Bad weather is no hindrance. Belarusian Summer Biathlon Championship Continues at Raubichy

In the autumn “Raubichs” is the championship of Belarus in summer biathlon

Today in Raubichy races with a mass start will end the championship and championship of Belarus in summer biathlon. Yesterday, athletes identified the strongest in sprints. At the start in difficult weather conditions came about 80 biathletes. In the men's sprint, Anton Smolsky became the best, and Dmitry Lazovsky and Ivan Tulatin closed the top three. In a similar discipline in women, Ksenia Sparrow won. Anna Makarska has silver, Dinara Smolskaya has bronze.

Anton Smolsky. “This is the first competition in the last six months, and in the morning before the race I even had excitement: it was not a long time ago, it was difficult to understand what to expect from the body,” said Anton Smolsky. As you can see, there were a lot of starters, juniors and young men motivated to beat us. That's great! We didn’t go into these competitions specifically. They can be called a control section - this is a planned work. The body, of course, feels a bit heavy, because they have done a large training volume with an eye for the winter. We're still preparing for her.

The head coach of the national team Oleg Ryzhenkov says: the main thing for athletes at the home tournament is to perform the coaches’ installations, cope with excitement and emotions. Not all representatives of the national team performed at the Belarusian championship. In men, the first race was missed by Pavel Belko, who damaged the brush, and Ilya Aveyenko, who felt unwell shortly before the tournament. The women's sprint went without one of the team leaders. Anna Sola shot before the race, but then withdrew from her on the recommendations of doctors. The rest are in.

The composition of the men’s team has hardly changed compared to last season. Only, says Oleg Ryzhenkov, joined “new” – Alexander Golyak. To the women’s team in the off-season joined Anna Koroleva, recently performed in ski racing. For her, the national championship was the first biathlon competition in adulthood. The addition occurred in the coaching staff: the famous Russian specialist Yuri Kaminsky started working with the women's team, with the men's - Austrian coach Reinhard Gesweiner.

The Belarusian Summer Biathlon Championship will be the only summer start for athletes. From the program of the Commonwealth Cup this season, stages on ski rollers were excluded, but Oleg Ryzhenkov does not see this as a problem. The upcoming winter season is post-Olympic. It will be long, full of basic work. Perhaps, the head coach of the national team notes, additional competitions would be even superfluous for athletes: in recent years, biathletes have “run over”, because they had much more competitions than when they competed in the World Cup.

There is no exact information on where Belarusian athletes will compete next winter. The Congress of the International Biathlon Union (IBU), held recently in Germany, did not add clarity. State coach Ivan Pesterev says:

- At the IBU Congress, the decision to admit our team to international competitions was not made. It wasn't even discussed. The only positive thing is that Congress has authorized the IBU Executive Committee to make such a decision at any time before the next Congress.

Whatever the next steps of the IBU, the start of the winter season is scheduled for the end of November (the first stage of the Commonwealth Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk will open on November 26, and on the same day the first race of the World Cup 2026/27 will be held in Kontiolahti, Finland). There is still a long time to go – the preparations continue. After the Belarusian Summer Biathlon Championship, the national team will again be divided. After a short pause, the men will start gathering in Raubichy, where they will prepare for the snow. About the plans of the women's team Yuri Kaminsky says:

- After the tournament, the athletes are scheduled for a short rest, and then we will move to snow training - we will go to Toksovo, near St. Petersburg, in the snow tunnel, where we will start working both on the ground and on the snow. After this collection we will move to Aldan, to Yakutia. I believe that Belarusian athletes – biathletes and skiers – lack snow. We want to make up for that. For athletes, especially young women, it is important to go to it early and work on the technique of skiing.

past@sb.by