The two-time biathlon Olympic champion Anfisa Reztsova is dead. As the Russian association announced on Friday, the ex-athlete, who was extremely successful in both cross-country skiing and biathlon from 1985 to 2000, died at the age of 58.
The winter sports scene mourns the loss of Anfisa Reztsova. The Russian died on Thursday at the age of 58 for reasons that are still unknown. The former cross-country skier and biathlete suffered a heart attack in March and had to be treated in hospital. The Russian Biathlon Federation did not say in its official statement whether a similar incident occurred.
Reztsova remains one of the most successful athletes in Russian winter sports history. Over the course of her career, she won a total of five medals at the cross-country skiing world championships, including three gold medals. She was also crowned cross-country Olympic champion twice with the relay team.
Switching from cross-country skiing to biathlon
For the 1990/91 season, Reztsova switched from cross-country skiing to biathlon. And here too she celebrated some outstanding successes.
She won the overall, individual and sprint World Cup twice each. At the Olympic Games in Albertville in 1992, she won the gold medal in the sprint and the bronze medal in the relay. Two years later, Reztsova was again crowned Olympic relay champion in Lillehammer. She also celebrated a total of ten individual victories in the Biathlon World Cup.
In recent months, Reztsova has increasingly made the headlines because of her stance on the exclusion of Russian athletes. She did not hold back on her clear criticism of the international associations, which she described, among other things, as “bastards”. In her opinion, the Russian athletes were only excluded because the world association IBU is “afraid of our athletes,” Reztsova told Russian media in September 2022.