Be the part of Lena's success

Do you remember Magdalena Neuner? The best female biathlete of all time?

Just kidding!

You will not see her on next season's tracks but you can still meet all her trophies now. Visit the special exhibition of her medal collection including Crystal globes, World Cup medals and three Olympic medals from Vancouver 2010.

Meet all these trophies

Now the exhibition is prolonged. So what are you waiting for? Take a trip to Magdalena's hometown Wallgau in Germany and visit the City Hall (Wallgauer Rathaus). 

You can find the Exhibition in Wallgauer Rathaus 

Opening hours - every Tuesday and Thursday from 14:30 til 16:30

and every Sunday from 10:00 till 12:00.

The exhibition is just as successful as her career  

Who knows, maybe you'll meet her there :)

Fans preparing for the new season: Tickets

166 days...

...to the first IBU World Cup event this season.

Are you excited? I hope so. Many of you will watch the races on TV. Some of you will be there to support your favorite biathletes live. On the stands. Or by the track. The atmosphere is indescribable, isn´t it? What place will it be? Östersund? Hochfilzen? Pokljuka? Will you scream „heia“ in Oslo Holmenkollen? Maybe you will travel a lot and visit all the places. Book the tickets now! Here´s the overview.

Östersund (Sweden)

It´s easy. Buy a ticket for only one day or you can buy multipass tickets for more days. Why not. So you have some discount for it. But only the weekendpasses are available for advance purchase and pre-booking now. The entire weekly passes had to be released in May but unfortunately they aren't. Nevermind.

Saturday or Sunday stand tickets costs 200 Sweden crowns (SEK) - cca 22 EUR.

Weekend multipass stand ticket costs 300 SEK – cca 33 EUR.

Last season´s multipass ticket

For more infos about the tickets and for booking go to https://nortic.se/customer/index.html?event=12179274&siteLanguage=en

Hochfilzen (Austria)

Book your tickets now by filling the form on the site. There is a chance to get the tickets on the one of two stand places or by the track. You can choose tickets for each day or “Generalkarte” for all days.

Friday, Saturday or Sunday ticket on Tribüne A is for 17 EUR.

Generalkarte on Tribüne A is for 47 EUR.

Standing in Hochfilzen's Crowd 

For more infos about the tickets and for booking go to

http://www.biathlon-hochfilzen.at/kartenbestellung.html

Pokljuka (Slovenia)

Pokljuka is back for IBU World Cup since 2010. Unfortunately there are no information about the tickets for the December races in 2012 on the official website. But there are still prices for the races in 2010 so you can hope the prices will be similar this year.

Thursday, Saturday or Sunday ticket was 10 EUR/day (including Bus transfer)

The price of VIP ticket for each day was 100 EUR

Oberhof and Ruhpolding (Germany)

There is a warning on the official web site of Oberhof that tickets for the IBU World Cup 4 are not available yet. So be careful and don´t trust any sellers that can offer you tickets for special prices!  Tickets for both IBU events will be available in autumn 2012.

Choose your seats in Ruhpolding while waiting 

Antholz-Anterselva (Italy)

Ticket presale for the 6th World Cup event will start from Monday, 2nd July 2012 at 8 a.m.

But from 2nd to 31st July 2012 ONLY general tickets for the seating area will be on sale. After this date you can also get single seating tickets for each day.

Nové Mesto na Morave (Czech republic)

World Championships 2013 tickets are on sale now and for very interesting prices. You can book either tickets including accommodation (5, 7 or 12 nights in double hotel rooms) or just tickets without accommodation - V.I.P, upper grand stands, lower grandstands, grandstand E and track.

Tickets without accommodation:

11 days full-event-pas starts from 900 Czech crowns (CZK) – 36 EUR

4 day pass for week 1 starts from 375 CZK – 15 EUR

5 day pass for week 2 starts from 600 CZK – 24 EUR

Find your place in Nove Mesto 

For more infos about the tickets and for booking go to

http://www.biathlonnmnm.cz/cz/2013/vstupenky.html

Oslo-Holmenkollen (Norway)

There are many options how to see your favorite biathletes live in the special place of Holmenkollen. What about the special feature – the family camp KAPELLSKOGEN which is an excellent option for families? The parents can watch biathlon by the competition course, while the kids can enjoy many fun activities. You could also choose tickets for the main stages, track stands or V.I.P. ticket. For each day or as a weekend package.

