Even David Komatz (left) and Lisa Theresa Hauser didn’t expect silver at the World Championships for Austria in the single mixed relay.
Photo: imago/Thomas Bachun
»Super Team« – the International Biathlon Union (IBU) should be a little jealous of this title for a new competition. After all, it comes off the tongue much more easily and internationally comprehensibly than their bulky single-mixed season. And the name is great too. Can super be increased at all? Of course not. But some marketing guru can be trusted to do anything.
Like the super team competition that the Ski World Association Fis has just reinvented in ski jumping and in which only two instead of four athletes per country start. Officially, this should give those nations with fewer top athletes a chance to win a medal. The promise was not fulfilled in the first tests: Austria won the women’s competition ahead of Norway and Germany. For men, Poland was ahead of Austria and Japan. As always, underdogs were miles away from the podium.
With the same reasoning, the IBU also introduced the single mixed relay that crowned world champions for the fourth time on Thursday. Here, one woman and one man are enough to set up the mini relay. And those countries that were never among the favorites in normal seasons would also have a few good ones, so the reasoning. When the Austrian David Komatz also hit his last target in the eighth shooting range in Oberhof and crossed the finish line in second place, the people in charge of the world association must have felt a load of relief, because by then the hopes of the outsiders in biathlon had also Medals never met. So far, the order has been: Norway, Italy, Sweden. A year later: Norway, Germany, France. And then: France, Norway, Sweden. The common fan will notice that these are the nations that are always ahead.
The Norwegian series world champions Johannes Thingnes Bø and Marte Olsbu Røiseland were again unable to stop Komatz and his partner Lisa Theresa Hauser, but all the other favorite squadrons, including the German one, missed so often that the Austrians finally took silver ahead of Italy. The season of the hosts with Sophia Schneider and Philipp Nawrath had to settle for sixth place after one penalty loop and twelve shooting errors. For comparison: Komatz and Hauser only missed six times. Such a mismatch was necessary for the surprising medal. “I guess no one expected that today. It was an almost perfect race for both of us,” Komatz told ORF afterwards. »I thought: if everything goes well, a top six place would be possible. I’m even happier that it turned silver.«
To put it bluntly: Austria was not a blatant outsider. Hauser was a mass start world champion once before. The really small nations from Romania to Croatia to China were all lapped and taken out of the race in Oberhof. The IBU knew beforehand that this would happen. More than a decade earlier, she had introduced the regular mixed relay – also with the argument of making it easier for smaller nations because they would only have to field two good athletes instead of four. But even in this discipline, the favorites at the front almost always kept to themselves.
So why another competition? “In biathlon, things are becoming more and more spectacular. Otherwise we wouldn’t have the single-mixed relay at the World Cup,” says Erik Lesser, who retired a year ago. »It has to be short and sweet.« In fact, the media competition for TV viewers and sponsors is the driving force behind this development. More races mean more advertising time, i.e. more income for the associations. In addition, the running distance is extremely shortened so that it gets back to shooting faster, which fans usually find more exciting than the running part of the sport.
This is comparable to the parallel races of alpine ski racers. Instead of two minutes, the athletes are only a good 20 seconds there. The tension is kept artificially high. At 35 minutes, the single-mixed relay is only half as long as a normal one. “Because you’re afraid you don’t stand a chance against other formats,” believes Lesser.
This development cannot be stopped, even if more traditional formats such as the alpine combination, normal hill jumping or the individual competition of biathletes in the World Cup are hardly ever held. One would only wish that the process were accompanied by a little more honesty: it’s all about the spectacle and ultimately about the money. Then you wouldn’t give the blatant outsiders false hopes. They might be starting to feel a little shaky.
