One trimester of racing is in the books and it’s been a fun and wild ride. We’ve seen five different women win a race. Many more have been in the mix for a win or a podium. And we’ve already had six different women leading the Overall including: Lisa Vittozzi, Karoline Knotten, Franziska Preuss, Lou Jeanmonnot, Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold, and Justine Braisaz-Bouchet. Basically after every race the bib has been changing hands. The result has been an immensely enjoyable first few weeks of racing.
However, as we turn the page to 2024 it is time for the leaders to separate themselves from the field. The true contenders for the coveted Overall Globe will become clear as the World Cup heads to Oberhof, Ruhpolding, and Antholz. In fact, history tells us that by the end of this segment of the season we will have a very good shot at knowing who will win the whole thing.
As laid out above, with so many women fighting for the top position it has been difficult to tell who is going to take control of this thing. One week it looks like Lou Jeanmonnot is ready to dominate while Franziska Preuss looks like a storybook comeback tale. The next week Ingrid Tandrevold looks ready to step into the enormous footprints of Marte Oslbu Roeiseland and Tiril Eckhoff. And then we have Justine Braisaz-Bouchet with the most dominant racing of all in Lenzheride. All of that and we still haven’t mentioned two of the top favorites, Julia Simon and Elvira Öberg, who, while yet to wear Yellow, are right in the mix.
So first let’s take a look at the top 10 and where we stand right now:
| Athlete | Current Score |
| Justine Braisaz-Bouchet | 427 |
| Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold | 417 (-10) |
| Elvira Öberg | 393 (-34) |
| Lisa Vittozzi | 386 (-41) |
| Franziska Preuss | 322 (-105) |
| Julia Simon | 317 (-110) |
| Karoline Knotten | 310 (-117) |
| Vanessa Voigt | 297 (-130) |
| Lena Haecki-Gross | 284 (-143) |
| Lou Jeanmonnot | 278 (-149) |
For the purposes of this exercise I cut down the “real contenders” list to the women who I believe would have the best chance of winning the Overall should everything go right for them the rest of the way. We’re going to pretend that everybody has good health the rest of the way including no injuries and most importantly no COVID as that has already affected the Overall race.
We’re really going to focus on the top six women on this list but I’m going to give a few notes on the women in slots 7-10. However, I don’t think they are “realistic” options or threats to win the Overall at this point. It would take something like COVID or injuries affecting most of the top 6 and I already said how we’re going to imagine that won’t happen.
Lou Jeanmonnot: It really pains me not to put Jeanmonnot on the list of the true contenders. She was so good in Oestersund with the back to back Sprint and Pursuit victories. However, finishes of 15th and 13th in Hochfilzen before missing the Sprint/Pursuit in Lenzerheide puts her 149 points back and in 10th position. The underlying metrics are still solid including a her consistently terrific shooting at 92% right now. And she’s ranked 14th in skiing. Those are numbers that can usually put somebody in the top 5 of the Overall and I think there is a really good chance she battles back into a fight for the top 5. I think COVID just took too much out of her score to put her in position to compete for the Overall this season. Next season though she’s coming in as a favorite.
Lena Haecki-Gross: She has been one of the most fun stories of the season. Her skiing, while always good, has been better than ever this year. She’s taken herself from being fast to being one of the fastest women in biathlon. At the end of the first trimester she’s sitting at 5th overall in the ski rankings. Just amazing stuff. She’s hitting 84.6% which is the best of her career. However, it just isn’t good enough to compete week in and week out. I fully expect to see her battling for podiums just like in Hochfilzen and I hope that she gets at least a couple more this season! But for her to compete for the Overall it would take doing that every week from here to the finish and that just isn’t likely. An amazing and fun story and I will certainly be cheering for her every week!
Vanessa Voigt: If I had written this after Oestersund I would have had Vanessa Voigt right near the top of this list. At that point she had three straight top 5’s including two 3rd place finishes and appeared to have taken a HUGE step forward. As it stands today she still has taken a very solid step up. She currently ranks 14th overall in skiing where her prior career best was 28th last season. Meanwhile she’s still hitting 93.8% which is a career best. It’s not surprising at all to see her in the top 10 of the Overall and just 25 points back from the top 5. Honestly it would not surprise me at all to see her leap back to the top 4-5 in the Overall. I don’t know if she can get all the way to the top though considering who is in front of her.
Karoline Knotten: Speaking of women who have taken a step forward, Karoline Knotten has taken a HUGE step up. A great shooter just like Voigt, Knotten is still hitting 90% putting in a tie for 12th best on the season. Her skiing though has gotten absurdly better. Last season was the previous fastest of her career and she was ranked 47th overall. Right now she sits at 15th. She’s just on a completely different level. Her prior Overall best was 18th and right now she’s 7th. I can’t wait to see where she finishes. However, her winning the Overall would be one of the most stunning Overall wins of all time.
