The head of the RBU believes that it is now impossible to recruit eight high-quality biathletes for the Russian national team

It is currently not possible to recruit eight equally qualified biathletes for the Russian national team, so it is inappropriate to have a second team of the same class, it is better to create an internal competition by bringing together the best in one only team, declared the Russian president; Biathlon Union (RBR) Viktor Maygurov .

At the end of March, a meeting of the RBU coaching council was held in Tyumen, where it was decided to introduce the format of the main and reserve teams starting from the 2024/25 season.

— You previously confirmed that two competing groups are great, but now the SBR is moving away from them. For what?

— We experimented for two years and got the result. We don’t have enough top athletes to fill two groups. Let’s be honest: we won’t hire eight equal people, why do we need to create a team of eight more people?

Now we want to bring all the best into one team so that there is internal competition. Individual training is not bad if you know how to do it. The second team will focus on young people. We will support athletes transitioning from junior to adult sports.

— Do you consider the experiment with two groups a failure?

– For what? On the contrary, successful.

– You leave two groups.

– We have gained experience. In two years, maybe we’ll do something else. We are now back to the classics, and thank you to the Ministry of Sports for the opportunity to fund this number of athletes.

I can’t say that Istomin or Bashkirov are doing a bad job, but that’s the decision that was made. And it’s not mine, but that of the coaching council. There were no other proposals to the council. If we understood that we were doing something wrong, they would have told us,” Maygurov told .