Damon Morton delivered Australia’s best result of the season and his best Sprint result in Junior IBU Cup so far, finishing an extremely respectable 22^nd out of 83 in IBU junior Cup 3 in Pokljuka, Slovenia.

Strong Field

A strong field lined up at Pokljuka's Junior Cup including 7 Russians (3 DNS), 6 Ukraine athletes and athletes from powerful junior biathlon nations of France, Czech Republic and Austria. Damon's first lap was fast, showing his improvement in speed since first trimester, December 2016 and the benefit of strong training blocks. In the prone shooting he again shot clean taking his run of perfect clean prone shooting to 6 races in succession this season and in bib 32 emerged from the range in 3^rd position.

Damon followed up in standing with a second bout of perfect shooting to maintain his early high position on the leader board but tired on his final lap and went on to finish a commendable 1 min and 28 s behind the winner K Strelskov from Russia who was first in a time of 26mins 27secs. 

Recovery From Illnes

The race was Damon’s first individual competition since coming down sick and developing bronchitis over Christmas. His Christmas flu was the worst he has experienced in Europe requiring antibiotic treatment. His coach Joe Obererlacher made the call to rest him until he was 100% recovered and then slowly rebuild on the training track, consequently Damon missed National Team duties at IBU Cup 4 and 5 in January to focus on racing well in February.

Damon and sister Darcie will race for the 3^rd day in succession in Pokljuka with a second sprint race on Sunday 29th Jan 2017.

Click here and scroll down for full race results.