Slovenia 2023-2024 Team Preview

Slovenia isn’t one of the traditional biathlon powers. That doesn’t mean that Slovenia doesn’t have a biathlon history. If you look back through the histories of biathlon you won’t see all that many instances of a powerhouse Slovenian team. Every now and then though you’ll see little moments. You’ll see a surge by Jakov Fak, the ageless wonder, and in the mid 2000’s there was the pair of women Tadeja Brankovic and Teja Gregorin.

Maybe now is the time for another surge? Looking at both men’s and women’s rosters and there are a ton of young biathletes pushing towards the World Cup. Both men and women have some top tier talent ready to lead them as well. It’s not inconceivable that in the next couple of seasons there will be a history making year as these young athletes come into their own. I’m pretty excited to watch them grow. So lets see who we are dealing with here

Women:

Quota: 4 Athletes to Start

The Speed Demon

Anamarija Lampic (28)

Well one season into the Anamarija Lampic transition from Cross Country skiing and we can already see what it could turn into. In her very first race on the World Cup she absolutely obliterated the field with her skiing, and even with shooting 7/10, managed a 5th place. In her very first start! She repeated the feat a few weeks later in Antholz, this time managing an 8/10 and again finishing 5th. While those were her only two major successes on the World Cup level, goodness gracious was it enticing. She ended up racing a total of 15 times on the IBU and World Cup levels combined. In those 15 races she had four top 10s and seven top 20’s, and seven races where she failed to break 40th. To be fair, on the IBU Cup she was top 20 in every race but one.

I’ll give you one guess who was the fastest woman on the World Cup? I don’t think you’ll need more than one guess. Yep! It was Lampic! And guess who was the fastest on the IBU Cup? Yes again! Lampic! And to be honest it wasn’t really all that close. Once again, this is why Lampic in biathlon is so tantalizing.

	Prone %	Standing %	Total %	Shooting Time
2022-2023	76.7	46.7	61.7	34.6

I’ll give you one guess who was ranked last in shooting for women on the World Cup. Nope! It actually wasn’t Lampic…she was 2nd to last with a whopping 61.7% shooting percentage. She actually did hit 76.7% prone which was fair. It was the 46.7% standing shooting that really sank her.

Look, we don’t need to say too much here. If Lampic can figure out how to shoot 80% or higher on a regular basis she’s going to be a competitor. If she can’t, then she’ll be a boom or bust athlete who still has a chance to grab a podium in any Sprint race. Let’s see what another summer of shooting did for her!

The World Cup Level

Polona Klemencic (26)

One of the big break out athletes last season was Polona Klemencic. Prior to last season she had finishes of 84th and 99th on the World Cup Overall list and a career best finish of 29th. She absolutely blew that out of the water last season. She had 12 finishes that were better than 29th. This included the first two top 10’s of her career while setting a new career best of 8th in the Sprint at the World Championships. She succeeded across the board. She had that 8th in a Sprint, a 10th in the Oestersund Individual, a 13th in the Oestersund Mass Start, and a 17th in the Hochfilzen Pursuit. It was high level racing from Kontiolahti through Oslo and personally one of my favorite stories of the season.

Last season Polona Klemencic improved across the board. Pick a metric and she did better last season than she ever had before. Skiing? Went up from a previously career best ski ranking of 69th in 2021-2022 to 22nd in 2022-2023. She went from 1.4% slower than average to 2.5% faster than average. Sounds like that racing against Lampic in practice might have paid off!

	Prone %	Standing %	Total %	Shooting Time
2017-2018	63.3	83.3	73.3	32.2
2018-2019	82.4	69.4	75.9	31.4
2019-2020	70.7	64	67.3	30.5
2020-2021	75	75	75	29.1
2021-2022	81.8	76.4	75.6	30.1
2022-2023	82.1	81.4	81.7	30.9

Her shooting also made a really good improvement as well. After hitting right around 75% for most of her career (she hit 75% in three of the last five seasons), she made a solid gain to 81.7% overall. Klemencic has been an even shooter throughout her career as well. While most shooters have a preference for prone or standing, Polona Klemencic is usually almost even between the both. Last year you can see she was within 1% between the both.

The crazy part about Klemencic’s improvement is that there is still a lot of room for growth. Her shooting, while a definite improvement, still only ranked 60th overall last year. And she could still get a little faster as well. Her average shooting time was still only 30.9 seconds so there is a few seconds per shooting she could improve on as well. So will we see a regression back to her average performance this year like Jislova from last year? Or will we see further improvement. I cannot tell you how much I’m hoping for further improvements.

