Biathlon: “I fought and it paid off”, says Paulina Batovska Fialkova
“Jeanne Richard in shock”. On Sunday, during the mass start of the biathlon World Cup stage in Le Grand-Bornand (Haute-Savoie), Jeanne Richard came close to climbing onto the podium for the first time. Slovakia’s Paulina Batovska Fialkova prevented her from doing so by a mere tenth. The cheers from the crowd did nothing to change that. ” Are we even allowed to do this in France?” exclaimed Mona Brorsson, SVT consultant, in the middle of the race.
In Sweden, the end of the Gets biathlete’s race did not go unnoticed. Aftonbaldet devoted an article to her. As did the television channel SVT.
And that’s indeed how close it was 🤯 Agony for Richard, Podium for Batovska-Fialkova!
Watch live on https://t.co/8WieDPZaQf and https://t.co/p8ATzITmbR pic.twitter.com/X8VPJogD4M– International Biathlon Union (@biathlonworld) December 22, 2024
“The mass-start in Le Grand Bornand came to a dramatic end. France’s Jeanne Richard spent a long time chasing third place behind Germany’s Selina Grotian and Franziska Preuss. But Batovska Fialkova caught up and overtook Richard, much to the crowd’s dismay. The cheers turned to silence. Judging by the television footage, Richard wasn’t expecting to be overtaken”, write our journalists.
“It’s the worst thing you can experience,” reports Norway’s TV2, which is rebroadcasting the footage.
In Slovakia, of course, the story was quite different. “I didn’t think third place was still possible. I fought hard and it paid off,” says Paulina Batovska Fialkova in the leading SME daily.
In fact, the 31-year-old has come a long way. She wasn’t even supposed to be there. It was the withdrawals of Julie Tannheimer, Vanessa Voigt and Karolina Knotten that gave her the chance. “I didn’t know until the last moment whether I was going to start, and then I made two mistakes in my first shot. So I thought I’d fight for the top 15 again,” she told her federation’s website.
After her final run past the targets, the podium still seemed out of reach: “Throughout the last lap, I thought third place was out of the question. I didn’t even feel like I was catching [Jeanne Richard]. But the Frenchwoman ran out of steam at the finish line.
” I didn’t feel her coming at all, I had no idea she was behind me at the time. We had no information, well I didn’t hear anything, it was impossible to hear a noise… I gave it my all, I gave it all I had,” Jeanne Richard told L’Equipe.
In the mixed zone, she added: “I can’t be disappointed with my race, even if there was a little frustration at the end.
For her third place, Paulina Batovska Fialkova scored 65 points in the biathlon World Cup rankings and also received a €10,000 bonus.
For the Slovak, this result is the second best Christmas present of her life. The first was “when Rominka was born last year”, she confided.
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