Shevchenko and Latypov defeated everyone in Russian biathlon: Big globes in their hands

The final of the Russian Cup in biathlon is over, but the current season of biathletes continues. The Russian Championship will be held in Tyumen from March 23 to 31, and marathons in Uvat will be held as part of the championship in early April. And finally, from April 12 to 14, the final stage of the Commonwealth Cup will take place in Murmansk.

People from space

If we introduce what has already happened, then this: Natalia Shevchenko, who only in May 2022 announced her transition to biathlon from cross-country skiing, became the winner of the overall standings of the Russian Biathlon Cup. Winner of the small globe in the pursuit competition. Oh, and I also received a similar one in the sprint competition. Anastasia Goreeva won the Small Crystal Globe of the Russian Cup in individual races. Victoria Slivko won the mass start competition.

Based on the results of all races, Natalia Shevchenko scored 463 points. And the athlete’s lead over her rivals turned out to be more than convincing: second place in the overall standings went to Victoria Slivko (385), and third place to Elizaveta Kaplina (372). Shevchenko’s victory cannot be called a sensation. She was on her way, having clearly outlined her claims from the first races of the Russian Cup back in early December, taking home gold for both the sprint and the pursuit. Then she stood on the first step of the podium three more times, and was in the top 3 nine times.

At the final, fifth stage of the Russian Cup in Ufa, Natalia Shevchenko won the pursuit race. No, in general, Natalia decided the fate of the Big Globe the day before in the sprint. True, she didn’t win, and she didn’t even make it to the top three sprint winners, despite the fact that she surpassed all the medalists in speed: her only miss dropped her to fourth place, and the winners shot clean that day. But, without achieving a medal, she achieved the main thing in the scoring points for receiving the Big Crystal Globe – she was ahead of Victoria Slivko, who finished in the top 10 in the sprint. And thereby brought the gap to a level that Slivko would no longer be able to win back if Natalia had not even entered the pursuit race.

But Shevchenko entered the race and started it from fourth position. I made three mistakes, but I pushed myself with speed. As Elizaveta Kaplina, who was left with a wooden medal (two misses), said after the race, Natalia “really went into space speed” on the last climb. On the fourth lap they walked together, Kaplina assumed that at the final stand the “showdown” would begin between them. Both missed once, but there was no need to sort things out on the ski track between Kaplina and Shevchenko. On the last climb, Elizabeth was unable to support Natalia. Then Kaplina even analyzed: throughout all the races I had good health and progress, but, alas, not on the last lap of this pursuit.

What is this: escape velocity in biathlon? The answer is in the words of the same Kaplina. “I still had a chance to catch up with Natasha on the last lap, I tried literally 30 meters, and everything was already a dark color before my eyes, just to get to the finish line.” But after the race, Elizaveta cheered herself and everyone up with the ambitions she had shown and voiced: “I was still driving later and thought, if I get ahead of her and someone is between us, I can take the Small Crystal Globe. But it didn’t work out. Next year the cups will all be mine.”

“Yes, yes,” Natalia Shevchenko will probably say, and not only she. In women’s biathlon, the battle for leadership has seriously intensified this season. As for the pursuit race itself, the champion admitted: she didn’t have much strength, but the skiing helped. Here we all, of course, believed it: the leader’s speed is all just successful skiing, what else?

Natalia also said that she tried “not to hang out anywhere.” But on that last climb, when I actually went into the lap in fifth position, that’s what I planned: to decide everything on it in advance, so that there would be no showdowns at the finish line. And then, when I heard the question: how can she explain her successes to society, after all, this is only her second year in biathlon? – I answered it simply like that. “Apparently, talent, the combination of all factors: shooting and movement.” And she also couldn’t restrain her ambitions: “I would like to do it even faster.” And, as for the Russian Cup itself, there was a desire: to end the race “on a beautiful note – with a victory.”

“So that Natasha doesn’t catch up”

Natalya Gerbulova was second in the pursuit, losing 6.6 seconds and making one mistake. Then she admitted: she was told that Natalia Shevchenko was losing by 12 seconds. I understood: given the form Shevchenko is in, you need to shoot exclusively without misses. And yet, at the last stage, I almost completed this task. But this does not mean that silver is not a success. “I think that for me and for our team today this is a super result. I tried to hold on to Shevchenko, but, of course, my and her technique are heaven and earth,” said Gerbulova, assessing her technique as “very bad.”

Third place in the final race of the Russian Cup finals was taken by Anastasia Shevchenko (sister of Natalia Shevchenko’s husband – ed.). The day before, Anastasia won the sprint. And this gold was the first in personal races this season; there were first places, but in team races. In the sprint, she was convincing in both shooting and speed. (Tamara Derbusheva (+8.5 seconds) finished in second place, also with clean shooting; in third place was Polina Shevnina (+9.7), also without misses.)

After winning gold, Anastasia Shevchenko said that in the morning there was some strange feeling, but this, it turns out, “foreshadowed that I would be as calm as possible at the race.” And so it happened: “I came to the race, was completely collected to show the maximum result.” I called it all a peak season release. “Of course, we will continue to maintain this peak. I am very glad and happy. My main task was to prevent Natasha (that is, Natalia Shevchenko – ed.) from catching up with me.”

After the pursuit race, when “Natasha” still beat her, although Anastasia tried to “catch up” with her on the descent, Shevchenko admitted: “Natalia and I are on the podium together, this is great happiness.”

