THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF THE INTERNATIONAL BIATHLON ...

IBU EVENTS IBU VERANSTALTUNGENCUp 2009 i 2010 ibU CUp 2009 i 2010 ibU CUp 2009 i 2010 ibU CUpHaute Maurienne,Martell and PokljukaAuTHOR AuTORINTanja OHLSON – GERIBu Communication AssistantIBu kommunikationsassistentinOriginal language germanOriginalfassung deutschAs an Olympic season, the last biathlon winter waspractically split in two. Of course this also affected theIBU cups. While many World Cup athletes still competedin events early in the season and the number of participantsreached new levels, the events in Haute Maurienne,Martell and Pokljuka were quieter. Still, competition continuedto be at a very high level.In fact, the average winning times there were even fasterthan at the IBU-Cups before the Olympic Games, and thepossibility of securing a starting place for the last e.onRuhrgas IBU World Cup in Khanty Mansiysk also kept theoverall placements exciting.At the IBU-Cup 6 in Haute Maurienne, FRA, which hadonly few participants due to the long distance and theshort time left before the beginning of the Olympic WinterGames, the two leading athletes of the overall score,Sabrina Buchholz and Daniel Graf from Germany, had beensick shortly before the competitions started, and were stillsomewhat weakened. Nevertheless, their head start wasenough for them to defend their positions in spite of beingplaced in the middle of the field. The women’s sprint waswon by Teja Lehtimäki from Finland, while German JulianeDöll came in first at the pursuit. Both of the men’s winners,Daniel Böhm in the sprint and Christoph Knie in the pursuitcompetition, came from Germany.The IBU-Cup in Martell was right at the same time asthe start of the Olympic Games in Vancouver. A considerablenumber of nations and athletes came there anyway.However, the start list held the names of many athletesknown from the World Cup who had not qualified for the52 biathlonworld The official Magazine of The iBU 20 i 2010