Ukraine wins first gold at the 2025 Winter Universiade

15 January 02:43

Ukrainian athlete Bohdan Borkovsky, 20, won the individual biathlon race at the World Winter Universiade in Turin, Italy. This was reported by "Komersant Ukrainian" with reference to the Biathlon Federation of Ukraine.

The biathlon competitions of the XXII World Winter Universiade have started today in Turin.

“Bohdan Borkovskyi is the winner of the short individual race! Ukraine started the Universiade with a victory! And in the very first race, the men’s short individual, the Ukrainian team won the first gold! Bogdan Borkovsky, for whom this format is by no means a specialty, had a great start. Having seized the lead at the 0.5 kilometer mark, he did not give up the first position to anyone until the finish line,” the Biathlon Federation of Ukraine reported.

Bohdan passed two of the lines cleanly, but made three mistakes on the next two. However, this did not prevent the Ukrainian from going out on the course with a better schedule.

“Finland’s Patrik Kuuttinen, who eventually became the silver medalist, was only two seconds behind before the last lap, but he was not able to compete with Borkovsky in speed – at the finish line, our athlete’s advantage reached 25 seconds. Moreover, Kuuttinen could have lost second place, as he was losing ground to Czech biathlete Petr Hak, who had already finished the race. However, the course ended a little earlier than the Finn had exhausted his strength: Hak won the bronze medal, losing the second place by less than four seconds,” the federation added

Another Ukrainian, Serhiy Suprun, took fourth place, and Vladyslav Chikhar finished fifth.

“Serhiy Suprun and Vladyslav Chykhar finished fourth and fifth respectively. They lacked a little bit of accuracy: Serhiy had two penalties and Vlad had three, which prevented them from getting on the podium,” the statement said.

“Two more of our guys made too many mistakes: Roman Borovyk failed to close five targets, finishing 16th, and Stepan Kinash, who continues to regain his form after surgery through races, finished the first race of the Universiade 20th with four 45-second penalties.

Universiade. Short individual race. Men:

1.Bogdan Borkovsky (0 0 1 2) 38:40.9