Sport is made for betting

With so many football matches out of action, it's a perfect day to get into a true winter sport - biathlon! It's on Eurosport today, kicking off at 11.45am, but best of all, as it's a sprint race where competitors go out one-by-one (think cycling time trial), you won't miss anything by getting involved a bit later. Conditions in Oberhof yesterday were windy and foggy for the women's sprint, making shooting rather difficult - which is not a bad thing for traders. Uncertainty evens the field a little, increasing the chance of a big-priced winner, or at the very least, volatility in the winner market. Norwegian superman Ole Einar Bjorndalen is the favourite as per usual, and he warmed up on Thusday with a win in the realy for Norway. He missed one shot (of 10), you can see the stats from that race here . Ski times and shooting stats give a good guide to what you might expect in this race. When the guys who ski better than they shoot go too hard trying to establish a le...

New story in the Norwegian press this morning - the Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has sent a text message to Swedish biathlete Mattias Nilsson Jr (who commented on his blog about his disgust for the Russian drug cheats) promising that Russia would make a stance against doping in biathlon. As a follow-up to that, the heads of the Russian biathlon team have asked IBU president Besseberg for help in cleaning it up. Now I can believe a president making an effort to get things changed, it's highly unlikely he had any involvement in encouraging the cheating. But for the heads of an organisation with systematic drug-taking to call for assistance in cleaning up THEIR MESS, that's utter crap. The first (and only) step they can make to cleaning it up is resign in disgrace. These are the same people who screamed their athletes were innocent just a week ago and sent them to Pyeong Chang knowing full well the B-samples would be positive as well. And then wanted to take a petty protest a...

Ah, you gotta love this sport! Too bad I was watching the exciting Aus v Sth Africa cricket test instead! Norwegian Alexander Os skied brilliantly to take the lead, despite missing one of his shots (which means he has to ski a 25second penalty loop). But then one of his teammates, a late starter Lars Berger, who only got a start when the top Norwegians Emil Hegle Svendsen and Ole Einar Bjorndalen pulled out to go home and train instead, shot clear (10 from 10), very rare from him, and took the win at any old price (was part of 'Any Other'). Usually the short prices getting beaten come from bad shooting, but this time it was simply there was a dark horse left in the field who is a very fast skier.