The first fight for international medals in 2022 took place in Ignalina in the easter part of Lithuania. Even in these difficult geopolitical times and no matter the close distance to Belarus, the Lithuanian organizers created some of the best competitions I ever took part in. Most of all the media broadcast was excellent!
Sprint
The sprint made the start to the race weekend on Friday. A small forest close to the small town Ignalina hosted the race. The terrain contained lots of small paths, small but partly steep hills, and the ability to cut through the forest made up for a thrilling competition.
My start to the race was not too bad, considering that the Sprint is not my favourite discipline and I’m a rather slow starter. Unless a small mistake to control #9 and a quite unfortunate route choice to the penultimate control I’m happy with my race. The result with a 23rd place is not too satisfying, but I knew that the long distance the day after was cut way better to my strengths.
Here are some links to the GPS, Livestream to relive all the action, or the short version with the official highlight video and to the results.
Long distance
Over the past few years (or months?), the long distance became my favourite discipline! In last October, I could achieve my first top 10 result at international championships at the european champs in Portugal. This year I could even improve my 9th place from the previous year by one rank and get 8th.
After a rather slow start with a few insecurities and slightly too spontaneous route choices I got better into my race. I could improve from a 20th intermediate place at control #5 to the 8th place in the finish. The often steep climbs and fast descents were very much to my liking. Of course, the (legal) inspection of the biathlon loop helped me a lot to prepare for this race. I had a lot of fun while racing, and that obviously made me fast! It’s going in the right direction!
Once again, here are the links for the GPS, Livestream, the official highlight video and for the results.
Mixed Relay
We started with a new team to this year’s mixed relay. Ursina started to the first leg, handed over to me while Simon’s job was to bring home a good result on the last leg. Unfortunately Ursina had not the best race, so it was my job to catch up as much as possible. I could handle this task quite well and had a very good race. I avoided big mistakes and scored the third fastest time on the second leg. I could almost close the gap to the first Swiss team Switzerland 2. Simon luckily could finish this job and secure us the 9th rank in nations. We’re not very happy with this result, but we are already looking forward to the next international relay competitions!
GPS, Livestream, the highlight video and the results can be found here.
High quality maps, interesting courses and excellent live broadcasts with GPS for all categories made this year’s European Championships a week to remember! Lithuania showed how it’s done, and the Swedish Championships a week later indicated that the organizers of the World Championships are ready to do just as well. I’m already impatiently looking forward!