Biathlon: a shooting session for Martin Uldal and Vebjoern Soerum that got everyone talking
Last Saturday, on the slopes of Lenzerheide (Switzerland), Norway’s Endre Stroemsheim, Tarjei Boe, Sturla Holm Lægreid and Johannes Thingnes Boe enabled Norway to win its first Biathlon World Championship relay title since 2021.
And yet, since the start of the season, it was the French who had got into the habit of dominating this event on the World Cup circuit, with four wins in as many races contested. Determined to topple Les Bleus on this world stage, the Scandinavians pulled off a perfect relay.
However, during the traditional ceremony, the team coached by Drôme’s Siegfried Mazet suffered a mishap that did not go down well with the various observers and consultants. As the national anthem rang out, the spectators and athletes could hear the shots of Martin Uldal and Vebjoern Soerum, who were not lined up for the day’s event and were training on the eve of the closing mass-starts.
“You have to respect the national anthem. Shooting had no place during this ceremony, “ laments Ola Lunde, a consultant for NRK. “It was a bit of bad timing. I was lying on the carpet when it started and I started shooting,” says Martin Uldal. Obviously, I would have preferred it if it hadn’t happened.
“The national anthem must be respected”.Vebjoern Soerum at NRK
His team-mate Vebjoern Soerum spoke of the difficulty of finding time to fit in a preparation session in the middle of a day with two races on the programme: “We didn’t have much time to train. We could only do one session. So unfortunately we didn’t really have a choice”, he admits.
A few minutes after the incident, the IBU quickly apologised and said it “regretted that the training took place during the Norwegian national anthem”.
“You have to respect the national anthem. It was a bit strange to train or shoot at that precise moment because it makes a lot of noise,” says Vebjoern Soerum. However, we didn’t have enough time and the IBU hadn’t planned it properly.
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