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History of the biathlon Christmas party that in two decades has rewarded the Gotha of this sport, from Ole Einar Boerndalen to Martin Fourcade, from Magdalena Neuner to Laura Dahlmeier, from Michael Greis to Dorothea Wierer.
Saturday 24 December 2022 2 minutes reading time
On 28 December 2002, for the first time, 35,000 fans in a stadium, the Veltins Arena in Gelsenkirchen, and 5 million viewers watched a biathlon competition that had an unexpected success and soon became an iconic event of the holiday season.
To tell the truth, since the 1990s, under the impetus of German TV, an invitational competition began to take place in Ruhpolding between Christmas and New Year's for which the Mixed Relay format was invented, but success came when, taking the pompous name of World Team Challenge we moved to the Schalke-04 stadium with an external track of just over a kilometer covered with artificial snow.
The first edition, with 20,000 seats not accessible for reasons of safety of shooting operations, was sold out and the 35,000 spectators saw the victory of Martina Beck and Michael Greis in the competition in which 12 pairs from 7 nations participated, including the Italians Wilfried Pallhuber and Nathalie Santer.
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