Anna Gandler shot 20/20 and won the women individual competition and home team's their first gold medal at the IBU Junior European Championships in Hochfilzen on the first day of competition with that. The Czech Vitezslav Hornig also shot 20/20 and won the men individual competition.

Junior Men Individual

Men were the first to hit the tracks in Hochfilzen. With warm temperatures, the course was very deep right from the start, so the opening competition of these Junior Open European Championships became a very exhausting exercise for the athletes. Vitezslav Hornig from the Czech Republic coped best with these conditions and took the win after 44:26.5 minutes. 

Alex Cisar from Slovenia won the silver medal with a gap of 29 seconds to the winner. After his victory in the Junior Cup Super Sprint in Arber, he recently travelled directly to the World Cup in Nove Mesto and gained important experience there, which he considered a "booster for self-confidence".

Patrick Braunhofer from Italy completed the podium in third place, 1:14 minutes behind the winner. 

The basis for their very good results was set by the first three at the shooting range: all three shot 20/20.

Junior Women Individual

First day of competition at the European Championships in Hochfilzen and the first gold for the Alps Republic! Anna Gandler showed an almost perfect race in front of her home audience, shot 20/20 and although officially still a youth athlete won in great style.

At finish Gandler spoke of "one of the hardest races she has ever participated in". After the third shooting she had become dizzy. "At that moment I thought it was impossible for me to shoot zero in the last shooting", said the pursuit youth world champion from Lenzerheide. 

Her low starting number probably also helped her to rich top of the podium. Gandler started the race with starting number 19 in what it turned out to be increasingly difficult conditions. This is probably one of the reasons why her first pursuer, Amina Ivanova from Russia, didn't stand a chance against her on the track. The youngest of the Russian team had a significantly less favourable starting position with starting number 67 and finished the race 1:16 minutes behind in silver despite also zero misses.

Behind her was Joanna Jakiela from Poland with a very strong skiing performance. She missed three shots (two at the last standing), but finished just eleven seconds behind Ivanova, 1:27 minutes behind Gandler.

Baserga and Barchewitz win the Individual score

Amy Baserga from Switzerland and Max Barchewitz from Germany have secured the globes in the season ranking of the individual competition.

Both did not catch the best day of the season today. Max Barchewitz didn't make it past 16th place despite only one shooting mistake. The victory in the individual classification resulted from his third place at the season opener in Pokljuka and the World Championship title in Lenzerheide.

Baserga ran in 20th place today with three errors, having previously won the bronze medal in the pursuit at the World Championship in Lenzerheide and finished second at the season opener in Pokljuka. These results were enough to beat the Russian Khaliullina with 123 points in the discipline ranking, who collected 114 points.

Foto: Harald Deubert