Lena Repinc (20)

At just 20 years old, Lena Repinc feels like she’s almost a must start for Slovenia on the World Cup right now. To be fair most of their options are pretty young. But Repinc is also very good. Last season she had starts on every IBU level from Juniors to the World Cup.

Repinc remains in the midst of a very good Juniors career. Thus far she has raced 20 Junior Cup level races and has 10 top 10s including two wins and five podiums. Last season she had a high of 6th at Junior Worlds, her first season at Junior Worlds vs. Youth Worlds. Meanwhile, on the IBU Cup she made an additional six starts with three in Idre Fjall and three at the European Championships. In those six races she had a best of 4th and never finished worse than 25th. Finally, on the World Cup she made an additional four starts finishing between 45th to 56th.

It’s hard to get a breakdown of on how she did on any particular level last year. She spent so little time at any one place because she was constantly bouncing around. Basically when you look at her she’s a slightly better shooter than skier so far. On pretty much every level you can see that she shoots between mid to high 80’s with a pretty close split between prone and standing.

Not surprising at age 20, but the higher the level she goes the worse her skiing looks. When compared to her natural rivals in the same age grouping she’s actually pretty swift on the skis. She was a 9.6% faster than her average Junior Cup competitor at Junior Worlds and ended up at 15th in the ski rankings. So she’s not quite Selina Grotian level but she’s still pretty good. In fact she would likely have finished a little higher at Junior Worlds but she had a rare bad shooting weekend.

Looking forward I have nothing but the highest of hopes and expectations for Lena Repinc. She’s got all sorts of potential. There is the very real possibility that she could end up a top 20 World Cup level athlete. The shooting is already coming along well. She skiing is decent. She’s quite young. And almost best of all she’s already used to success. She’s succeeded against her age range and above. I don’t want to put too much pressure on her but I’m hoping for another solid season of growth. No defined expectations, just good things.

Ziva Klemencic (22)

Polona Klemencic’s younger sister, Ziva Klemencic has not quite had as much success as Polona Klemencic. Now, to be fair, Ziva is a little bit ahead of where Polona was at the same age. So while she hasn’t had the great success yet, that isn’t to say that she won’t have it soon! Last season was a year of growth. She raced eight times on the World Cup and had a season’s best finish of 45th along with two other top 50 races. She didn’t score a point but it really wasn’t a terrible season. She did qualify for a Pursuit race and that was good!

Also, she did see a little improvement last season. Her overall ski rank went up from 102nd to 68th as she 2.4% slower than average to 1.8% slower than average. Not exactly fast but moving up! Meanwhile her total shooting stayed fairly flat from 79.1% to 77.1%. But…her prone shooting went form 81.8% to 90%!

Look Ziva Klemencic has LOTS of room to grow. But she has good support and good role models to show her the way. Four seasons ago Polona Klemencic’s ski rank was 102nd and her overall shooting percentage was 67.3%. If she can do it, so can her little sister!

The Young Squad – And now we enter into a whole host of young women all with the potential for future success. Seriously, all of the women are super young. Shockingly so!

Kaja Zorc (20)

First up is one of the most successful, Kaja Zorc. Zorc is really good. Like prorbably should be in the group ahead of this one good. Just like Lena Repinc she’s currently competing on all three levels and she’s starting to have success on varying degrees.

On the Junior Cup level, not surprisingly, Zorc is having the most success. Just last season she had her first Juniors level win when she won gold at the Junior Worlds in the Individual. Overall last season she has seven top 10’s and two podiums in 12 races on the Juniors level last year. She ran five races on the IBU Cup and had all of her finishes between 31st and 44th. And she raced her 2nd ever World Cup race last year. The results don’t matter as much (mostly because she finished 82nd) but she raced!

As for her statistics, she looks pretty similar to Lena Repinc. In fact on the skis, she was ranked just 1 place ahead of her. She was 9.8% faster than average which was a nice little improvement year over year. Her shooting meanwhile was okay at 75% overall which included 86.7% prone shooting. And her average shooting time was just 33.1 seconds.

So what does all of his mean? It means that Kaja Zorc is already good. She’s got a gold medal to her name already! Now its time to keep getting better. The skiing is coming along at a very good level. Let’s see what happens when she can get her shooting into the low to mid 80’s? Especially if she picks up 3-4 seconds per shooting? There is very good possibility there!

