This is an event that took place at the end of last year, on December 28, 2019 at the Veltins-Arena in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. I had the chance t watch it today and I'm glad I did.
It's an interesting event because even though it's biathlon, a part of it is held in a stadium. I've never seen biathlon in a stadium, so it's a first for me. Veltins-Arena was hosting the event. This arena is basically a football stadium with a retractable roof and a retractable pitch and a capacity of 62,271.
This wonderful event had two stages: mass start and pursuit and I saw the pursuit. Teams were all mix teams, 10 males and 10 females and to my surprise there wee only 9 countries.
As I was saying above, this event was partly held in this stadium, which means athletes had to go round the stadium facing some hills and came into the stadium for the shooting part as the shooting range was set up inside. Artificial show is a wonderful thing, right?
Results from Pursuit. Congrats Norway, I can't say I'm surprised as they are good at this and have plenty of snow to practice. Nordic countries have a huge advantage and it shows. Ukraine came second, no surprise there and France third. I was a bit disappointed to see Italy on 5th place, was expecting more from them, however, it's still a good place, it's in the middle.
Mass start had a different ending though, Italy ranked 1st, yay!!! Germany and Ukraine came second and third.