Okay now let’s get to the top six women in the Overall. I’ve assigned them a “percent chance” of winning the Overall globe. There is no analytics at play here. These are all just numbers I came up with off the top of my head just based on their situation right now. If you were to crunch the numbers I’m sure these wouldn’t be strictly accurate but I feel they do a good job of giving a picture of where we are now and their chances of winning this thing. (And yes, they do add up to 100%!)
Franziska Preuss
| Statistic | Current Rank |
| Overall Rank/Points | 5th / 322 (-105) |
| Average Finish | 4.3 (Rank = 1) |
| Podium Percentage | 33% |
| Overall Ski Rank | 8th |
| Back from Median | -3.75% |
| Shooting Percentages | 94/96/95 (Rank = 1) |
| Shooting Speed | 27.4 seconds (Rank = 16) |
At first blush my instinct was to put Franziska Preuss in the category above. Basically celebrate that she has had a really good start to the season but acknowledge that coming back is going to be very difficult. Then I actually looked at her profile a couple of weeks ago and holy cow she’s been good. 8th overall in skiing is much better than I anticipated. I mean I knew she had been doing well with some really good course time ranks but 8th is solid. It would actually tie for the best in her career. Insane shooting accuracy at 95% overall. Shooting time is relatively quick compared to the field.
Best of all, she has the best average finish of every woman in biathlon this year. An average finish of 4.3 is right in the mix with the Overall winners of the last five seasons:
– 2022-2023: Julia Simon = 5.5
– 2021-2022: Marte Olsbu Roeiseland = 3.6
– 2020-2021: Tiril Eckhoff = 8.5
– 2019-2020: Dorothea Wierer = 8.5
– 2018-2019: Dorothea Wierer = 8.8
Not only is Franziska Preuss’ average finish in the mix with recent Overall Globe winners, she’s actually 2nd best behind only the resplendent Roeiseland in 21-22. Really the only reason she isn’t right at the top here is because she missed the races in Hochfilzen with COVID. After two missed races though, she bounced right back with 7th, 4th, and 7th in Lenzerheide and barely looked like she had missed a beat. We can hope that she got even stronger over the holiday break.
Why do we have reason for concern with her and why is she all the way down here? Well for one, she did miss those races and is 105 points behind. That’s not nothing. Also, can we really expect her to shoot 95% the rest of the season? The best full year of her career she hit at more than respectable 90.7%. 95% is up there with the best shooters of all time though and that will come with a negative regression at some point I would imagine. Also, and I hate to say it, she’s Franziska Preuss and she seems to have angered the gods of biathlon at some point in her life. Every time she seems to get momentum she gets hit with something, like getting COVID earlier this season. I just have to have optimism that she can keep this up as long as possible!
Chance of winning the Overall Globe: 8%
Julia Simon
| Statistic | Current Rank |
| Overall Rank/Points | 6th / 317 (-110) |
| Average Finish | 9.8 (Rank = 7) |
| Podium Percentage | 12.5% |
| Overall Ski Rank | 7th |
| Back from Median | -3.87% |
| Shooting Percentages | 90.7/84.6/87.7 (Rank = 40) |
| Shooting Speed | 25.4 seconds (Rank = 3) |
Take a moment and just try to think, what is your impression of Julia Simon so far this season. Before looking at any stats I think I would have said it was a “slight” disappointment. With emphasis on slight. She definitely looked well off of her game in Oestersund starting off with finishes of 31st and 16th. She gave an interview afterward where she said that she was just completely drained. It looked like maybe the strain of the off the course issues were going to pull her down this season.
Since then though, in the last six races of the 1st trimester, she has never finished below 7th including her first podium of the year in the Lenzerheide Pursuit. Over that stretch she has run fairly steadily and ranks 7th in skiing right now. That’s a little step back from last season but still would be faster than any other season in her career. She started the season shooting 80% in the first two races. Since then she’s hit 90% over the last six races which is even better than her 88.3% from last year. Meanwhile there was no slow down in her shooting speeds as she is still blazing away as one of the fastest shooters on the World Cup
There really is an inflection point once she ran that first Pursuit in the Oestersund. Since that point she’s looked like a true contender. You can win an Overall Globe if you’re a top 7 skier plus a 90% shooter. If you read the Oberhof preview you can see that Julia Simon has a TON of success at our first stop of the 2nd trimester. If she can use that as a springboard with at least 1-2 podiums then she’s right in the mix. Regardless we can expect that Julia Simon will keep on fighting. That’s just who she is.