Klara Vindisar (20)

Next up on our list of strong young Slovenian women is Klara Vindisar. Vindisar, unlike Repinc and Zorc, is right now still working primarily on the Junior Cup level. While she did get six IBU Cup level starts she also had 12 Junior Cup level starts. It was a fairly solid Juniors season. She had a few high finishes including three top 10s, one of which was 8th in the Individual at Junior Worlds. Nine of her finishes were top 20s. Overall pretty solid. Meanwhile on the IBU Cup she had one top 30 in six starts.

Her Junior Cup stats show a clear shooting over skiing strength. Last season was the strongest shooting season of her career hitting 85.6% with nearly even prone/standing splits. Her skiing was a bit further. She finished ranked 55th in skiing averaging 5.4% faster than average for the Junior Cup.

For Vindisar next season I imagine she’ll continue to have plenty of Juniors experience but hopefully we also see a little more IBU Cup racing. It might be a little bumpy but I think that she can use the experience. The shooting at that level, or a little bit better will keep her somewhat competitive. Hopefully training with Lampic, Klemencic, and Repinc pushes her forward on the skis! Should be another year of progress for Vindisar.

Tais Vozelj (24)

Tais Vozelj feels positively old compared to some of the women in this section of the roster. At 24 years old she’s young by any normal standards and there should be plenty of room for her to grow. Right now she’s probably one of the women I’m least optimistic about on this list. For most of the last several years her numbers were all around trending in the wrong direction. From 2018-2019 through last season everything was going down: her finishes, her ski speed and her shooting percentage. Last season though served as nice little rebound.

She raced just six times last year, all on the IBU Cup. This is about par for the course for her the last few seasons. Her top finish was a 46th which she actually did twice. The paired those with a 57th, 66th, 67th, and 76th. Those 46th place finishes were the best she had since 2019. Think about that. She’s 24 years old and her last finish that high was when she was 20.

This was primarily due to her improved shooting. Her accuracy was up to an actually very solid 87.1% last season That included 97.1% prone shooting. However, her skiing continues a downward decline. Last season she ended up a whopping 6% slower than average, her slowest season to date. If she has any chance of having a longer career she has to see that speed increase again. It’s been pretty much four straight seasons trending in the wrong direction. She’s gotta get that going the other direction immediately.

Nika Vindisar (23)

It’s another repeat name on the list! Nika Vindisar didn’t compete at all on the IBU level last season. Maybe somebody else can find something better, but I just don’t know if she retired or what? I’m just going to put in what I wrote last season though:

Looking at the remaining roster Nika Vindisar is the only other woman with any consistent World Cup level experience. With the lack of other experience it will likely be Vindisar filling one of the two remaining spots on the World Cup.

The last two years have been fairly inconsistent for Vindisar. Her ski ranks were not great finishing below 100 in overall rank both years. Her shooting was also poor with overall shooting percentages of just 76% and 79% both years. Although she did make marked improvement in her prone shooting from 70% to 81.5% year over year. Her shooting time though went up like a rocket. She went from averaging 31.5 seconds per trip to the range to just 26.6 seconds, good for 11th overall shooting time on the year. This appears to have been a point of emphasis for the entire Slovenian roster from top to bottom.

At just 22 years old Nika Vindisar should have lots of room to grow. When looking for indicators of what we might expect though we are left with only Juniors races as she has only 2 solo IBU Cup races to date. Over her last two years as a Junior she has mostly top 30 finishes including three top 10 finishes. This improvement was primarily related to her dramatic ski improvement so that her last years as a Junior she had almost all top 20 course times. This gives some indication that her skiing should improve the next several years. She might not be a super star but if she eventually get to the top 50-70 that might be around her ceiling. Looking at her shooting though she’s never been much better than she is now. All throughout her juniors she shot consistently in the 70% range. However her shooting was exceptionally fast.

So what should we look for? This season maybe some mild improvements in skiing can get her overall ranking into the 70-80 range. Long term I think a ceiling better than 50-60 overall might be optimistic. I would be happy to be wrong though!

