The decision to cancel the stage of the Alfa-Bank Russian Biathlon Cup in Tyumen due to severe frosts is absolutely correct, we must protect the health of athletes, the two-time Olympic champion told . Svetlana Ichmouratova .
Ivan Melikhov, vice-president of the Russian Biathlon Union (RBU) for competitions, told on Wednesday that races at the Russian Cup stage in Tyumen were canceled due to frost. At the lowest point of the route, the temperature dropped to -23 degrees Celsius. Later, SBR executive director Alexander Pak told that the canceled races would not be postponed.
– It’s a normal decision. We have had precedents with very freezing temperatures. You have to take into account that -23 is really cold. We can train at 30 degrees below zero, but running at -23 is pretty cold. Considering the fact that the season has just started, we must take care of our athletes. Health comes first. In any case, we can then organize additional competitions and find something. Our guys won’t be left without a start: winter has just begun.
Canceling competitions in the current situation is completely normal. I welcome this decision. Running and freezing your nose and fingers? When we shoot, you stick out your index finger. You touch the metal backing, and it’s just freezing. Your fingers become very cold and you often don’t feel this corset. Some guys have probably had frostbite on their fingers before, and for them, this weather has a particularly hard impact on their health.
— Did you run at -23?
— We also ran in lower temperatures, it happened. We can only prove this with the thermometers we used, and our temperature was lower there, but the judges showed that the temperature allowed us to compete.
“Wouldn’t it be better if they didn’t run?”
– Certainly. Because the main thing is the health of our athletes. Now, if they breathe in the cold, half of the biathletes will fall asleep, and what will we do in the next steps? So it’s normal that competitions are canceled by such conditions,” Ishmuratova told .
The next stage of the Russian Cup will take place in mid-January in Izhevsk. Next week, biathletes will hold the Alfa-Bank Commonwealth Cup in Ufa.
Watch live broadcasts of the races on the channel, as well as on the matchtv.ru and sportbox.ru websites.
Source : MatchTV

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