Ukrainian biathletes Yulia Dzhima and Dmytro Pidruchny will represent the country in the traditional biathlon show Biathlon World Team Challenge, better known as the Christmas Race. The competition will take place on December 28 at the stadium of the Schalke football club in Gelsenkirchen, Germany.
According to the regulations, athletes will first run a mass start, which will determine the starting positions in the pursuit race. The mass start will begin at 19:00, and the pursuit race at 20:20 Kyiv time.
This year, 10 teams from different countries are participating in the Christmas Race:
- France (Julia Simon and Fabien Claude)
- Germany (Vanessa Vogt and Justus Strelow; Franziska Preuss and Philipp Nawrath)
- Austria (Anna Handler and Simon Eder)
- Norway (Ingrid Thundervold and Sturla Legrade)
- Czech Republic (Marketa Davidova and Michal Krcmarz)
- Sweden (Anna Magnusson and Esper Nelin)
- Ukraine (Yulia Dzhima and Dmytro Pidruchny)
- Latvia (Baiba Bendika and Andrejs Rastargujevs)
- Belgium (Lotte Lee and Florent Claude).
This will be Yulia Dzhima and Dmytro Pidruchny's third appearance on this show. In 2021, they took second place in the mass start, but finished eighth overall. In 2022, together with Anton Dudchenko, Yulia took eighth place.
In total, Ukraine is participating in the Christmas Race for the sixteenth time. We have two victories in our piggy bank: in 2008 thanks to Andriy Derizemla and Oksana Khvostenko, and in 2014 thanks to Serhiy Semenov and Valentyna Semerenko. Ukrainian biathletes have stood on the podium six times.
Ukrainian fans can watch the competition for free on the regional TV channels of “Suspilne” (“Suspilne Kyiv”, “Suspilne Sumy”, etc.), as well as on the TV channel “Suspilne Sport”. For viewers using the MEGOGO platform, the broadcast will be available in the “Sport”, “Maximum” or MEGOPACK packages.
