Ukrainian biathletes Yulia Dzyma 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 Schalke football club stadium 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 start 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 Simone and Fabien Claude)
- Germany (Vanessa Vogt and Justus Strelow; Franziska Preuss and Philip Nawrat)
- Austria (Hanna Handler and Simon Eder)
- Norway (Ingrid Thundervold and Sturla Legreid)
- Czech Republic (Marketa Davydova and Michal Krchmarzh)
- Sweden (Anna Magnusson and Esper Nelin)
- Ukraine (Yulia Dzyma and Dmytro Pidruchny)
- Latvia (Baiba Bendika and Andrejs Rastarguievs)
- Belgium (Lotte Lee and Florent Claude).
It will be the third performance in this show for Yulia Dzyma and Dmytro Pidruchny. In 2021, they won second place in the mass start, but finished eighth overall. In 2022, together with Anton Dudchenko, Yulia took the eighth position.
In general, Ukraine is participating in the Christmas race for the sixteenth time. We have two victories in our treasury: in 2008, thanks to Andriy Deryzemla and Oksana Khvostenko, and in 2014, thanks to Serhiy Semenov and Valentina Semerenko. Ukrainian biathletes stood on the podium six times.
Ukrainian fans can watch the competition for free on the regional TV channels "Suspilne" ("Suspilne Kyiv", "Suspilne Sumy", etc.), as well as on the "Suspilne Sport" TV channel. For viewers using the MEGOGO platform, the broadcast will be available in the "Sport", "Maximum" or MEGOPACK packages.
