When Anastasia Kuzmina ended her career in 2019, she was basically at the top. She became a world champion, at the final event of the World Cup in Oslo, she won both the sprint and the pursuit and received a small crystal globe for the sprint.
At that time she was 34 years old.
When she unexpectedly announced in 2023 that she was returning to biathlon, no one knew what to expect from her. Is it more marketing or will we actually see her compete in the World Cup again?
The number of places in the World Cup is limited, and getting into it means having the performance to do so.
When Kuzmina returned, she did not promise any specific results, but at the same time she spoke: “I’m not coming back just to say hi to the fans.”
And now she has qualified for her fourth Olympics. In the sprint in Oberhof, she took 20th place, and placings in the top 30 of any individual World Cup race guarantee female athletes a place at the Olympics. The Slovak unit Paulína Bátovská Fialková also fulfilled this condition earlier and did not compete in Oberhof.
Kuzmina is thus returning to the Olympics after eight years. In PyeongChang 2018, she won three medals.
By far the oldest female racer
In a sense, it was an Olympics full of paradoxes for her at that time. She fell behind
