We are now two trimesters through the 2023-2024 World Cup season and we are currently in the middle of one of the most exciting Women’s Overall races of the last few seasons. Almost every race it feels like a new woman is surging to the front of the pack. If you asked me after every weekend I would probably have a different woman who I think is the one catching fire and moving towards the Overall Globe.
In the first trimester: week 1 it was Lou Jeanmonnot. Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold looked like the woman to beat in Hochfilzen. Then Justine Braisaz-Bouchet went into Wonder Woman mode and swept the week in Lenzerheide to take Yellow into the holiday break.
Things haven’t changed at all in trimester #2. In Oberhof Braisaz-Bouchet did nothing to shake our confidence in her. Ruhpolding, though, belonged to Tandrevold again as she fought her way into the Yellow bib. Finally in Antholz Julia Simon announced her intention to compete with her trademarked aggressive racing.
This has meant that every race has felt like a double race. There is the obvious the race playing out in front of us almost every single one of which has been immensely enjoyable. Having so many women in the race for the Overall also means that there are a bunch of athletes having awesome seasons and they are showing it race in and race out. Also though, in the back of your mind you have to keep track of where the Overall leaders are. With margins that have been so slim it doesn’t take much for one of these women to make a move up the standings.
So before we examine where we are now, lets look back to the standings as they were at the end of the first trimester so we can compare how things changed.
| 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) |
And now where things stand after the conclusion of racing in Antholz.
| Athlete (Change since 1st Trimester) | Current Score |
| Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold (⬆1) | 719 |
| Justine Braisaz-Bouchet (⬇1) | 689 (-30) |
| Lisa Vittozzi (⬆1) | 671 (-48) |
| Julia Simon (⬆2) | 662 (-57) |
| Elvia Öberg (⬇1) | 602 (-117) |
| Lou Jeanmonnot (⬆4) | 590 (-129) |
| Lena Haecki-Gross (⬆2) | 559 (-160) |
| Franziska Preuss (⬇3) | 539 (-180) |
| Karoline Knotten (⬇2) | 522 (-197) |
| Vanessa Voigt (⬇2) | 475 (-244) |
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 but they are having really good years so we should celebrate them a little!
Vanessa Voigt: When Voigt first came racing into our World Cup biathlon lives two seasons ago she was a really popular pick to immediately vault into the top 10 for the Overall if not competing for the Overall globe itself. Things haven’t quite worked out that way over the last two seasons. That’s not to say she’s been bad. She hasn’t! She was 12th Overall last season and if she finishes in 10th this year it will be another career best Overall finish! The thing with Voigt is that several times per year she flashes the potential that we’ve all been to intrigued by. This week in Antholz was another of those weeks as she finished 4th in the Short Individual and the Mass Start surrounding a Single Mixed Relay win with Justus Strelow. She currently shooting a ridiculous 94.8% which is the best of her career. She’s even skiing the best year of her career at -2.4% vs. median biathlete. However, after starting out consistently top 20 in skiing in the start of the year, she dipped back to where she was finishing last season. Antholz showed her once again in the top 20 though. She remains on the slower end of the field in shooting speeds averaging just 30.5 seconds per shooting. That’s still a career best by 2 seconds but not quite where she needs to be. For her to be in the mix for the Overall next season and beyond it’s about finding speed. Both in the skis and the shooting range.
Karoline Knotten: While there is some vague sense of disappointment around Vanessa Voigt, there is none at all around Karoline Knotten! This is one of the breakthrough performances of the season! She’s basically better at everything. The huge improvement is ski speed. She moved from what was a career best of 0.3% slower than median last season up to 2.8% faster than median this season. She’s gone from 47th to 15th in overall skiing which is amazing improvement. She averaging a course time rank of 16th this year. I can’t tell you how impressed I am. Meanwhile she hasn’t lost her shooting. After a career best year of 92% last year she is still at 90.9% this season. Combine that with getting her average shooting down to a swift 25.4 seconds per shooting, good for 5th fastest on the World Cup and you’re in position for some great finishes. Thus far she has: 10 top 10’s, 3 top 5’s and her first career podium. Prior to this year she had seven career top 10’s ever. With finishes of 6th and 5th in Antholz she’s showing no signs of slowing down and is in good position to grab the first Overall top 10 of her career!
Franziska Preuss: Without missing races due to COVID Preuss wouldn’t be on this list, she would be on the list of true contenders. It’s just another case of the tragic career (so far) of Franziska Preuss. It feels like every time she starts to get momentum it gets robbed from her due to injury or illness. This season though, we have to look at as a success. So far she is the only woman to have finished in the top 10 of every single race. Don’t believe me? Go look. Every race she has competed in she has finished in the top 10. It’s frankly a run of consistency you just don’t see. Her average finish is still 5.3 a full 1.1 places ahead of Vittozzi. This is a dangerous game to play but, since she missed two races if you were to add a 5th place and a 6th place finish (45 points and 40 points) to her total she would be at 624 points, within 100 points of Tandrevold, and definitively in the Overall race. That’s including her sitting out the Mass Start in Antholz as well. It’s been a terrific year skiing 4.3% faster than average, easily the best of her career, while shooting 92.8% overall, also the best of her career. I sincerely hope she’s able to get a medal or two at the World Championships. She deserves it!
