Biathlon news - Boe edges closer to record with 11th World Cup win in Antholz
BySportsbeat
Updated 26/01/2019 at 18:04 GMT
Johannes Thingnes Boe moved ever closer to the single-season Biathlon World Cup wins record by dominating en route to his 11th victory of the campaign in Antholz-Anterselva.
Norway's Johannes Thingnes Boe crosses the finish line to win the men's 12,5 km pursuit event of the IBU Biathlon World Cup in Rasen-Antholz (Rasun Anterselva), Italian Alps, on January 26, 2019. (Photo by Marco BERTORELLO / AFP) (Photo credit should read
Image credit: Getty Images
The Norwegian now has five wins on the spin and his tally has come in just 14 races this term – with the 25-year-old showing no signs of slowing down.
With eight further World Cup races and four in the World Championship still to come, Boe breaking Martin Fourcade’s all-time record of 14 wins in a single season – set in the 2016-17 campaign – appears almost an inevitability.
His latest triumph came in the 12.5km pursuit in Italy as he held off a quartet of Frenchmen to take what was ultimately a fairly comfortable victory.
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Boe takes 12.5km pursuit title in Antholtz
Boe wasn’t at his best – missing three targets on the range – but his skiing was so strong that no-one could live with him and he almost stopped several times on the final loop to wave and point at the crowd.
He eventually crossed the line in 31:33.7 minutes, which was 34.8 seconds clear of Antonin Guigonnat in second with Quentin Fillon Maillet another 5.8 seconds back in bronze.
Fillon Maillet pipped Simon Desthieux on the line, while five-time Olympic champion Martin Fourcade’s disappointing campaign continued with a fifth place.
Boe extended his advantage atop the overall standings as he now sits on 782 points, a mammoth 255 clear of Alexander Loginov – who finished seventh on the day – as Fourcade lies third.
Switzerland’s Isabel Derungs has recorded her first ever slopestyle World Cup victory after riding to victory in Italy.
The 31-year-old took the opportunity to capitalise on the absence of a number of other competitors, participating elsewhere at the X-Games in the United States, with the win at Seiser Alm.
Derungs prevailed with a score of 79.15, ahead of Canada’s Brooke Voigt on 76.00 and Jasmine Baird on 73.25.
The imperious Natalie Geisenberger underlined her status as the leading light of women's luge by clinching her ninth world title.
The 30-year-old, who won her first-ever women's sprint gold on Friday, clinched her fourth women's singles crown in her last five World Championship outings in Winterberg on Saturday afternoon.
Geisenberger - also twice a double-Olympic champion - thrilled her home crowd in Germany by defeating compatriot Julia Taubitz by 0.425 seconds.
Super-G world champion Nicole Schmidhofer proved the party-pooper in Germany as Sofia Goggia was denied a perfect comeback to World Cup racing.
Goggia was racing for the first time this season having broken a bone in her ankle in October, but the fairy-tale performance wasn’t to come her way after being forced to settle for silver in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
Just 0.23 seconds separated the Italian from the title with Schmidhofer stopping the clock in 1:19.98 to secure the third World Cup title of the season.
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