E.ON IBU World Cup Biathlon

The pursuit race at the World Cup Biathlon Final in Khanty-Mansiysk ended in victory for Martin Fourcade of France.

The race gave all fans of biathlon a confrontation interesting in its glow. The overall leader and winner of yesterday’s sprint Martin Fourcade started from the first position and ran confidently, cutting snowy shroud. Perhaps it was difficult weather conditions that forced the biathlete to spend extra seconds during the second shooting, letting his main rival Arnd Peiffer of Germany. However, the youngest of Fourcade was not very upset. He literally hung “on the tail” of the Peiffer, providing psychological pressure. This played a role at the last shooting, when biathlete from Germany missed the penultimate shot. At this time Fourcade could not even hide his own enthusiasm, because he understood that he a gold medal was already in his pocket. Without reducing his speed, he continued to work on the track and finished nearly 20 seconds ahead the silver medalist Arnd Peiffer.

To the great delight of Russian fans Dmitry Malyshko interfered in the fight for third place. Yesterday he showed the 11th in the sprint, so he had the most favorable position among all of his teammates. Due to the excellent speed, and almost clean shooting, he was able to win seven positions back, and at some moment of the race was keeping third position. His main rival in the struggle for a podium was the famous Norwegian biathlete Emil Hegle Svendsen – one of the most experienced and titled participants of the World Cup. In the end, the experience won. The biathlete of Norway defeated the Russian one at the last shooting range, when the young biathlete from St. Petersburg, could not cope with emotions and made a second miss in the race. Malyshko tried to attack, but could not catch up with Svendsen.

The rest of the Russian national team, also have done their best to improve their own results. So, Anton Shipulin moved from 27 position in the sprint race to 13 in the pursuit, Andrey Makoveev – from 18 to 16 position.