Schölzhorn & Co. do (too) many laps

Three nations and a dozen extras: that's how the women's relay team had to be described on the final day of the Junior World Championships for biathletes. The French women set the pace at the front, only Germany and Norway (both of whom made mistakes at the shooting range) were able to keep up. The rest were far behind.

March 05, 2025

By: Luis.mahlknecht

Also in this group was Italy's quartet, which started the race in the line-up Fabiana Carpella - Birgit Schölzhorn - Francesca Brocchiero - Ilaria Scattolo. The motto for all of them is "good on the course, wind-battered at the shooting range". Each of them had to do the penalty loop at least once, and only their solid character performance on the course saved them from a debacle. Fifth place doesn't look so bad, and the gap of almost four and a half minutes to the top and more than three minutes to the medals is enough to give us cause for concern.

The Norwegian juniors managed to do something similar in the afternoon to what the French women had achieved. Although they had to initially prevail against the Ukraine and Germany, from the second changeover onwards they took control with determination and rushed towards an ultimately uncontested victory. The places of honor went to Germany and Poland, who won a relay medal in the U23 class for the first time in junior competitions.

The Italian quartet crossed the finish line in fifth place, just 13 seconds behind the bronze medal. But fifth place had a bitter aftertaste, because of the top teams only the "Azzurri" had to go into the penalty loop, and that was three times (once by Davide Compagnoni, twice by Nicolò Betemps). But then Christoph Pircher started to catch up, improving the team to seventh place, and Marco Barale was able to gain another two places with two excellent shooting performances and a strong run.