Kaja Maric (20)

At 20 years old Kaja Maric has been mostly racing on the Junior Cup while starting to get her feet wet on the IBU Cup. She certainly hasn’t had the successful high finishes of some of her other young teammates but there are a few things there to like. Last season she made 10 Juniors level starts. Over those 10 starts she had a season’s best of 20th, which she did twice, and most of her finishes were in the 20’s and 30’s. She did have five IBU Cup starts but they were all over the map.

Looking more closely at her stats she seems to have plateaued just a touch in the last couple of seasons. Her skiing on the Juniors level was just a touch better than average but ranked 95th in overall skiing. Her shooting meanwhile has been stuck in the low 70’s for the last several years including 71.4% last season. She’s consistently much better prone shooting than standing shooting. For her to take the next step and stand out amongst this crowded field of young women she’ll need to either get a bit faster or a bit more accurate. Preferably she would achieve both!

Zala Repe (19)

For the first time on this list we have a woman who has only raced on the Junior Cup level. It is really remarkable how many of these young ladies have already had IBU Cup experience. But Zala Repe, in her two seasons, has only raced Junior Cup. Over those two seasons she has a career best of 25th that interestingly enough she set in her very first race. She’s been chasing that high again ever since. She’s got room to grow basically everywhere as she is a slower than average skier and she has shot only 75% and 68.8% in her two seasons of racing.

Vitorija Meznar (18)

Just as with Repe, Viktorija Meznar has raced exclusively on the Juniors level thus far in her career. In two seasons she’s raced seven times and has a career best of 34th. The good news is she rose to the occasion and that 34th occurred at Youth Worlds last season. Also as with Repe, she’s very early in her career. There is plenty of improvement that can, and I’m hopeful will, be made. Too early to make any serious predictions about her career.

Ela Sever (17)

The youngest woman on the entire list, Ela Sever has raced a total of two races on the IBU levels. She merits listing though because in her very first race, the Youth Worlds Individual she finished 6th. She followed that up with a 45th in the Sprint. In those races she was quite quick with course time ranks of 10th and 19th. Just two races, but that’s a pretty good start to the career. I’m excited to see more this season!

Men:

Quota: 4 Athletes to Start

The Vet

Jakov Fak (36)

Another season and another season start for Jakov Fak. Here’s the crazy thing, he’s 36 but in my head he’s been around for ages. He’s just three years older than Benedikt Doll but for some reason I always lump Fak in with Simon Eder. Regardless, the winningest man in Slovenian biathlon history, with 8 career wins, continues on for an 18th season of World Cup competition!

As he comes into this season next season, Fak remains, at least for now, the best Slovenian male. That’s been the case for some number of years at this point. Last year he still managed to finish 19th in the Overall standings, a nice bounce back from an injury plagued 2021-2022. He also had yet another podium, finishing 3rd in the Individual in Ruhpolding. His 27th podium it pushed him to 22nd most podium finishes of all time. This 19th place in the Overall last year also gives him three our of four years in the top 20 of the Overall after I initially predicted that he was falling off. Guess I was wrong about that one! And I’m happy to have been!

The really cool thing about Fak is that he’s seen virtually no deterioration of his performance over the last five to six seasons. His ski ranks are almost always in the high 20’s/low 30’s. Except for his injury season he’s always between 1-1.8% faster than average. His shooting is almost always in the upper 80’s for total hit rate. His shooting time is usually between 26-29 seconds but always in the same range.

	Prone %	Standing %	Total %	Shooting Time
2017-2018	92.2	91.2	91.7	31
2018-2019	83.9	88.5	86.2	28.8
2019-2020	91.9	86.3	89.1	26
2020-2021	93.8	87.6	90.7	27.2
2021-2022	83.3	84.4	83.9	29.4
2022-2023	91	88.3	89.7	27.5

As Fak has gotten older it’s really just been copy and past from year to year for his performance. Will this be the season he starts to fall apart? I mean, I don’t see why I would predict that again. I think we’ll probably see more of the same from Fak. Any time he competes like that, if he shoots well he’s going to have a chance for the random podium. I would love to see at least 1-2 more before he’s done!

The World Cup

Rok Trsan (31)

Next up is one of the absolute best names in biathlon: Rok Trsan. If he were ever to get his first podium the headlines would write themselves: “Rok Trsan rocks the course.” Alas, that great moment hasn’t (yet) happened as he has a career best of 25th which he has managed twice. Last season he scored just one top 40 in eight World Cup races and he finished 83rd in the Overall Rankings.

