Nordic Skiing/Biathlon Thread

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Sep 26, 2020
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Elvira kept her cool. The fact she got to (pretty much) shoot on her own all four times probably helped as well. Simon tried to push it at the start of the third lap, but failed badly. She is not at her very best yet, but there's still time to get there for the Olympics. Braisaz-Bouchet continues to be mighty fast, but it's hard for her to win when she can't shoot clean and also loses significant time during the shooting itself.

Minkkinen and Magnusson took back some points on Jeanmonnot, but she can be happy that Kirkeeide had an absolute nightmare out there. Minkkinen is looking like a strong candidate for the pursuit title.
 
Feb 20, 2010
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I can't recall a similar outcome, but @Libertine Seguros may be able to point to a relay in Khanty-Mansiysk 20 years ago or something.
Can't think of any tbh, men's relays have typically not had this many teams competitive after that point, because there's always been a steep drop-off after the first few because of the sheer strength in depth that the Norwegians, French, Germans and Russians had, with either Sweden or Austria being the next up depending on era, such that as soon as any of those made any errors, you wouldn't have 5 teams up front anymore, but there were only very rarely any others that would interfere (such as when Italy got that shock win in the blizzard in Oberhof in 2012). Also Oberhof relays more typically have large time gaps, but huge swings in time due to the unpredictable conditions in the range that mean races aren't necessarily close but see a team with a seeming unassailable lead throw it all away, or a team seemingly out of it suddenly emerge at the front (in much the same way as we saw from Giacomel individually in the pursuit yesterday).

The best example for that would be 2011, when Christoph Stephan completely killed the crowd after one lap by shooting a penalty in the very first prone, only for the conditions to get really tricky at the top of the range in standing causing absolute havoc for the other top teams (Alexander Os shot 2 penalties, Vincent Jay shot 3, and Lowell Bailey and Markus Windisch shot 4, while Ivan Tcherezov got out without a penalty loop but a slower range time than that time Dorothea Wierer almost froze to death holding off on her last shot in standing) while Stephan arrived at the more sheltered end of the range, cleared all 5 targets, and trotted off to a big lead, only for Alexander Wolf to shoot a penalty in prone on the second leg and drop back behind the others, then hit 5/5 in standing while Simon Fourcade and Lars Berger (one and four loops respectively) floundered.

Oberhof is also statistically one of the hardest, if not the outright hardest, ranges in the sport, but also with some of the more decisive and punishing trails, so it's usually been conducive to larger gaps; somewhere like Ruhpolding which is renowned for a relatively easy range can see the race come down to ski speed, or a women's relay in Nové Město (the longer loops since the reprofiling can be quite challenging but the 2k loop is fairly tough to make significant gaps on) where the shooting conditions are easy would be the kind of circumstances you'd usually expect to be the biggest candidates to create this kind of closeness. Having all those teams within such a small time spread is rare in a Single Mixed, which is designed to be close, so to see it in a conventional relay - and in Oberhof especially - is crazy.
 
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