Chance of winning the Overall Globe: 12%
Lisa Vittozzi
| Statistic | Current Rank |
| Overall Rank/Points | 4th / 386 (-41) |
| Average Finish | 6.1 (Rank = 3) |
| Podium Percentage | 25% |
| Overall Ski Rank | 10th |
| Back from Median | -3.56% |
| Shooting Percentages | 92.3/95.4/93.9 (Rank = 4) |
| Shooting Speed | 28.9 seconds (Rank = 35) |
When I went through and did my initial ranking of the top 6 I actually forgot Lisa Vittozzi. I think that about sums up her year. She’s been really really good. Yet somehow she’s been lost in the conversation here. That says so much about how far she’s come back. Last season it was just truly enjoyable seeing Vittozzi with good shooting and good racing. It had been a pretty sharp downward turn for her after she finished 2nd in 2019 and bottomed out with a 31st in 21-22 when she couldn’t hit a prone shot to save herself. Now though, she finishes 5th and nobody blinks an eye.
As you would expect from somebody in the top 5 of the Overall race there are not really any weaknesses in her performance so far. She’s currently 10th overall in skiing which is her best career skiing season besides last year. That includes her 2nd place Overall finish from 2018-2019. She shooting at a profoundly great level hitting 93.9%, good enough for 4th overall, including 92.3% prone. I still can’t stress to you how amazing it is to see her hitting 92.3% prone. Her average shooting time ranks 35th which isn’t the best but it’s not bad at all.
What would keep her from getting there? A slight regression or skiing or shooting back towards her career averages in such a tightly bunched top group would see her slide a few places. Also just having one of the other women get really hot like Justine Braisaz-Bouchet did in Lenzerheide.
Can Lisa Vittozzi get to the top of the mountain this season? Absolutely. The path to victory in the Overall is usually something along the lines of top 7ish skiing and shooting around 88% or better. Lisa Vittozzi is right there. She’s just 41 points back as we start the 2nd block of racing. Nobody should be surprised to see her sitting on top of the rankings after we exit Antholz.
Chance of winning the Overall Globe: 18%
Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold
| Statistic | Current Rank |
| Overall Rank/Points | 2nd / 417 (-10) |
| Average Finish | 5.5 (Rank = 2) |
| Podium Percentage | 37.5% |
| Overall Ski Rank | 4th |
| Back from Median | -5.56% |
| Shooting Percentages | 93.6/81.5/87.7 (Rank = 41) |
| Shooting Speed | 30.0 seconds (Rank = 55) |
I don’t want to take too much time on Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold as I probably have talked more about her this season than any of the other top contenders. It’s probably because I’m quite impressed by how she has put in the work to take the last, and in my opinion the most difficult step, to go from really good to fighting for the Overall Globe. That’s exactly what she did this season though.
While she was ranked 5th in skiing last year and is “only” up to 4th this year that doesn’t show how much faster she really is. Last season she was on average 3.8% faster than the median athlete. This year she’s 5.56% faster. Does waxing play a role in that? Possibly. But she’s undeniably faster. While not quite Justine Braisaz-Bouchet or Elvira Öberg, she can hold her own.
Meanwhile her shooting is right around where it has been the last three seasons which is both good and bad. It’s good because her overall shooting of around 87% is solid. However, the bad part is we just aren’t seeing the improved standing shooting we would want to see. It’s really become a hinderance. That and a middle of the road shooting time average of 30 seconds are the only things holding her back from being the best of the best. I guess everybody has to have a weakness right?
Make no mistake, Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold is one of the favorites for the Overall Globe this season. We’ve seen time and again that one of the best things that you can do is not only rack up podiums, which she had three of in eight races, but to limit bad races. She has just one finish outside the top seven this season. You can win a Globe doing that. However, to close the door she probably needs to find a way to get that standing shooting at least to 83%. That’s still questionable but it might be all she needs with that speed and that prone shooting talent.
Chance of winning the Overall Globe: 18%
Justine Braisaz-Bouchet
| Statistic | Current Rank |
| Overall Rank/Points | 1st / 427 |
| Average Finish | 9.3 (Rank = 4) |
| Podium Percentage | 50% |
| Overall Ski Rank | 3rd |
| Back from Median | (-6.03%) |
| Shooting Percentages | 84.6/84.6/84.6 (Rank = 64) |
| Shooting Speed | 31.5 seconds (Rank = 76) |
And we arrive at the woman who will be wearing the Yellow bib when the racing starts up again in Oberhof this week. Justine Braisaz-Bouchet is one of the absolutely stars of the season. She comes back from maternity leave and we have no idea what to expect. She showed well over the summer and fall but would she really pick up where she left off? I mean she won a gold medal just before she left the sport to become a mom.
