Olympic champion in cross-country skiing and biathlon Anfisa Reztsova has died. Obituary

At the age of 58 died Anfisa Reztsova is an outstanding athlete with an amazing biography. She became the very first Olympic champion in biathlon. She became the very first who managed to take gold medals in two events, because before biathlon there was cross-country skiing. However, in her fantastic biography there was also room for a triumphant, despite various troubles, return to them after a rich biathlon career.

In recent years, Anfisa Reztsova has become well accustomed to the role of an expert, which is in demand in today’s sports journalism. The kind of expert that any author dreams of—one who speaks truths that are inconvenient for functionaries, both strangers and their own, who does not worship political correctness in the selection of expressions and refuses to embellish a completely dull reality. The style of her comments left no doubt about why Reztsova, unlike many titled peers, never turned into a successful sports official: she simply did not know how to mask emotions and facts.

Reztsova commented almost exclusively on the Russian biathlon, which has been popular and disastrous in terms of results for almost a decade and a half.

And this accent sometimes made her forget that her native species was still a different species. The Vladimir girl, then Anfisa Romanova, came to ski racing late – in the fifth grade of school. But she quickly got used to it and by the mid-1980s she was already at the core of the Soviet national team, which was a tremendous achievement. This base consisted entirely of the leaders of the genre, led by the legend, four-time Olympic champion Raisa Smetanina. Reztsova won the right to go to the 1988 Olympics in Calgary, having decided to have an abortion for her sake, and in Canada, she, not as famous as some of her partners, but brazen and self-confident, was entrusted with the most important, final stage of the relay. And Reztsova did not disappoint – the Soviet skiers confidently marched to the gold. And their finisher a few days later added personal silver to it in the 20 km race, losing only to Tamara Tikhonova.

Then there was a dashing turn in life: a second pregnancy, the birth of a daughter and a barrier placed on the way to the ski team, which was already rejuvenated and was preparing to win even more often than the previous version, with new heroines – Elena Vyalbe, Larisa Lazutina. And Reztsova, who didn’t fit in, was thrown into biathlon. The women’s program had just been included in the Olympic program, and, naturally, the sports authorities of the disintegrating country wanted it to have as many different interesting options as possible.

However, Anfisa Reztsova at first did not look like an ideal find for an already powerful team. Even now, high-status skiers, tired of the “profile” look, sometimes pick up a rifle. But current methods allow you to immediately learn how to use it more or less decently. Reztsova’s shooting was chronically unsuccessful. And then it was considered a key biathlon component.

Anfisa Reztsova broke the stereotype by putting it at an ever-present speed. And she really helped her out.

For anyone who fell in love with biathlon in this century, it is apparently impossible to imagine how one can win an individual race with seven penalties, that is, earning seven penalty minutes. Reztsova did this too.

In 1992, she went to the Olympics in Albertville as the leader of a team – not a Soviet one, but a CIS one. And in front of her, in order not to lose her trump card, she got herself permission to train with men. And she was right. The first women’s Olympic race was the sprint. In it, Reztsova amazed everyone, going to zero in prone shooting, and making her usual three misses on the stand-up. The seasoned German Antje Mizerski, having run less on the penalty loop, was still 16 seconds behind her. Olympic victories in two winter events were unprecedented. The repetition of Reztsova’s trick took place only in 2018 at the Olympics in Pyeongchang: the author was Czech alpine skier Esther Ledecka, who retrained as a snowboarder.

In the same season, Anfisa Reztsova took first place in the overall World Cup, and a year later won the second Big Crystal Globe in a row, which modern Russian biathletes hardly see even in their sweetest dreams. And in 1994, she went to the Olympics in Lillehammer already in the uniform of the Russian national team. Reztsova did not receive individual awards in Norway, but she did not miss out on relay gold. As well as the opportunity, with her ruff character, to again run into a stupid quarrel with sports leaders, because of which, in fact, her biathlon career went downhill.

At the same time, after the birth of her second daughter, her sports career resumed where it seemed Reztsova would never appear again – in ski racing. Her return to the powerful team in the second half of the 1990s, which at times seemed literally invulnerable, turned out to be triumphant. Reztsova missed the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, but in 1999 her performance was so good that the former biathlete could not be taken to the World Championships in Ramsau. And there was another prestigious relay gold, which, however, apparently, did not change its owner’s attitude towards biathlon. The fact that it still remained the main event for Anfisa Reztsova can be judged by her specialization as an expert, and by the fact that the event, which requires both running and shooting, was chosen by both daughters of the athlete – Daria and Kristina, now , perhaps more closely resembling the Russian women’s team’s best chance to recapture at least a semblance of the glory days ushered in by her mother’s miraculous breakthrough.

Alexey Dospehov