The final day of competition on Finland was for the two Mass Starts. Thanks to the IBU starting the season with these races instead of the third week we got to see some new faces on the start line.
Results
The men raced first and it was Eric Perrot who took the victory by 9 seconds in spite of finishing the race as an icicle! He hit 19/20 to record his second career victory. Second place went to teammate Quentin Fillon Maillet who was excellent on skis today which was lucky as he missed three at the range. Crucially he cleaned the last shooting though and was able to pass Sturla Laegreid for second spot. Laegreid was third with two misses. His skiing isn’t optimal at the moment and I wonder if he has some on-going lung issues.
The women’s race was won by Elvira Oberg….finally! After third in the Individual and second in the Sprint she made it to first! This time she hit 18/20 but hit 10/10 standing to get back into the race and ski past Julia Simon on the final loop to clinch victory. Simon looked more like her old self but you can tell the week she has had after starting in bib 29. She had the exact same shooting score as Oberg, 18/20, also cleaning all her standing targets. Another with two misses was Franziska Preuss but her strong skiing meant that she went past her two teammates Voigt and Tannheimer and also Anna Magnusson to finally get on the podium this week.
Hits
Danilo Riethmueller was excellent in 4th place taking a personal best. He shot well with 19/20 and was always at the front of the race but couldn’t match the others on skis. Vitezslav Hornig is on a PB roll going from 27th to 22nd to 15th in just a few days. Anton Dudchenko was the hero on the range as he was the only man to hit all 20 targets finishing 12th.
Julia Tannheimer was again impressive in the women’s race taking 5th place and a new PB with 19/20. Two women hit all 20 today and they were Vanessa Voigt in 4th and Anna Magnusson in 7th.
Dorothea Wierer has looked really good this week. She was 6th today with one miss but was leading at one point. It’s good to see her back in better form this season.
Misses
There wasn’t such good news for the Italian men with both Tommaso Giacomel and Didier Bionaz both missing 7 targets. In fact the shooting form the men wasn’t great in general with 1 clean and only three others with a single miss. There were many missing 4,5 and 6 on the range!
The women shot better but Regina Ermits had a nightmare on the prone missing 7/10 but then hit all 10 standing targets! Strange!
Extra bullets
There was sad news at the start of the day with Ingrid Tandrevold pulling out for the race and missing Hochfilzen too with her on-going heart issues.
For the second race in a row the Norwegian men finished from 5th to 9th but at least this time they put someone on the podium!
Franziska Preuss was paying special attention to her bibs this week. She had bib 54 in the Individual and the Sprint and finished 5th and 4th. Today she had bib 3 and finished third! Legend!
It was Suvi Minkkinen’s 30th birthday today. She had already given herself a podium as a present but her teammates gave her a cake at the end of the race! If I had a cake waiting at the finish line I would have won that race by at least five minutes but I guess it was a surprise as she was 11th!
Today’s results mean that Eric Perrot takes the yellow bib as leader of the World Cup and red as leader of the mass start standings. Vitalii Mandzyn stays in blue.
It was Elvira’s first race in yellow and she won it so she takes it to Hochfilzen with her. Sara Andersson takes over in the blue bib for the Under23’s.
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