The "Tank Biathlon" Chinese team and the Belarusian team competed fiercely at the Arabino Stadium. In the first cycling race of the "Tank Biathlon" held after the opening ceremony, the Chinese team won the first place in the group and got a "good start" in the competition. Photo by Wu Xu

People's Daily Online, Beijing, August 4. On August 3, Moscow local time, the "International Military Games-2019" held an opening ceremony at Patriot Park on the outskirts of Moscow. In the subsequent "Tank Biathlon" cycling competition, the Chinese team competed in the first round and won the first place in the group with a large advantage, achieving a "good start".

At about 13:30 local time, the game officially started. The reporter saw at the competition site that in the first group competition, our army's 96B tank numbered 606 came on stage to compete with Belarus, Serbia, and Azerbaijan in the first round. The starting order was China, Belarus, Serbia, and Azerbaijan. The yellow-painted Chinese tank took the lead from the first track and performed steadily at the start. It successfully passed the S-shaped road and cleared obstacles, and reached the shooting area in only 1 minute and 24 seconds.

According to the rules of the competition, each team will cycle for 2.5 laps on a track of about 10 kilometers, passing through obstacle sections, combat sections, and shooting sections. During the process, they need to cross 10 types of 26 different obstacles such as wading fields, minefield access roads, rutted bridges, and washboard roads, and use tank guns, anti-aircraft machine guns, and parallel machine guns to shoot at different targets at different distances. It is understood that during the competition, if the shooter fails to discover or destroy the target, or violates shooting safety regulations, the referee will impose penalty laps in accordance with the rules; if the driver stops, stalls, bumps the pole, reverses, or detours when passing obstacles, the referee will also impose time penalties in accordance with the rules.    

In the fiercely competitive field, the members of our 606 crew were calm and performed steadily. The commander used anti-aircraft machine guns and parallel machine guns to shoot at targets of different distances and categories. The gunshots sounded and fell, and all hit. The driver concentrated on speeding all the way, reaching a high speed of 72km/h. In the end, the total time was 20 minutes and 12 seconds, and he won the first place in the group with an absolute advantage of 1 minute and 41 seconds ahead of the opponent.

The reporter learned that the "Tank Biathlon" is the most competitive event among all competitions, with teams from 25 countries competing on the same field. Representing our army in this competition this time is a synthetic brigade of the 76th Group Army. After accepting the task, they sent 4 teams (3 participating and 1 candidate) and 12 team members to participate. According to the requirements of the competition system, each participating team is divided into two groups based on last year's performance rankings, and the weight of participating equipment is limited. The competition rules are also different from last year. The Chinese team fully learned from last year’s competition experience, carefully studied the competition rules, sorted out 27 changing points, collected more than 20,000 pieces of training data, and formulated countermeasures one by one.

The reporter saw at the scene that the Chinese team fought bravely and tenaciously all the way, and finally passed all kinds of obstacles with zero mistakes and crossed the finish line first, with a time of 21 minutes and 01 seconds. But soon, an interesting scene happened. The referee team revised the Chinese team's time to 20 minutes and 12 seconds. It turned out that during the first round of tank gun fire, the Chinese team was misjudged to have hit 2 of 3 shots, and one shot missed the target, resulting in a penalty circle. During the target inspection and review at the end of the competition, the referee team repeatedly identified and determined that all 3 rounds fired by the Chinese team's tank guns were successful, and there were no misses. The competition time was reduced by 49 seconds according to regulations, and became 20 minutes and 12 seconds.

During the game, our officers and soldiers and Chinese tourists in the stands waved national flags and cheered hard. At the end of the race, there was warm applause from the audience, and some spectators could not help but shout loudly. The Russian people and officers and soldiers from other countries also stood up and applauded the outstanding performance of the Chinese crew. (Wu Xu Yin Qingwen Huang Wangmin)