Grandstand weekend package for adults - 750 Norway crowns (NOK) – 99 EUR

Kapellskogen & Track weekend package for adults - 300 NOK – 40 EUR

V.I.P. ticket - 790 NOK – 104 EUR/day

Many spectators sectors with special family camp place (W)

For more options and infos about the tickets go to

http://www.skiskyting.no/worldcup-english/Tickets/Sider/Kartenkonzepte.aspx

The X-files of the last season

"This could be a case for Mulder and Scully…"

...sings the band named Catatonia. Some moments of the last World Cup season really could be kind of cases for them. Strange things have happened and nobody understand it. Maybe the truth is out there. However, let's take a look! 
But hey! Don´t take it too serious :)

15/1/2012 Nove Mesto na Morave

I was there and I must tell you, it was really a strange sunday afternoon. There was two pursuit races of 8th IBU World Cup to go - women 10 km and men 12,5 km. I wished to see a dramatic race, but I would never have thought it would be so mysterious. Especially for the German team.

Mysterious shooting range in Nove Mesto na Morave

At first - Magdalena Neuner. She led after second shooting and she looked so strong and in perfect shape, but...maybe not so concentrated. Or? Was it paranormal phenomenon?

In the third shooting (first standing stage) she unfortunately cross-fired four shots so she hit neighboring targets and lost a chance to win. Everybody was surprised.

Magdalena Neuner after hitting 4 neighboring targets

Second – Arnd Peiffer. Also in the first standing he hit all 5 the target but one of them didn´t close. He had done an extra penalty loop and was given a time adjustment of 21 second moving him into second place with  Martin Fourcade.

(He was third after not knowing about Arnd’s problem, but IBU jury have made fair decision and gave a tie position for them)

Arnd Peiffer and Martin Fourcade finished both second 

because of not closed target

7/2/2012 Kontiolahti

There is something in the finnish air.

Especially before IBU World Cup events in Kontiolahti. This year it was not only very cold weather, but something more.

Many of biathletes had the same problem when they have arrived at Joensuu airport. Lost baggages. Another strange thing that have made them think about it. For example Sarah Studebaker from US team wrote on her facebook fanpage that day:

„Made it to Kontiolahti...with my bag but without my rifle. What's going on

here??“

Joensuu airport – the place where many bags were lost

29/2/2012 - 11/3/2012 Ruhpolding

If I will make a race on the Ruhpolding track I will be very carefull. Remember Jean Guillame Beatrix, Evgeny Ustyugov, Zdenek Vitek or Thierry Langer...  

There was something strange on this World Championships. One place with so many falls and slidings in men´s sprint. Even Svetlana Sleptsova have made heavy fall in women´s pursuit and caused the collision with another biathlete. 

                                      Vicious place of World Championships 

Can you imagine, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson will come next season to solve all X-files? :)

Biathlon and advertising part I.

Biathlon is not tennis. 

Yes, I know it's a simple truth but what I try to say - just imagine biathlon is so popular, imagine that prize-money every single race……

Ok, stop dreaming and let's think about the real possibilities to earn some extra money for the team, new skis maybe etc. So you are lucky if any company choose you for representing their brand, to be the main face of their campaigns. Of course 

it 's not only about a money. You tell yourself - Hmm, I must be really famous, it's a honor and….yes, of course I can have some extra money!!  But also it's a big opportunity to promote yourself as a person and biathlon as a sport as well. 

Sometimes you may discover what could you do when you retire from your career.

Who knows if Magdalena Neuner will continue with modeling. As we remember from the campaign for example for Mey bodywear, she is very beautiful, so it could be possible.  

Magdalena Neuner for Mey bodywear

Magdalena enjoys these moments 

Source: leben.freenet.de

This campaign or this product is not so strongly connected with biathlon. But some companies are choosing biathletes as the face of their campaigns just because they want to promote products that can help improve the performance or make sport more comfortable.

For example Kaisa Mäkäräinen and the advertisement for Maxim recovery drink.

Kaisa Mäkäräinen for Maxim - recovery drink 

Or Raphael Poiree and his wife Liv Grete - you can see them in many spots promoting coffee Alikaffe.

In the other side sponsorship gives you a chance to promote yourself and then of course you help the brand become more popular. Last months Russian biathletes were in the studio in photo shoot for Adidas and their new autograph cards with nice message: We could have done any sport, but we chose biathlon!

Svetlana Sleptsova as a tennis player. 
For autograph cards of the rest of russian biathletes visit http://biathlonrus.com/eng

You can be the face of advertising just to support and develope young people in doing sports in your country. Anastasiya Kuzmina took part in the camapign for Team Slovakia that was focused on raising awareness of national sport representation and supporting young talented athletes. 

Anastasiya Kuzmina for Team Slovakia with message: 

Without support it would be a different story.

What a nice idea to show biathletes as the idols, isn't it?

3...2...1....start

Do you miss biathlon these days?
There is almost summer outside the window so you can watch only replays from the last season...
...but what about enjoying the sunny weather and take a little training? To be in the best form. As biathletes do!
What kind of sport could it be? Maybe sailing as slovenian team, maybe running or biking. You can let me know, of course.
Stand up and go-go-go!
So I can prepare next article for you.