Two races, two medals: After winning the individual world championship, Lisa Maria Spark also won a medal in the 7.5 km sprint at the Junior World Championships for biathletes. The 21-year-old ran to bronze behind winner Tereza Vobornikova from the Czech Republic and Italy’s Rebecca Passler.
Spark was only 4.5 seconds slower than the new world champion. The Ruhpolding native, who only switched from alpine to biathlon at the age of 12, was on course for gold until the last shot. But that last hit missed the target. The missed shot rankled the police sergeant. “That’s annoying. I thought about it too much for a moment”she said shortly after the race in a telephone interview with the sports show.
Because Spark started the race with an early start number, she had to wait a long time at the finish, but in the end she was extremely happy with bronze and a perfect starting position for the pursuit races on Sunday – in the live stream at sportschau.de.
Good team result for women
Mareike Braun (DAV Ulm/14th place/2 mistakes/ + 47.1 seconds) still has a good chance of going far forward in the chase race. Luise Müller (SV Grün-Weiß Pirna/18./2/+1:11.8 minutes) and Johanna Puff (Bayrischzell/21./2/+1:22.3 minutes) have a little further way into the top ten .
Junior Lodl again with problems at the shooting range
As in the individual, the German juniors went empty-handed. Hans Köllner (WSV Clausthal-Zellerfeld/2/+2:31.3 minutes) was again the best of the 29th DSV-Quartet. Christoph Noack (SG Klotzsche/36./2/+2:30.2), Darius Lodl (SV Hermsdorf/37./4/+2:31.3) and Frederik Madersbacher (Nesselwang/39./1/+2 :37.7) fell short of expectations.
Norway’s Martin Nevland, who ran the number 76 racer without a penalty in 24:24.5 minutes over 10 kilometers to victory, became the sprint world champion.
33 nations included
In the USA, 139 women and 169 men from 33 national associations are at the start. The German Ski Association had previously stated that the goal was “to knock at the top of the world and fight for the medal places”.