Ukraine holds the best race of the Biathlon World Cup 2024/25 with a record

The men's short individual race took place at the 1st stage of the Biathlon World Cup of the 2024/2025 season in Kontiolahti, Finland. Three representatives of the Ukrainian national team finished in the top 15. Vitaliy Mandzyn took 4th place, Dmytro Pidruchnyi was tenth, and Anton Dudchenko rounded out the top 15. This was our country's best performance of the season.

Vitaliy Mandzyn was in the running for the podium with four clean firing lines, but his stroke let him down. Vitaliy was separated from the third place by half a minute.

The 21-year-old biathlete from Ternopil closed all the targets at four firing lines. The 4th place was a personal best at the World Cup level. Before that, his best result was 31st place in the sprint in Oberhof in the 2023/2024 season.

Dmytro Pidruchnyi, who in 2019 became Ukraine's first ever world champion in this discipline, did a great job throughout the race and had a great chance of winning.

Before the third firing line, the 33-year-old from Ternopil had 0 in the missed shots column, but he failed to complete the 15 km course perfectly. One inaccurate shot at the 4th firing line dropped Dmytro to the edge of the top ten. Despite this, Pidruchnyi's 10th place was the best result in his career in individual races at the World Cup level. Before that, his highest result was 20th place in Estersund 2019/20.

As OBOZ.UA previously reported, on Sunday, the Ukrainian biathlon team of Kristina Dmytrenko, Yulia Dzhima, Anton Dudchenko and Vitaliy Mandzyn took 6th place (+3:38.9) in the mixed relay.

It should be noted that the Ukrainian national team took 9th place in the opening race of the 1st stage of the Biathlon World Cup of the 2024/2025 season. Our country was represented by Olena Gorodna and Artem Tyshchenko.

Only verified information is available on our Telegram channel OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes!