According to Urheilu’s expert Kaisa Mäkäräinen, the Finns’ shooting performances were positive, but the final results should not be lulled too much.
Vilma Ahosola,
Nina Old house
18:44•Updated 19:06
Sweden celebrated the biathlon world cup men’s 20 km victory in Kontiolahti Martin Ponsiluma. Second and third were the surprise names Switzerland Niklas Hartweg and Germany David Zobel. The best Finn in the competition Olli Hiidensalo skied to 11th place in the season opener.
In Kontiolahti, Hiidensalo achieved his best personal ranking of his career. He was eleventh in the Hochfilzen sprint last season. Hiidensalo says that there was excitement in the air before the start of the race.
– There were a lot of butterflies in my stomach in the morning. The opening of the World Cup is exciting in a completely different way than the home games.
On the normal course, there are no penalty runs, but a minute is added to the time for each missed shot. Hiidensalo only had one penalty minutes in the shooting-oriented competition.
– The shooting was exciting, it was one shot at a time. In terms of skiing, it was calm, I watched the peeses. For the last round, I got a really good fart and managed to do well in it, when I had saved my strength in the previous rounds, says Hiidensalo.
– The condition is good, but the energy is what decides. Today the peeses were helpful and for example Tarjei Bön at the back, he skied well for a while, and at the end he cleared a little, the Finn continues.
Tero Seppälä skied to 35th place, Jaakko Ranta 46, Tuomas Harjula 72. and Heikki Laitinen 78. Even though the rankings were at the bottom of the results list, Urheilu’s expert Kaisa Mäkäräinen is still satisfied with the Finns’ shooting performance.
– The Finns had fun on the bench. It is important that we got one really good ranking, Olli’s 11th place. It is certainly better than what he could have expected himself, and the good performance came from working on the bench. Everyone had room for improvement in their skiing speed. Of course, when the distance gets shorter, the differences get smaller.
“Doesn’t tell the whole truth”
Although the wind conditions of the competition were similar to those of the gun alignment, only the second and third Hartweg and Zobel shot cleanly, for whom the podium places were the first of their careers.
22-year-old Hartweg’s previous career best finish is 17th last season. Zobel’s, 26, best finish before today’s podium is last season’s eighth place from the joint start in Oslo.
Among those who failed in the competition were the national teams of Norway and France, who were among the pre-favorites for the opening of the competition season, whose athletes floundered on the shooting bench and were unable to challenge the top three of the competition.
Among other things, last season’s overall World Cup winner Quentin Fillon Maillet missed 15th place by two shots and won the normal distance Cup Tarjei Bö was found on the results list only in place 53. The best Norwegian in the competition was Sturla Holm Lägreid and he was found “only” in sixth place. The best french was Fabien Claude in ninth place.
Despite this, Mäkäräinen points out that one should not get too carried away with the results of today’s competition.
– When you look at the results list, it doesn’t tell the whole truth. When you look at the list of the fastest skiers, there are familiar names at the front. On a normal trip, however, the final Result List comes through shooting.
The women open their season on Wednesday in Kontiolahti with a 15 kilometer normal race. Finland is represented in the competition by Mari Eder, Nastassia Kinnunen, Suvi Minkkinen, Erika Jänkä and Venla Lehtonen.