in the same event. Ten out of ten helped him finish ahead of nearest rival and silver medallist Taras Rad who had one error on the range. Third place went to Mengtao Liu with two misses giving us the exact same podium from the Beijing Games.
Early home success
The Canadian crowd didn’t have long to wait to celebrate with two gold medals in quick succession. In the women’s standing Natalie Wilkie defended her World title but this time she had to share it! Liudmyla Liashenko finished with the exact same time as Wilkie despite missing one shot to Wilkie’s clean score. A perfect shoot from Brittany Hudak secured the bronze and another Canadian medal.
Hot on the heels of Canada’s first gold medal came a second! Mark Arendz took the win in the men’s standing. Despite one mistake on the range he was still fast enough to claim victory by almost 21 seconds. Serhii Romaniuk was second with 10/10 upgrading last season’s bronze medal to silver. The reigning champion Marco Maier was third this time around with 9/10.
German dominance
As expected the German women once again swept the podium in the VI race. Linn Kazmeier came out on top in the battle of the teammates to take the gold medal. With the same shooting score of 9/10 as her teammate Leonie Maria Walter she was able to ski away to a five second win leaving Walter to pick up the silver. Despite a clean sheet at the range Johanna Recktenwald had to settle for third some 51 seconds back.
Kazik class
The red hot favourite and defending champion in the men’s VI was Oleksandr Kazik and he was triumphant once again in the sprint. Even with 2 missed targets he still took gold by nearly 7 seconds. Anthony Chalencon was his nearest challenger. With 9/10 he managed to stop a Ukrainian sweep of the podium taking silver for France. Iaroslav Reshetynskyi completed the podium with a clean shoot for bronze.
Follow biathlon23 on X(Twitter), Facebook and Instagram!
biathlon23 