Baiba Bendika

Baiba Bendika
Association	Latvia
birthday	27th June 1991 (age 29)
place of birth	Cēsis , Latvia
Career
Debut in the World Cup	2011
status	active
World Cup balance
Overall World Cup	32nd ( 2019/20 )
Individual World Cup	16. ( 2017/18 )
Sprint World Cup	34th (2019/20)
Pursuit World Cup	20. (2019/20)
Mass start world cup	38th (2019/20)
last change: July 29, 2020

Baiba Bendika (born June 27, 1991 in Cēsis ) is a Latvian biathlete . In 2011 she made her debut in the Biathlon World Cup , where she was the first female athlete in her country to finish in the top five in 2016.

Career

Bendika, whose father was also a biathlete, started training on skis at the age of ten. At the same time, she initially practiced other sports - including orienteering and floorball - before concentrating on biathlon. She attended the sports school in Cēsis and then studied tourism management at the Vidzeme University from 2010 to 2014 . The personal trainer of Bendika, who is 1.55 m tall and one of the smallest athletes on the World Cup field, has been the Latvian World Cup medalist Ilmārs Bricis since the mid-2010s .

Bendika competed in her first international races at the European Youth Olympic Winter Festival 2009 , where she finished 31st in the sprint and tenth in the mixed relay. In the following years up to 2012, she regularly competed in international youth championships, where she mostly achieved results in the lower midfield. In 2011 she achieved her best individual result at a Junior World Championship, finishing 34th in the 12.5-kilometer individual race. In the small Latvian biathlon team, Bendika moved up to the first team within a few years and received her first appearances in the IBU Cup and World Cup from winter 2011/12 . In the highest international competition series she clearly missed the points of the top 40 in each of her individual appearances until 2015/16, in the IBU Cup she achieved these positions sporadically. At her first World Championships in 2012 in Ruhpolding , Bendika was 95th in the sprint and 99th in the individual (with a good 110 participants each). The Latvian seasons in which it ran were each lapped.

In February 2016, Bendika - who had not yet won a World Cup point - finished fifth in the Canmore sprint . She remained in this race as one of seven athletes without a miss and in the end was 23.7 seconds behind the winner Olena Pidhruschna . With her result she exceeded Ieva Cederštrēmas seventh place in the Antholz individual from 1994, which was the best result of a Latvian biathlete in the World Cup until then. In the subsequent World Cup races in Presque Isle , Bendika reached places 15 and 13 in sprint and pursuit. She finished the 2015/16 season as 49th of the overall World Cup. Together with Andrejs Rastorgujevs , she came eighth in both of the single mixed relays held as part of the World Cup this winter.

In the winters from 2016 to 2020, Bendika made the points in the World Cup with increasing frequency and above all increased her mileage: In winter 2016/17 , her times on the track were two percent slower than the average of the field of participants, she ran three years later one percent faster than the average world cup athlete. The Latvian sporadically achieved further top ten results. In December 2018, she set her best World Cup result as fifth in the 15-kilometer individual race on the Pokljuka ; At the 2020 World Championships in Antholz she ran - after twelfth place in the sprint - to ninth place in the pursuit. She finished the 2019/20 season as 32nd of the overall World Cup. In addition, during these years in the Martell sprint in January 2017 , Bendika was third on the podium of an IBU Cup competition for the first time and took part (as the only Latvian biathlete) in the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang , where she competed three times in individual races Results between places 33 and 38 achieved.

statistics

World Cup statistics

The table shows all placements (depending on the year, including the Olympic Games and World Championships).

• 1st - 3rd Place: Number of podium placements
• Top 10: Number of placements in the top ten (including podium)
• Points ranks: Number of placements within the point ranks (including podium and top 10)
• Starts: Number of races run in the respective discipline
• Relay: including mixed relays

placement	singles	sprint	persecution	Mass start	Season	total
1st place
2nd place
3rd place
Top 10	2	1	1		4th	8th
Scoring	7th	14th	13	4th	18th	56
Starts	19th	53	25th	4th	18th	119
Status: end of season 2019/20

Biathlon world championships

Results at world championships:

World Championship		Individual competitions				Relay competitions
year	place	sprint	persecution	singles	Mass start	Women's relay	Mixed relay	Single mixed relay
2012	Ruhpolding	95.	-	99	-	26th	23.
2013	Nové Město	91.	-	98	-	-	23.
2015	Kontiolahti	82.	-	92.	-	-	-
2016	Oslo	78.	-	65.	-	-	25th
2017	Hochfilzen	50.	27.	65.	-	-	25th
2019	Ostersund	17th	23.	52.	27.	-	23.	10.
2020	Antholz	12.	9.	25th	18th	23.	21st	17th

winter Olympics

Results at Olympic Winter Games:

	Individual competitions				Relay competitions
	sprint	persecution	singles	Mass start	Women's relay	Mixed relay
Olympic Winter Games 2018 | Pyeongchang	39.	33.	39.	-	-	-

Web links

Commons : Baiba Bendika  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Baiba Bendika in the IBU database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} biography on own website, accessed on July 29, 2020
2. ↑ ^{a b} Baiba Bendika. Vai sensacionāla? on sporto.lv. February 2016.
3. ↑ In January 2016, Bendika finished in 41st place in the Antholz pursuit. Due to the disqualification of the Ukrainian Olga Abramova in April 2017, she moved up to 40th place, so that this competition is recorded in the statistics as the first in which she reached the points, cf. List of results , accessed on July 29, 2020.
4. ↑ Baiba Bendika in the IBU database (English)