In the men’s biathlon national team, the most advanced athlete this season is Renārs Birkentāls, who last week became only the sixth Latvian to break into the TOP10 at the World Cup stage. The won ninth place opened the opportunity for the man from Talsi to participate in the distance with a joint start for the first time. In an interview in “Sports studio”, he told about the behind-the-scenes of this season, which, compared to previous years, made it possible to achieve such good results.
Renard Birkenthal’s World Cup mass start debut ended with 25th place. Lack of experience played a role there, because starting side by side with all the best 30 athletes in a group is a completely different taste of biathlon.
“The feeling is quite interesting, because the moment everyone enters the shooting range and lies down, there is a grave silence.
As soon as the first shot is fired, the ovation is from zero to a hundred.
You hear it all, and it affects you a little. After the first shooting range, I already met my imaginary competitor – my Finnish friend Tero [Sepeli]. We also drove all the races together, we had the same amount of penalty laps, we fought in every lap, we tried to climb a little higher.”
Birkenthal discovers that in such contact battles, one must also be fast enough in shooting to be able to sneak out of the shooting range together with the same number of penalties. “If you shoot 10-15 seconds slower than the other, then you will have to make up for it on the track, which is also a big factor,” emphasizes the biathlete.
The biggest progress of the Latvian is precisely in terms of skiing – Renārs has reached the TOP20 in terms of speed, but in skiing spade was in one of the stages of the relay, when the 24-year-old Birkenthal was the fastest biathlete in the competition. This can be explained by the fact that he managed to maintain his health for a longer period of time.
“I haven’t been sick for a year, there haven’t been any micro-injuries or other hiccups. The whole plan was executed, after which we hope to be in the best shape at the Olympics.
Of course, seeing the good condition at the moment, I doubt whether I will be able to keep it up for another month. But at the same time, there is a little confidence that its form in the Olympics could be even better.”
The biggest advantage for this season is in the psychological aspect. In previous seasons, disorder, eternal bidding and unfulfilled promises in the Latvian biathlon kitchen willy-nilly also referred to the performance of the biathletes. This is Birkenthal’s first season when he didn’t have to think about things outside of biathlon.
“All parties agreed on how we were going to do it and how we were going to implement it. To my surprise, everything happened with the finances. That was also a big factor that we didn’t have to worry about every day this year. There are people, and I understand what those people do, how they work and why they are here! That is definitely a huge factor.”
The majority of Latvian biathletes are currently going to the last training camp in the highlands, but the Latvian team will arrive in Antholcs, the home of the Olympic Games, on the last day of January.
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