On Saturday, the third stage of the Biathlon World Cup will continue in Hochfilzen, Austria. We bring to your attention the women's classic 4 x 6 km relay.
On Friday, the women's sprint brought a real holiday for Belarus, as the gold medal was won by 25-year-old Anna Sole, who demonstrates outstanding readiness at the start of the Olympic season. She managed to win as much as 47 seconds from the nearest pursuer. Another Belarusian Dinara Alimbekova finished eighth, which gives serious hopes to the fans of the Belarusian national team in the relay.
Bookmakers consider the Swedish and French teams to be the favorites of the race, but you can seriously argue with them. The Eberg sisters made 5 mistakes for two in the sprint, and one Chevalier-Boucher smeared the same amount. And in the relay, as you know, it was shooting that came to the fore, because the distance here is only 6 km.
Belarusians may well claim victory, but they have a weak link in the form of Elena Kruchinkina, who was only 85th in the sprint. And the overall statistics of her shooting at relay races in the World Cup for her entire career does not even reach 75%. We will bet on German women who shoot well, and even Vanessa Hinz has shown herself well here in this regard – an experienced native of Munich should already come out of the shadows. We are still waiting for Belarusians on the podium.
From duels, you can play on the hosts of the Austrian track – they should be ahead of the Swiss national team, which is experimenting with the composition at the start of the season, and only one of the Gasparin sisters will run here. I like Estonians more and more, who must be above the shelves. We are also waiting for rehabilitation after the failure in the Ostersund of Ukrainians. Jim looked very powerful in the sprint, and Petrenko and Belosyuk were not bad.
