The return of the team unit, the continuation of Kuzminova. Female biathletes start the season – Winter sports

The new edition of the Biathlon World Cup will start on Saturday in Kontiolahti, Finland. Paulína Bátovská Fialková returned to the Slovak team after maternity leave, and three-time Olympic champion Anastasia Kuzminová will also continue.

However, several newcomers and juniors also made it to the national team, who have a chance to present themselves on the biggest forum. The highlight of this year will be the World Championships, which will take place from February 12 to 23 in Lenzerheide, Switzerland.

Slovakia sent eight competitors to the opening matches of the WC. Bátovská Fialková, Ema Kapustová and sisters Mária and Zuzana Remeňová will perform in Kontiolahti, where they will fight in mixes, relays, endurance races, sprints and mass races, and Jakub Borguľa, Tomáš Sklenárik, Damián Cesnek and Matej Badáň among the men.

While three Slovak female competitors can start in individual races among women, only two among men.

“We have had a good preparation. It went according to plan and I think the competitors are well prepared for the upcoming season. The Kontiolahti nomination reflects the performance. In the case of Nasta Kuzminová, her team decided to start in the IBU Cup. If he runs well there, he will be nominated for the next rounds of the SP,” SZB president Peter Vozár revealed before the start of the season.

Just before the start of the World Cup, good news also came from the opening IBU Cup in Idra, Sweden, where juniors Artur Ischakov and Šimon Adamov fulfilled their quotas for participation in the highest forum in the very first race. In the 7.5 kilometer sprint, Ischakov took 43rd place, Adamov finished 60th.

“For my first IBU race in my life, the shooting was good, but the loss on the track was still big. I still have a lot of work to do, but I must say that I am happy. It’s a great feeling to finally race and I’m happy that I’m Slovak,” said the originally Russian citizen, who obtained Slovak citizenship in September of this year, for Slovak Biathlon.

It is expected that at least one of the Ischaks and Adamovs will strengthen the national team in the 2nd round of the WC in Hochfilzen, Austria.

The goal of the Slovak expeditions this winter is to improve the ranking of the countries and thus the starting positions before the next Olympic winter.

“We want to increase the quotas for the Olympics for individual races, for women from three to four and for men from two to three. We will concentrate on single relays. The women’s relay should be at the Olympics in 2026, and we will try for a miracle to nominate the men’s relay as well. We want to be a bright example so that we have at least six athletes at the next Olympics, ideally eight,” Vozár wished.

The biggest expectations are from Bátovská Fialková, who won the title of world champion in the summer biathlon in the super sprint during the summer and also successfully prepared for the winter.

“I didn’t expect such a quick and successful return after maternity leave. I was a bit troubled by autumn diseases, but everything is fine now and I will enter the winter season in full force. The test results are at the highest possible level, so I am already looking forward to competing in the World Cup I’m glad that I’m shooting well so far.

I have a taste for racing and I firmly believe that I will reach my original performance, i.e. the wider world top, and from there it is an easier position to shoot for the top ten or the podium. I would like to stand there, but that’s what everyone wants,” said the competitor, who has nine podium positions in the SP.

However, other biathletes are among the favorites. The overall triumph is defended by Lisa Vittozzi, who dominated last winter. The twenty-nine-year-old Italian also won small globes for endurance and pursuit races, and she took home gold and three silvers from the World Championships in Novi Město.

However, her preparation for the new season was stopped by back problems, and since she will miss the start in Kontiolahti, her chances for an overall triumph will also decrease.

The door was thus opened for her rivals, among whom the biggest aspirants are last year’s bronze winner Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold from Norway and three Frenchmen Lou Jeanmonnotová, Justine Braisazová-Bouchetová and Julia Simonová. After them, other Norwegian, Swedish or German women can fly out of the peloton.

Among the men, there is only one favorite and that is Johannes Thingnes Bö, who is fighting for the sixth overall triumph and the third in the series. In the past winter, he won all the globes except for the sprint, where he finished second overall, and he took home three gold, three silver and one bronze medals from the World Championships. But even he did not avoid problems before the new year and did not achieve the results he would have liked in preparation.

At the test race in Sjusöen, he took 10th place in a sprint with two mistakes on the shooting range, losing 46 seconds to the victorious Vetle Sjästad Christiansen. The race with a mass start was even worse for him, and with five inaccurate shots he ended up in 17th place.

“Now I have to recover, it’s a wake-up call for me. I hoped that I would be better on the range and on the track,” he declared a week ago.

As in previous years, his biggest competitors will traditionally be his compatriots. The Norwegians occupied the first five places in the overall ranking last season, when the leader was followed by his brother Tarjei, Johannes Dale-Skjevdal, Sturla Holm Laegreid and Christiansen.

The French will rely on Emilien Jacquelin, but Quentin Fillon Maillet, the overall winner from two years ago, is also in good form, from the Swedes it is Sebastian Samuelsson, and youngsters Tommy Giacomel and Eric Perrot would also like to have a stronger say in the classification.