Trsan has a clear strength with his shooting. He’s regularly top 20 in the shooting rankings and last season was no exception as he his 88.3% of his shots including 91.7% of his standing shots. Even though he’s not as fast as he once was his shooting is still relatively quick as well. He’s certainly not slow to pull the trigger.

	Prone %	Standing %	Total %	Shooting Time
2018-2019	87.5	80	83.8	29.4
2019-2020	90.9	88.2	89.6	25.7
2020-2021	86.7	83.7	85.2	26.1
2021-2022	90.6	92.9	91.8	29.4
2022-2023	85	91.7	88.3	27.6

Unfortunately the same can’t be said for his performance on the skis. It’s just been a bit of a struggle as far as competing on the course as he struggles to break the top 100 in overall skiing. His average course time rank last season was just 74th and he averaged 3.4% slower than average.

At age 31 I’m not going to predict a major breakthrough for Trsan at this stage. He pretty much is what he is. He can shoot well enough to stay in contact but without a pretty significant improvement in skiing, of which there has been no sign, he’s going to struggle to create that amazing headline I dream of.

Alex Cisar (23)

I said this last year and I’ll repeat it again, Alex Cisar remains one of my personal favorite biathletes and it’s only partially because of his biathlon. Just watch his Instagram account for a bit and you’ll see what I’m talking about. He is a pilot and has some lofty career aspirations outside of biathlon. Meanwhile he’s also a physio therapist. I don’t know how well this phrase translates outside of English but he’s like a Renaissance man in biathlon.

The best part is he’s actually quite a good biathlete too! While competing on the Junior circuit he had five wins, 12 podiums, and 23 top 10s. This includes four solo Youth/Junior World Championshps medals. he was good enough that he was #2 in the Juniors Overall in 2019-2022 finishing just behind only Niklas Hartweg. That’s pretty good company huh? Last year for Cisar was another solid step forward as well as he finished 51st Overall on the World Cup level. And that was with missing the last two weekends of competition. He had his best racing of his season (and World Cup career) at the World Champs finshing 19th in the Individual and 17th in the Mass Start.

	Prone %	Standing %	Total %	Shooting Time
2022-2023	91.1	91.8	91.5	26.7

For Cisar last season was about getting better at everything. However the stand out for him was that he became not just good, but one of the absolute best shooters on the World Cup. As seen below he posted an awesome 91.5% shooting percentage with nearly even prone/standing splits. Last year he was behind just Sturla Holm Laegreid, Niklas Hartweg, and Simon Eder. That’s good company to keep!

It was also an improvement on the skis as well. He went from 146th on the World Cup in skiing two seasons ago up to a more than respectable 68th. That put him 1.3% slower than average. Much improved from 5% slower from two seasons ago. The best part is that he was getting faster as the season went on. His average course time rank of the first trimester was 68.6. Over his last six races it was up to 45.3. While not a speedster yet, that’s still a nice improvement.

This season will look for more of the same…except better. Well it’s hard to get that much better with the shooting, but continued improvement with the skiing! If he were to make these improvements and then to race the entire season is a top 40 in the Overall out of reach? Top 30? I guess we’ll see but I’m hopeful!

Anton Vidmar (23)

Anton Vidmar, while the same age as Alex Cisar, has taken a bit of a different path to arrive at roughly the same place. While Cisar was having a terrific Juniors career, Vidmar was doing decently well. Don’t get me wrong, it was in no way bad. He still had some good finishes, including finishing with four straight top 6 finishes for his Juniors career. It just wasn’t Cisar 2nd Overall Juniors level. As he was in his last years of Juniors eligibility he was also getting some IBU Cup experience where he had a fairly unremarkable run. He garnered just two top 30 finishes in 19 races.

Starting last season, though, he appears to be pretty well locked in on the World Cup level. Since making the jump up he’s been on a steady upward trend. Seemingly ever couple of weeks since making his World Cup debut he’s setting a new career best. And when you are 23 years old that exactly what you hope to see happening! Last season he finished 40th in the Overall. His season included five top 30’s and his very first top 20, a 15th in the final Sprint of the season in Oslo. Talk about ending on a high note!

