For arnd peiffer his season debut ended with painful bruises and a bleeding laceration. Away from the television cameras, the world champion had fallen in a downhill race at the biathlon individual in ostersund.
Nine months after his gold medal run, he overturned several times on the course of his world championship triumph, hitting the back of his head with his rifle stock and breaking it. "I saw him climb out of the ditch," said benedikt doll when 16. Best in an overall disappointing german team.
"Arnd was fortunately not unconscious, from a medical point of view everything is in the green so far," said the german team doctor katharina blume to the ZDF and gave the all-clear. It could have ended worse. In february 2016, peiffer had caused a major scare when he went off the track in the pursuit in presque isle/USA and slammed his head into a tree. At that time, the athlete from harz had suffered a severe brain injury, bruises in the chest area and bruises in the face. This time it ended more gently, even though his gun was totally damaged.
"I was three or four times close to lying down at the same spot, too," said teammate erik lesser: "it was pretty hard on the track today. The curves were pretty crazy."
Thus peiffer’s misery continued at the season’s start. Because the sprint olympic champion had to skip the first world cup weekend with mixed relay and sprint due to a stomach-intestinal infection. Nevertheless, he went into the most difficult of all biathlon races highly motivated and was in fifth place after the first two flawless skis. But then the mishap. So the 32-year-old could not prevent the disappointing team result.
After the proteges of national coach mark kirchner had already shot themselves out of the race in the sprint with a total of 16 mistakes, it was not much better over the 20 kilometers with a total of 21 mistakes. "I underestimated that a little bit, that was an incredibly hard run in those low conditions," said the totally exhausted doll (4 faults). The rain made the already difficult course from ostersund even harder to run. Philip horn (3) turned 27., johannes kuhn (5) 41., simon schempp (5) 53. And lesser (4) 72. – this is not the demand of the germans.
"I was lousy," said lesser: "my pulse exploded, even though i wasn’t running fast at all. That was a brutal cramp. Schempp said: "I still don’t have any standing ability at all, and there’s not much going on at the push stand either. That makes it very, very difficult right now."
Meanwhile, france’s star martin fourcade returned with his first success in a year. After the seven-time overall world cup winner had no chance against the 16-time season winner johannes thingnes bo last winter, the 31-year-old now reopened the duel of the biathlon giants. "For me this is very emotional and i am very happy to finally be back," said fourcade. This time, his rival bo had to settle for tenth place.
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