“Forever young”: with that sign Victoria Slivko supported Evgeniy Garanichev in his last race, the national championship relay race. And indeed, in the last days of his career, the biathlete seemed to have rejuvenated. He Once again he became the young man who destroyed everyone 10 years ago!
At the end of his career, the ever-young Garanichev really got angry. The other day, he and Slivko won gold in mixed singles, placed fourth in the mass start, and in the relay race led the Tyumen region to its first victory at the Russian Championships in 10 years. A beautiful end to Evgeniy’s incredible sporting journey!
special arrangement
The Tyumen region was one of the favorites in the men’s relay. The team presented the strongest lineup for the race (Vadim Istamgulov, Alexander Povarnitsyn, Alexander Loginov, Evgeniy Garanichev), but prepared a twist by organizing the athletes in stages. To give a nice farewell to Evgeniy Garanichev, who was ending his career, they appointed him auctioneer.
But strong rivals were not going to give victory to Tyumen and his famous finisher without a fight. Teams from Belarus (Lobastov, Lazovsky, Danilov, Smolsky), Khanty-Mansi-Yugra-1 Autonomous Okrug (Ivanov, Porshnev, Vagin, Paschenko), Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug (Bektuganov, Plitsev, Abashev, Kayumov) and Bashkortostan (Babchin, Babikov, Masterkov) also planned to compete for medals (Latypov).
Together with Slivko, Garanichev performed a real miracle:
“We need to end on a good note.” Did Evgeny Garanichev win his last gold?
From the beginning of the relay, it was these teams that took the lead, but after the second shootout, the Bashkirs left the contenders for the prizes. And all the other teams were greatly reduced until the end of the second stage.
The third stage was decisive in the race. Loginov showed not only an excellent shot, making only one mistake, but also amazing speed. But things weren’t going so well for our rivals. Abashev took three penalty loops and deprived the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug of its medal chances, Danilov made two errors and did not show very good movement, and Vagin could not compete with the leaders on his feet. As a result, Alexander managed to pass the relay with an advantage of 43.6 seconds over Alexey.
great farewell
But even with such an advantage, it was too early to give the gold to Tyumen ahead of schedule. Evgeniy has never been stable in relay races, so he usually missed team starts or ran in the early stages. And here the former biathlete of the Russian national team had a double responsibility: the final stage and the final race of his career.
Evgeniy Garanichev
Photo: Donat Sorokin/TASS
Fortunately, Garanichev gave his all. Evgeniy calmly shot to zero on both lines, while his opponents made mistakes and did not allow their pursuers to seriously reduce the gap. The biathlete finished truly triumphant. With the flag of the Tyumen region and to the enthusiastic shouts of the native stands, who chanted: “Zhenya! Zhenya!”
While Garanichev was poignantly congratulated on his victory by his teammates, the race was completed by Ugra and Belarus, who competed for silver and bronze.
And Tyumen said goodbye to its hero. The biathletes sprayed Evgeniy with champagne, Slivko threw a cake in his face, and then all the athletes began to pump Garanichev in unison. It seems that even the best like Martin Fourcade and Ole Einar Bjoerndalen didn’t have such a beautiful farewell.
“Great farewell! During the warm-up, during filming, I even had tears in my eyes as I passed through the stands. Thank you very much to the fans for your support! The fans really create the atmosphere at competitions, they always support us, encourage us and that motivates us.
I closed the door like this. Thanks to my enemies who constantly rot me. I don’t think my career and its dramatic end is a good script for a movie.
I started here and I finish my career in the best stadium in the world. I couldn’t let my team down. My teammates from the Tyumen region gave me a comfortable advantage. I just had to shoot and row to the finish line, which I did,” Garanichev admitted to Match TV.
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This victory was the first for the Tyumen region in many years at the Russian Championship. The last time the Tyumen team won was ten years ago. Then Ivan Tcherezov, Andrey Makoveev, Dmitry Elkhin and the ever-young Evgeny Garanichev ran. There is something very symbolic about this.
Although the bronze medalist from the Sochi Olympic Games said goodbye to biathlon today, he will also compete in the marathon in the Chechen Republic. Maybe two golds isn’t the limit?
