wind, fog and rain

Yesterday was the women's 4X6km relay. Start was 7:30pm, I woke up just before 10, had a leisure breakfast, watched the tour, took a nap (I don't think I have ever taken a nap before a race), ate some more food and before you knew it, it was 5:30 and it was time to head to the sight! The wind had been howling all day and the rain was coming down pretty hard. As zero (sighting in our rifles) rolled around so did the fog. The coaches who are normally 50m behind us with their scopes had to come down right beside our mats in order to see the targets. The wind was being tricky and kept changing intensity and which direction it was blowing. 

Zina was the first leg of our relay. The course here is pretty tough, you climb a monster climb and then have to come down a steep hill with a sharp right hand corner. Zina was off to a good start but right before the corner it all went wrong, she crashed hard into an Italian who had put on the brakes and did a full somersault over her and lost her ski in the process. Needless to say she was a bit disoriented and now at the back of the pack. She came in to her prone and hit all 5 with a couple spares. But as she came into her standing bout noticed how much her hand and arm were actually hurting from the crash. She ended up having to do two loops. Megan had a decent leg only using one spare prone and one spare standing. It was then my turn to go. I was feeling pretty good on the skis and came into my prone shooting and thought the wind had died a bit since my zero, I made a correction and hit 2/5, meaning I had three spare bullets to hit 3 targets. I ended up with two penalty loops :( . I hammered out my second loop and came in for my standing shooting. I hit all 5 nice and quick with no spares. Back out on course I knew that I was going to have to hammer if I wanted to give Melanie a good shot at finishing this race. (side note - they have a new rule in relays that if the your last person is not done shooting standing by the time the winning team crosses the finish line then you don't get to finish the race, lame I know!) I tagged off to Melanie right as the winning team was coming into shoot their prone bout. Unfortunately Melanie didn't get to finish her last lap and we ended up unofficially 13th. 

Not a single team got away without penalty loops yesterday. In relays there are usually no more than 10 loops and maybe 100 spare rounds used, yesterday there was 84 penalty loops and 263 spare rounds. In the mens relay it was the same, 100 penalty loops and 352 spare rounds. 

Tonight is the men's 10km sprint starting at 5:30pm. Tomorrow is the women's 7.5km sprint start time at 5:40. Unfortunately for the women we only have 3 start spots, meaning one of us will have to sit out. The coaches have decided that Melanie will be the one to race tomorrow, we are pretty close in ski speed and she shot better than I did yesterday. So looks like it will be the side lines for me.

ciao

Rosanna

Here is a video of Zina's crash.