As it turns out the answer is yes. It hasn’t been a perfect season. In her first three races she finished 21, 24, and 15 and she looked a bit out of sorts on the range. The last five races have been basically perfect as she found the podium in the Hochfilzen Sprint finishing 3rd, 8th in the Pursuit, and sweeping the entire weekend in Lenzerheide. So yes would be the answer to that question. Yes she can look just as good if not better than ever.
She has true “mom strength” out there skiing as fast as anybody in biathlon being ranked behind only Anamarija Lampic and Elvira Öberg. She is also shooting better than she ever has in her career. Granted, it’s only 84.6%, but it is still better. And if you look just at the last five races it’s 88.75%. Shooting 88.75% and running 3rd fastest definitely puts you in position to win the Overall Globe. And look, there she is wearing yellow.
That’s the thing about a season long competition though, you can’t just pick and choose, it has to be the entire season. That’s the amazing thing about what Julia Simon did last season, is she went from being a boom or bust athlete with a high ceiling and low floor to being consistent. She took out the bust entirely and found a way to rescue her bad races and limit the damage. For Justine Braisaz-Bouchet to stay in yellow she’s going to need to do that. There can be no more Oestersunds. No more 75% or 60% days. It has to be 80% and up from here on out.
Just look at that face about though. It’s completely intangible and doesn’t mean a thing, but doesn’t that look like a content woman? A woman at peace with the world and her competition? It sure does to me. I think that’s somebody who can win the whole thing.
Chance of winning the Overall Globe: 20%
Elvira Öberg
| Statistic | Current Rank |
| Overall Rank/Points | 3rd / 393 (-34) |
| Average Finish | 9.4 (Rank = 5) |
| Podium Percentage | 37.5% |
| Overall Ski Rank | 2nd |
| Back from Median | -6.35% |
| Shooting Percentages | 83.1/83.1/83.1 (Rank = 74) |
| Shooting Speed | 29.4 seconds (Rank = 43) |
Is Elvira Öbergthe sleeping giant here? I feel like she’s mostly gone under the radar in favor of discussions about Justine Braisaz-Bouchet, Ingrid Tandrevold, Julia Simon, and Franziska Preuss. Even Lou Jeanmonnot feels like she’s had more attention. Yet here is Elvira in 3rd in the Overall just 34 points back. She basically closes that gap if she wins the Sprint in Oberhof and Justine Braisaz-Bouchet gets 3rd. She couldn’t be any more in this race unless she was wearing Yellow.
The really spectacular thing about Elvira is that she is so close to being in Yellow and yet it feels like we haven’t seen the full Elvira race yet. She does have a win and two more podiums, but she still hasn’t put it all together quite yet. Right now she has been skiing quite well as we would expect. She’s 2nd overall in skiing behind only Anamarija Lampic. Expecting somebody to regularly be faster than Lampic is just unreasonable. When you look at the numbers though this is actually Elvira’s fastest and best skiing year yet.
What continue to hold her back is what it always has been, the shooting. She’s hitting just 83.1% with perfectly even splits. She’s averaging a middle of the road 29.4 seconds per shooting. That’s just not good enough to win the Overall. You can be really fast and not the best shooter, but historically you still need to get to around 85-86% at worst to win the Overall Globe.
Why am I so optimistic about her? Well because we know the shooting is there. She hit 88.6% last season. She was even better in 2021-2022 when she shot 85.3%. It’s in there, she just needs to uncover it…and it looks like she has. She shot 74% in Oestersund. That’s just ouch. Since then she’s shooting at a very good 88.75%. Ever since she got the rifle sorted out in Hochfilzen she’s finished: 2, 1, 5, 5, 2 for an average finish of 3rd.
Elvira is my favorite to win the Overall this season. Over the last two weeks she’s performing at an absolutely outrageous level and it seems reproducible. There is nothing she is doing now that she hasn’t done before. It’s just that she’s doing it all at the same time. If she keeps this level of competition up she will not only be in Yellow as we head to the World Championships, she’ll have a healthy lead.
Chance of winning the Overall Globe: 24%
So what’s the grand takeaway then? This is a very tight race and there are good arguments for any of the current top six to win the Overall Globe at the end of the season. I wouldn’t be shocked to see any of them hoisting the big globe at the end of the season. They all have showed that this season they can compete on the level high enough to win it all!
One thought on “Women’s Overall Breakdown”