The Russian biathlon team has not won gold medals in relay races for 30 years. At the Olympic Games in Sochi, they were able to prove that their team is the best in this kind of program.
On the eve of the final day of the Olympic Games in Sochi, Russian biathletes were able to truly delight their fans. The men's team won the gold medal in the most prestigious race - the relay. The same victory helped the Russian team to take the leading first place in the medal standings.
This race turned out to be very entertaining, because the dispute over medals continued until the last minute of the competition. Throughout the race, the leaders often changed, after all, biathlon is not a predictable sport. The resulting gold medal turned out to be the first Olympic medal in the relay race for Russia. Indeed, the last time such a medal was won only by Soviet athletes was in 1988, in Calgary.
The first to run was Alexey Volkov, who was able to show a good move and not let go of the leaders of the race - the Norwegians, who were confidently leading until the fourth stage of the relay. Due to misses during the second shooting, Volkov finished fifteenth, however, when passing the relay, he was able to reduce the gap to 16 seconds.
The second Russian biathlete was Evgeny Ustyugov, who finished 24 seconds behind. At that moment it seemed that the Norwegians would definitely get their gold medal, especially since the Olympic champions Bjoerndalen and Svendsen had already fled in the last two stages.
The third stage was entrusted to run Dmitry Malyshko, who was not very stable this season. This race turned out to be successful for him, as he was able to overcome the firing lines almost flawlessly, and also showed a good move. Malyshko passed the baton to Shipulin third, losing 16 seconds to the leader.
Anton Shipulin became a real hero in this race. Despite two penalties in the first shooting range, he was able to concentrate and shoot clean from the stand. In addition, he did not concede with the move to the German Shemp, who left the shooting range first. One and a half kilometers before the finish, Shipulin managed to bypass the German athlete, and at the finish he did his best to get such a long-awaited medal.
The representatives of Germany became the silver medalists of the relay, and the Austrians received the bronze. It is worth noting that the men's biathlon team made a total of 8 penalties, which is significantly more than teams from other countries.
