The names of such star Olympians of Sochi-2014 as the Norwegians Ole Einar Bjoerndalen and Tura Berger, the Frenchman Martin Fourcade, the Russian Anton Shipulin or the leader of the Belarusian team Daria Domracheva are familiar to most sports fans. Especially after the telecast of the Games, in which they won a total of eleven medals, including seven gold. But their rivals were several dozen of the best biathletes in the world, who also went to the Games for prizes.
Biathlon for "Laura"
The list of participants in the tournament, which took place in the Laura ski and biathlon complex, was formed in stages. At the first of them, the IBU (International Biathlon Union) allocated for each country, depending on the performances of its athletes at the 2012 and 2013 World Championships, the so-called quotas. Based on the quotas, the total number of teams allowed to participate in the relay races was determined - 55 (28 men and 27 women). But only 23 of them went to the start of the relay (13 and 10).
For the first time in the history of the Olympics, Sochi also hosted a mixed relay. The Norwegian national team won the race, for which Tura Berger, Tiril Eckhoff, Ole Einar Bjoerndalen and Emil Hegle Svendsen ran.
At the same time, the IBU also named the number of Olympic athletes from each country. The maximum quota of 12 people, including six women and six men, was received only by the three strongest biathlon powers - Russia, Germany and Norway. Moreover, the Russians, who had unsuccessfully held the 2012 World Cup in Ruhpolding, where they won only two bronze medals, retained the opportunity to start in full force, not without difficulty. But Ukraine, which announced 11 people, and brought 10 athletes to Sochi from Belarus, Kazakhstan, Poland, the USA and France, failed to do this.
The minimum quota of two participants went to countries not only that have never won anything, but in general are firmly in the rearguard of world biathlon. Among them were, for example, Australia, Andorra, Great Britain, South Korea and even Brazil. By the way, the best place for the only Brazilian at the biathlon tournament, who started in Sochi three times, Jacqueline Mourao, became the 65th.
One of the two biathletes of the Australian team was a native of the Tyumen region, a participant in the youth championship of Russia and the 2010 Olympics, Alexei Almukov, who has been living on the Green Continent since the age of seven.
Headquarters decision
The second stage, at which the fate of personal Olympic trips to Sochi was decided, was given by the IBU to national biathlon organizations. In Russia, the composition of the national team was formed by the SBR (Russian Biathlon Union), more precisely, its Olympic headquarters. The selection criteria were the results shown by the athletes at the 2013 World Championships in the Czech Republic and at the final stages of the World Cup and IBU Cup before the Olympics. The decision to include a particular biathlete in the application was made by a majority vote of all members of the headquarters, and in case of equality, the opinion of its chairman, Viktor Maigurov, was decisive.
12 main and two substitutes went to win the winter biathlon in southern Sochi. The men's team includes Alexey Volkov, Evgeny Garanichev, Alexander Loginov, Dmitry Malyshko, Evgeny Ustyugov, Anton Shipulin and a spare Timofey Lapshin. At first, Olga Vilukhina, Ekaterina Glazyrina, Olga Zaitseva, Yana Romanova, Irina Starykh, Ekaterina Shumilova and Galina Nechkasova, who remained in reserve, were included in the women's application. But after Starykh was disqualified shortly before the first official start, having found traces of doping in the body, Olga Podchufarova from the youth team was given her place in the team.
The second stage took place somewhat differently in other countries. So, in France and Ukraine, the Olympic team included almost all biathletes available in the country, including the brothers Martin and Simon Fourcad and the sisters Valya and Vita Semerenko. In Norway, the criterion is that an athlete who is not from the elite group is in the top six at the World Championships. But on the eve of Sochi, the opinion was decisive not only of the coaches of the national team, but also of officials from Olympiyatoppen, a special department of the Olympic Committee that controlled the training of the leaders of the national team. The German Olympic Committee, forming the 2014 squad, immediately announced that in addition to the sports results of biathletes, it would also take into account their age. And it turned out to be not a word game at all. A young team really went to Russia, winning only two silver medals, but with excellent prospects.
Germany is the only country in which, when forming the composition of the Olympic team, the performance of athletes is taken into account not only in the classic winter biathlon, but also in the summer one. For others, summer biathlon is considered training.
Olympic pedestal
In total, eleven sets of awards were raffled off at the competitions in Laura, the online broadcasts of which alone drew millions of viewers from all over the world. In the end, the Norwegian national team turned out to be the most prepared for the Sochi track, winning six medals - three gold, one silver and two bronze. The laurels of the "medal" heroes of the Games, in addition to the two-time Sochi champion Ole Einar Bjørndalen, who set a new record for the number of Olympic medals won - 13, were shared by his teammates Emil Hegle Svendsen and Tura Berger.
The national teams of Belarus, headed by three-time champion Daria Domracheva (3, 0, 1), France, where Martin Fourcade became a two-time gold medalist (2, 1, 1), and Russia (1, 2, 1), won four medals each. In the Russian national team, gold was won by the men's relay quartet consisting of Volkov, Ustyugov, Malyshko and Shipulin. Vilukhina won two silver medals - in the individual race and in the relay, where Zaitseva, Romanova and Shumilova also got to the second step of the podium with her. Bronze went to Garanichev. Three silver and two bronze medals were taken home by the Czech national team.