	Prone %	Standing %	Total %	Shooting Time
2021-2022	77.1	74.3	75.7	32.1
2022-2023	83.1	86.9	85	30.5

Focusing primarily on last season’s performances we see a biathlete on the rise and with plenty of areas for continued growth. He ended the season just about the median skier on the World Cup. At prior levels he’s never been exactly a blazing fast skier so this isn’t entirely surprising. In fact at his age it’s a pretty good place to be. Meanwhile, his shooting was decent. He shot 85% overall, hitting just a bit higher standing than prone. This was right around where he was in the best Juniors season of his career. Other than that one year, before then he was normally closer to 80% or lower. So this was a really solid shooting year for him. He also had the fastest shooting year of his career at 30.5 second average per trip to the range.

As I said, Vidmar has plenty of areas from which he can continue to improve. Not hard to see this happening for him. Hopefully he and Cisar continue to grow in lockstep and can take the Slovenian up a bit in the Nation’s Cup.

Lovro Planko (22)

Lovro Planko is the third of the three young Slovenian men on the World Cup level. Right in the same cohort as Alex Cisar and Anton Vidmar he seems to, thus far at least, be following more of the Vidmar approach that the Cisar. Vidmar had a pretty good Juniors career including seven top 10’s and three podiums, his most recent coming just last season! He also raced the European Championships last year where he won bronze in the Individual, which he followed up with a 55th and 44th. Then on the World Cup, where he raced for most of the season, he had one top 30, and just missed two more. Just like Alex Cisar, his best racing of the season came at the World Championships when he finished 33rd in the Sprint and had his career best 29th in the Pursuit.

	Prone %	Standing %	Total %	Shooting Time
2021-2022	77.9	66.3	72.1	33.6
2022-2023	84.3	72.9	78.6	33.3

Examining primarily his World Cup statistics, as that is where he raced for most of last season, he was a little bit better with his skiing than his shooting. He finished near average on the course on the World Cup, good for 58th overall in skiing. His shooting ranked 84th overall, hitting 78.6%. In total though, fairly well balanced, more like Vidmar than the sharp shooting Cisar.

Looking forward as Planko looks to have the same improvements that Vidmar and Cisar have had, it looks like skiing will likely be the first thing that improves for him. His shooting has regularly been mid to low 70’s on the IBU Cup and especially on the Juniors level. However, especially the last few years when racing against Juniors, he was significantly faster than average, finishing top 15 in skiing in three of the last four seasons. I would anticipate that another year older we’ll see the skiing start to move up this season. Maybe he hits somewhere near 1% faster than average, which would put him near Jakov Fak in terms of ski speed, ranking around 30th in the skiing. That would be a great goal for the season and would result in, more than likely, a few new career bests!

The Young Squad

Matic Repnik (22)

When three of the four men above him on this list are within a single year of age it is hard to call Repnik a young guy. However, he has not quite cracked the World Cup level yet, so he’s still on this level for now.

Repnik has primarily been a Junior Cup athlete thus far in his early career, but over the last three seasons he has been getting some IBU Cup run as well. As for his Juniors career, its been decent, just not quite to the level of Vidmar or Planko. He’s ended up with five top 10’s with four of those coming just last season including his top two finishes of his Junior Career. Overall he’s been finishing mostly in the teens and 20’s for his Juniors racing. Success has been a little harder to come by at Junior Worlds though, with a best of just 12th the last two seasons at Worlds. In the end he did finish 11th in the Junior Cup last season.

The IBU Cup has proven difficult thus far as well. He did set a career best 25th last season in the Short Individual at Pokljuka. But in total he has just five top 40’s in 21 career IBU Cup races over three seasons.

Repnik’s path to victory thus far has been more along the Alex Cisar playbook. In short he’s a good shooter and we’re just waiting for the skiing to catch up. Doesn’t matter if he’s on the Juniors or the IBU Cup, he is always upper 80’s if not low 90’s. His shooting travels quite well. The skiing is just not quite there yet. He’s been getting better though which is a good sign. Sure he’s just 22 but its never a sure thing for skiing to improve.

He’s going to be primarily on the IBU Cup this season. I wouldn’t be shocked at all to once again see him shooting between 87-90%. The big thing we want to see now is if his skiing can improve. Last season he was 1.7% slower than average. A move towards just average this season would be crucial.

Pavel Trojer (18)

The Slovenian men are young overall, but Pavel Trojer truly is young. He’s just 18 years old but he already has 26 Junior Cup races and two IBU Cup races. That’s a remarkable amount of history already, and we’ve already had quite the journey!

Coming off of the 2021-2022 Youth World Championships he looked like a potential future star. In those races he finished 6th in the Individual, 7th in the Sprint, and 4th in the Pursuit. After starting out 22-23 with two top 10’s in the first weekend it looked like he was ready to build on last year. But it never really got better than that, just trending downward the rest of the year.