Kings can do anything

The winner of the overall standings of the Russian Cup was Eduard Latypov. Based on the results of five stages, the biathlete scored 450 points, Anton Babikov was second (377), and Kirill Bazhin was third (355). And Eduard Latypov became first in the sprint competition. In the pursuit race classification, the victory was won by Evgeniy Sidorov, who won the Sunday pursuit. In the mass start standings, Anton Babikov took first place, in individual races – Ilnaz Mukhamedzyanov.

Eduard Latypov also might not have entered the pursuit race: he won first place in the overall standings of the Russian Biathlon Cup, like Natalia Shevchenko, ahead of schedule the day before, winning in the sprint. Going for gold, Latypov said that he doesn’t count points in disciplines, he just hopes to show a good result. And he called his condition “borderline”: “It seems normal, but it seems not. My nose and throat are stuffy. Thank God there is no fever. You can perform in this state. I’ll run today and then we’ll see.”

Which, however, did not relax the rivals at all. Evgeny Sidorov, for example, who also admitted that he does not look at the sprint race table, “didn’t really” believe in the leader’s illness. “It happens to him that he gets sick, and then one day he wins.”

And Sidorov turned out to be right before the sprint. Edward won beautifully, although, as he himself said, without working at full strength. And after the finish, he still had to “justify” a little for his words before the start. “Today was hard, I’m not pretending. If I feel good, I always talk about it. Today, due to the distance, I couldn’t work as hard as I wanted.”

On Sunday, Latypov still failed to win first place in the pursuit race – he finished seventh (he made two mistakes in the first prone, then four in the second), but this did not change the final essence. And together with his daughter at the award ceremony, he showed everyone the main trophy of the Russian Cup.

Cherry for the fight

Ilnaz Mukhamedzyanov, who in Ufa had already won silver in the individual race, and after that – unexpectedly – found himself the winner of the Small Cup of Russia in the individual race standings (although he was only 15th in the ranking), called the Small Globe “the cherry on the cake” . Not simple, but giving strength for the rest of the season: “gives motivation to move on and develop.”

This motivation in the pursuit apparently drove me forward strongly. After the finish, Ilnaz had to tell how he outwitted himself in the race. At the last shooting, I noticed that the opponents were delaying their shots. “I think I’ll start shooting early to put psychological pressure on them. “In the end, I put pressure on myself and missed with the first shot.” And, since this was already the third race of the stage and fatigue was setting in, there was no task to catch up with Sidorov or Babikov, it was necessary to “work to the maximum, and then, if I could catch up, I would fight.” (Anton Babikov finished in second place, making one mistake, lag of 2.2 seconds, third was Mukhamedzyanov, one miss, lag of 4.8 seconds.)

“She was partying hard”

And the winner of the last race of the Russian Cup, Evgeny Sidorov (the one who was right in his suspicions about Latypov’s illness) shifted the “blame” for the success onto the junior coach. And he told how, at a training camp before the Spartakiad, it was the junior coach from Krasnoyarsk who helped him practice shooting. They say they changed the position a little, “because I didn’t like the way I reloaded the rifle: it bounced around a lot.” And so: “I went out to the race, and it was a blast to shoot, I hit.”

But “high” is good, but in the pursuit Sidorov still had thoughts that the gold might “float away”. After all, there were very strong opponents behind us. “On the two-story climb, the coach told me that from the second part I can start to get involved. They told me that I was starting to run back, I just had to hold on to the gap until the finish.”

Agree that this word “simply” heard so often in sports is worthy of adoration.

Honest medals

In Ufa, after the final race of the Russian Cup, the beautiful story of the Spartakiad in Zlatoust ended beautifully, when the Bashkortostan team gave its bronze relay medals to the Belarusian four, who took third place. According to some still existing standards (they performed outside the competition), Belarusians could not receive awards. Then Ilya Burlakov, Anton Babikov, Alexander Babchin and Eduard Latypov rose to the occasion, acting both honestly and brotherly. Now, thanks to a specially made set of medals, they received Spartakiad awards at their home stadium.

Large and Small crystal globes of the Russian Cup for the 2023/24 season:

Overall standings – Natalia Shevchenko and Eduard Latypov

Sprint – Natalia Shevchenko and Eduard Latypov

Pursuit race – Natalia Shevchenko and Evgeniy Sidorov

Individual race – Anastasia Goreeva and Ilnaz Mukhamedzyanov

Mass start – Victoria Slivko and Anton Babikov

Cup of Russia. General classification, men

1. Eduard Latypov – 430

2. Anton Babikov – 362

3. Kirill Bazhin – 341

4. Alexander Loginov – 338

5. Evgeny Sidorov – 331

6. Ilnaz Mukhamedzyanov – 296

7. Alexander Povarnitsyn – 269

8. Karim Khalili – 252

9. Dmitry Lazovsky (Belarus) – 241

10. Alexey Vagin – 232

General classification, women

1. Natalia Shevchenko – 463

2. Victoria Slivko – 385

3. Elizaveta Kaplina – 372

4. Anastasia Shevchenko – 355

5. Tamara Derbusheva – 345

6. Anastasia Goreeva – 341

7. Anastasia Batmanova – 339

8. Natalya Gerbulova – 334

9-10. Polina Shevnina – 309

9-10. Anastasia Egorova – 309