Biathlon: Anger over new start number rule

Winter sports enthusiasts and heat rarely mix, that’s the nature of things. The higher the temperatures, the slushier the layer of snow, which competitive athletes should glide over as quickly as possible. In other words: When temperatures are above zero, a cross-country ski trail usually changes over the course of a day in such a way that the ski becomes slower and slower and eventually seizes up. And because that is the case, there is now quite a heated debate in the biathlon scene.

The reason is a change in the rules, because of which the world’s best ski hunters fear that in the future they will more often be among those who will be slowed down by snow: Unlike before, the top thirty athletes in the Biathlon World Cup in the season that starts on Saturday will no longer be with low skis Start numbers rewarded. This means they no longer start their competition early. According to the reform of the World Biathlon Association IBU, they will only be able to compete in the sprint and individual competitions much later: in starting group three, with numbers 46 to 75.

There is, to say the least, dissatisfaction among the best-known and most successful biathletes: “We will have conditions that will not be fair,” said two-time Olympic champion Quentin Fillon Maillet from France to the Eurosport broadcaster. The Italian Lisa Vitozzi, overall World Cup winner last winter, doesn’t seem enthusiastic either. “In the end, it doesn’t matter what we athletes think,” she said recently, while five-time Olympic champion Johannes Thingnes Bö from Norway is more concerned about the spectators. “Nobody wants to watch a race for forty minutes before the top athletes shoot,” Bö told TV2. “I know that a large number of biathletes are against it,” said Sebastian Samuelsson from Sweden, before a German biathlete also spoke up.

Like Samuelsson, Johannes Kühn from the German biathlon town of Ruhpolding is a member of the athletes’ committee, the body that was heard by the world association when making the decision – but apparently did not know how to convince. “We had quite long and quite often meetings with the IBU. In the end, we actually achieved nothing. We wasted a lot of time,” says Kühn. It was “a great pity” that the IBU was not prepared to compromise. “We made a lot of good suggestions.”

“We have recently noticed a slight decline in viewing figures,” explains the World Biathlon Association

One of the athletes’ committee’s ideas was apparently to let the best World Cup athletes start together and closely staggered with significantly lower numbers, as IBU spokesman Christian Winkler said on Wednesday: “From our point of view, this does not solve the problem that we saw have,” said Winkler. Probably also because things would then have gone much the same as before.

All of this is about the most important currency in winter sports: TV time and TV money. In the face of competition with ever less snow and ice, it is important to assert oneself – and those responsible at the IBU clearly saw a need for reform. “We have recently noticed a slight decline in ratings,” reports Winkler, which can be attributed, among other things, to the suspension of the Russian athletes, but perhaps not only. The development in biathlon is not worrying. But people still thought about it, “more prophylactically,” says Winkler. “Of course there is also a commercial aspect to it. As a world association, we ensure that our sport is easily marketable.” So the mode was reconsidered and changed. “Our aim is to create more exciting competitions than before,” said the IBU spokesman.

The biathlon dominator Johannes Thingnes Bö would disagree and has already spoken on Norwegian television: “The opposite will happen,” predicts Bö: “If people switch to biathlon and don’t see any of the best, they will switch back, and We will lose viewers.”

What unites the critical voices is that they all come from athletes who have previously belonged to the first or second starting group. According to the old rule, they would have benefited from their good results from the previous winter and received a lower starting number in the first individual and sprint races next weekend in Kontiolahti in Finland. This advantage is now being given to others who are less well-known and successful – or who are moving up. These include the three young German talents Johanna Puff, Julia Tannheimer and Julia Kink, who are in the squad of the German Ski Association (DSV) in Kontiolahti. In addition, those who have had virtually no chance so far could benefit: the so-called exotic skiers.

One of them is Darcie Morton, currently the only Australian biathlete in the World Cup. So far she has always had start numbers above 50, and last season she didn’t collect a single World Cup point. This winter she can even hope for a single-digit starting number for the first time: the reform is particularly helpful to her. When asked, she sees “more equal opportunities for all nations, especially in difficult weather and snow conditions,” explains the 24-year-old: “So the weaker athletes also have a chance to compete with the top people and make it into the top 40 .” Unlike Bö, she sees an improvement for television viewers because it is worth watching the entire race for ninety minutes and not just the first thirty to forty minutes.

In the future, will the fans in the stadium calmly fetch bratwurst and mulled wine after the starting signal? Do TV viewers turn off later but also turn on later? The IBU begins a four-week test phase in Kontiolahti. “If it doesn’t work, you change it again,” says Winkler. Has the IBU also thought about introducing a draw system in which each athlete is alternately placed in starting group one, two or three? “Intuitively” he doesn’t think this idea is bad, explains Winkler, and perhaps it should be discussed. In any case, the decisive factor for the new rule will be whether athletes and the audience warm up to it.