When we look at his stats, it doesn’t look like any one aspect was the culprit. Shooting took a significant dip year over year, down from 85.6% to 75.6%. And while overall his skiing was looking better, looking at the race-to-race data, he took a significant hit to his skiing in the middle of the season, dropping from nearly constant top 15 course time ranks to the 30-40 range. Even as he rebounded later in the season, he didn’t quite reach his previous highs. Now was the shooting down because he was pressing with the slower speed? Were the skis struggling when he wasn’t shooting as well? It’s hard to know.

So we enter 2023-2024 with some questions. Will his shooting rebound back to the mid 80s or higher where he normally was? Will his skiing get back as well? There’s a lot to see and he’s still just 18! One reason for optimism? In the midst of this downward season he spent one weekend on the IBU Cup and he grabbed a 9th place in the Pokljuka Super Sprint. I’m betting on a rebound.

Jasa Zidar (21)

While he had made a handful of IBU Cup starts, Jasa Zidar is still primarily a Junior Cup biathlete. So that’s how we’re going to analyze him at present. So far in his career he has 27 Junior levels starts. In those starts he has four top 10s with two of those (one a super sprint qualifier) coming last season. For the most part though he finishing primarily in the 20s with an average finish last season of 25th.

In the racing that we have seen he’s definitely a better shooter than a skier. His shooting average over the last four season on the Juniors level is almost always in the mid 80’s. The only season it wasn’t was 2020-2021 where his only racing at this level was Youth Worlds where he shot 94%. Skiing meanwhile leaves a little to be desired as he is just a touch above average. That sounds great but remember on the Juniors level, the better predictor of success is seeing significantly above the average skiing.

Zidar is young. There is still plenty of time for the skiing to start to improve. Hopefully we see that start to happen this season!

Tadej Repnik (19)

The younger Repnik on the team, Tadej Repnik, has just two seasons of racing on the IBU level. Not surprising, all of them are on the Junior circuit. Even in just two seasons he still has 17 races already to his credit. So far not a huge amount of success with most finishes falling in the 40s-70s. However, it is worth noting that he had three of the four best finishes of his career last season at Youth Worlds where he closed the season going 15th, 27th, and 37th. So far the only thing he does consistently is shoot fast. He’s been top 10 in shooting time per race in 9 of his last 11 races, and most of those are actually top 5. Otherwise he’s fairly inconsistent with both shooting and skiing. We’ll hope that another season of racing will bring both improvement and consistency!

Matec Bradesko (20)

Matec Bradesko at 20 years old already has received some IBU Cup experience. It’s not much to celebrate yet though as he has only broken 60th place on two occasions. He’s still young though so lets focus more on his Junior competitions against his peers. On the Junior level, including 24 races over two seasons, the vast majority of his finishes are in the 40’s and 50’s. Last season he did have a brief early season surge where he carded three top 30’s right out of the gate. That was mostly on the strength of some very strong skiing. Unfortunately that appears to have been a bit of an anomaly as he’s never come close to that level of skiing before or since. Let’s hope it was a sign of things to come and he is able to make that more the norm this season.

Rus Groselj Simic (18)

This young gentleman, for the most part, has all of his racing experience over the last season with just three races before that. It was a good season for him too as he really started to show some improvement towards the end of the year. His shooting went from 73.3% over his first five races to a really nice 83.8% over the last five races of the year. He also saw his skiing improve to from course time ranks in the 40-60s to start the season and ended in the 20-30s. Those two elements combined to help him finish strong with three straight career best finishes of 19th, 19th, and 18th at the Youth Worlds. Hopefully we see more of that young man this coming season!

Aljaz Omejc (17)

Aljaz Omejc, at just 17 years old, competed a grand total of three times last season in his first year of IBU competitions at any level. Not that I would expect him to compete more than that, he’s just 17 for goodness sakes! In his three races, all three Youth Worlds events, he finished 50th in Individual, 30th in Sprint, and 21st in Pursuit. Not much to be learned here except that he doesn’t appear to be blessed with natural amazing speed. Not that he can’t find it, he just doesn’t have it right now. No major surprise he did well in the races he shot well. It wouldn’t surprise me if he just races at Youth Worlds again this season. But I’ll be interested in whatever we get to see!