Marian Blaj

Marian Blaj
Full name	Ioan Marian Blaj
Association	Romania
birthday	March 11, 1978
place of birth	Bran
Career
job	Teacher / trainer
society	SC Dinamo Brasov
Trainer	Gheorghe Gârniță
Debut in the World Cup	1998
status	resigned
World Cup balance
last change: end of career

Ioan Marian Blaj (born March 11, 1978 in Bran , Brașov County ) is a Romanian biathlon coach and former biathlete.

Marian Blaj lives and trains in Fundata and started for SC Dinamo Brașov . The teacher is trained by Gheorghe Gârniță and started biathlon in 1995. A year later he was promoted to the Romanian national team. He had his first international assignments in 1997 in Forni Avoltri 1998 in Jericho as part of the Junior World Championships, in which, however, he achieved no significant results. Blaj made his debut in the biathlon world cup at the beginning of the 1998/99 season in Hochfilzen . In the individual he reached the 94th place, in the sprint he was 98. The Romanian made a first big improvement in the same season as 53rd in the sprint of Ruhpolding . The best result at the 2000 European Biathlon Championships in Kościelisko was a 37th place in the individual. A year later he achieved much better results in Haute-Maurienne . In the individual the Romanian was 16th, in the sprint tenth and 19th in the pursuit. In 2002 Blaj won World Cup points for the first time as 27th of an individual in Antholz . It was also his best World Cup result. A little later, the Romanian joined Soldier Hollow first time at the Games of Salt Lake City at Winter Olympics on. In the individual he ran to 51st place, in the sprint he was 42nd and thus qualified for the pursuit, where he was 55th. After the Games Blaj started at the Biathlon European Championships 2002 in Kontiolahti , reaching its best result rank 22 in 2003 was the Romanian together with Vasile Sneaga , Dana Plotogea and Éva Tófalvi with the mixed relay run his country to a fifth place in Ruhpolding. The 2004 Biathlon World Championships in Oberhof was Blaj's first World Cup, where he was 76th in the individual and 92nd in the sprint. A year later he finished 37th in the individual and 78th in the sprint in Hochfilzen. So far, the last major event in the career of Romanians were the 2006 Olympic Winter Games of Turin . At the competitions of Cesana San Sicario he came in 65th in the individual and 76th in the sprint. The best result at the Biathlon European Championships 2006 in Langdorf was a 15th place in the sprint. In 2007 in Bansko he was 12th in the sprint and 13th in the individual.

After his career, Blaj became a coach and looks after Casius Gerbacea , among others .

Biathlon World Cup placements

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

placement	singles	sprint	persecution	Mass start	Season	total
1st place
2nd place
3rd place
Top 10					1	1
Scoring	1				1	2
Starts	19th	47	7th		1	74
Status: end of career

Web links

• Marian Blaj in the database of the IBU (English)
• Marian Blaj in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )