World Cup No. 6

The 3rd world cup in January brought the athletes to the Antholz valley in the beautiful South Tyrol. On the one hand, they always look forward to Antholz but on the other hand the height of 1600 m really gets to them. At their arrival on Monday, the athletes were greeted by fantastic winter weather. Sunshine and temperatures of minus 10°C let their athletic hearts beat faster.

The competitions started on Thursday. The women had to complete 7.5 km. The winner of the sprint was from Germany (surprise), Magdalena Neuner only had one real rival on the leg, but as Darya Domracheva/BLR missed one more disk at the shooting range, the podium looked as follows: Magdalena Neuner/GER (1 mistake), 2nd place Kaisa Mäkäräinen/FIN (0 mistakes) and 3rd went to Darya Domracheva/BLR (2 mistakes).

In the men’s sprint race on Friday, the Swede Fredrik Lindström celebrated his first world cup victory. 2nd place went to Evgeny Garanichev/RUS and 3rd place to Martin Fourcade/FRA.

On Saturday, the women’s relay and the men’s mass start were held. In the women’s competition, the ladies from France won over those from Belarus and Russia. The men started two hours later and their race was very exciting. In the end. Andi Birnbacher/GER won with an advance of 0.1 sec over the Russian Anton Shipulin and Martin Fourcade/FRA who was 0.3 sec behind and was third again.

To finish the week off, blue sky and sunshine reappeared. This time it was mass start for the women and relay for the men. Darya Domracheva/BLR was first to cross the finishing line, with Anastasiya Kuzmina/SVK and TOKOgirl Magdalena Neuner/GER behind her.

In the relay, the teams of France and Germany were having a neck-and-neck race. At the shooting range, Martin Fourcade/FRA got the better of Arnd Peiffer/GER. The last round brought no change and thus the French team won before Germany and the strong Austrians. Now everyone will have another week of training before they leave for Scandinavia.

22.01.2012

World Cup Antholz

Weather: a bit of everything

Snow: artificial/natural snow

Snow Temperature: -8–0°C

Air Temperature: between 0 and -9°C

Humidity: 45–100%