The girls in the individual race of the Alfa-Bank Summer Biathlon Championships of Russia in Krasnoyarsk fought hard until the last meters. The fate of the gold was decided only after the finish of one of the last participants, and it was impossible to predict who would win.
Fantastic Five
Among the women, unlike the men, all the stars came to the Russian Summer Championships: Kristina Reztsova, Victoria Slivko, Anastasia and Natalia Shevchenko, Anastasia Khalili (Goreeva), Ekaterina Moshkova (Noskova), Irina Kazakevich, Tamara Derbusheva.
After the first shoot-out, Slivko, Khalili, Derbusheva, Moshkova and N. Shevchenko became the leaders. The fight for medals began between these five, because the rest of the closest rivals let us down by making mistakes at the start.
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The second shootout added to the intrigue. Of the favourites, only Ekaterina gave zero, which allowed her to lead the race. Tamara, Natalia and Victoria made a mistake and began to lose about a minute, Anastasia got a two-minute penalty, falling out of the top 15. In the third turn, the girls came together. Moshkova, Slivko and Shevchenko perfectly completed the prone stage, while Derbusheva and Khalili made a mistake.
It seemed that Ekaterina, Victoria and Natalia would compete for the medals, because Tamara lost to the leaders by almost two minutes, and Anastasia by almost three minutes. But in the final run everything changed. Shevchenko and Slivko missed once, and Moshkov twice. At that moment, Derbusheva and Khalili missed. As a result, an interesting situation arose at the start of the race. Tamara was leading, Victoria was 12.4 seconds behind her. Ekaterina finished third (+18.6), Natalia fourth (+27.3) and Anastasia seventh (+57.9).
“I did everything I could to win”
The fight between the top four was literally all over the place. Shevchenko and Slivko played the role of catch-up, and Moshkova and Derbusheva were among the leaders. With each meter, the pursuers closed their gap. At the 12.6 km cut-off, Victoria lost to Tamara by 9 seconds, and Natalia to Ekaterina – by 4.2 seconds. After 1.5 km, Shevchenko was already ahead of Moshkova by 1.5 seconds, but Slivko closed in on Derbusheva by another 2.5 seconds.
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The last few metres of the distance were decisive, and the Sverdlovsk women were stronger in them. Tamara took gold and Natalia bronze. The Tyumen woman took silver, losing 4.7 seconds in the fight for victory, and the Ugra woman took fourth place, losing 7 seconds in the fight for a place on the podium.
“I did everything to win. I won’t say that I was confident, I knew that Toma was in the lead, he was not the last in the team, in the national team and in the country. Of course, I understood that it would be very difficult to fight, but I gave it my all. Now I can’t even stand up. On the last lap I tried to work at maximum speed, try to compete for first place and keep second place,” Slivko admitted to Match TV after the finish.
Victoria’s progress is surprising, given that she was complaining about her health before the start of the Chechen Republic. Then the Tyumen woman was convinced that she would not be able to run all the races. We also admire Derbusheva, who at the start of the season shows extremely stable results and wins medals.
The women’s event will take place next on September 14. The sprint is scheduled for 12:00 Moscow time.