Lena Haecki-Gross: This is one I really debated putting in the race for the Overall. She’s running really well and after her first career win and another podium she just had the greatest weekend of her career. Even after that amazing performance she sits a full 160 points off of the Overall lead. She’s having a really good season right now and it should be celebrated! It feels like she has been around forever, mostly because she’s been on the World Cup sine she was 18. After 10 seasons she’s hitting the peak years of her career and it’s coming along great. Her skiing, always a strength, is up to new levels as she ranks 6th in skiing right now. She’s shooting the best of her career by far hitting 87% total shooting. However, deep down I just don’t know that I can really put her in the race. It took the greatest weekend of her career just to get to that point. She would need to keep this form and replicate that several more times. If she does it I will absolutely be celebrating! As it is I think she’s having an absolutely phenomenal season. Keep up this pace and add a medal or two at World Championships and you can argue this is the best single season in Swiss women’s biathlon history!
Lou Jeanmonnot
| Statistic | Current Rank |
| Overall Rank/Points | 6th / 590 (-129) |
| 2nd Trimester Points (rank) | 312 (2nd) |
| Average Finish | 7.9 (Rank = 4) |
| 2nd Trimester Average Finish | 4.5 (Rank = 1) |
| Podium Percentage | 33% |
| Overall Ski Rank | 11th |
| Back from Median | -3.22% |
| Shooting Percentages | Prone 95/Standing 93/Total 94 (Rank = 3) |
| Shooting Speed | 29.7 seconds (Rank = 42) |
Lou Jeanmonnot is right on the very edge of being in contention. She’s actually so far back that it’s pretty easy to discuss her chances.
Why Might She Win? Well, I included her here because she had the 2nd best 2nd trimester of any woman in biathlon by total points and the best average finish. She’s trending in a really awesome direction with literally every finish in that period being better than the one before it and every course time ranking being better than the one prior. She ended up shooting a ridiculous 96% for the six races from Oberhof through Antholz and that included four of the five fastest shooting days of her entire season. By every measure she was awesome in Germany and Italy and looks like what she is, one of the best women in biathlon. When you look at her stats with 11th best ski rank and shooting 94% overall that’s the makeup of a woman who should be one of the top contenders for the Overall.
Why Won’t She Win? It’s simply because she’s starting off 129 points back, which isn’t itself an impossible margin to overcome, but she also has five women between her and the Yellow bib. There is absolutely no doubt at all that she can get the finishes that she needs to. Her average finish over the 2nd trimester was the 2nd best of everybody except Julia Simon. And her podium percentage is behind only Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold and Justine Braisaz-Bouchet. But in her position (primarily because she missed two races due to COVID) she also needs to rely on the other women at the top having bad days. None of the women ahead of her are seemingly invincible like Julia Simon last season, Marte Olsbu Roeiseland two years ago, or Tiril Eckhof before her, which is why Jeanmonnot still has a chance. However, it is asking A LOT for them all to slip up enough for her to finish with the Overall Globe.
I want to be clear, while I don’t think she is going to be able to win it this season, it won’t surprise me one bit if Lou Jeanmonnot wins an Overall title in the next few years.
Elvira Öberg
Elvira Öberg (SWE) – IBU World Cup Biathlon, pursuit women, Hochfilzen (AUT). http://www.biathlonworld.com © Jasmin Walter/IBU. Handout picture by the International Biathlon Union. For editorial use only. Resale or distribution is prohibited.
| Statistic | Current Rank |
| Overall Rank/Points | 5th / 602 (-117) |
| 2nd Trimester Points (Rank) | 209 (9th) |
| Average Finish | 9.6 (Rank = 7) |
| 2nd Trimester Average Finish | 9.8 (8) |
| Podium Percentage | 21% |
| Overall Ski Rank | 3rd |
| Back from Median | -5.5% |
| Shooting Percentages | 81.7/85.2/83.5 (Rank = 51) |
| Shooting Speed | 28.9 seconds (Rank = 33) |
When I went through this exercise at the end of the 1st trimester I was extremely optimistic about Elvira Öberg’s chances at making a run for the Overall. I was so optimistic that I actually had her listed as my favorite by a very slim margin. My hope was that in the 1st trimester we were only seeing a bit of Elvira Öberg’s immense potential. Unfortunately she had probably the most disappointing 2nd trimester of any one the women’s side. While she still sits in 5th Overall just 117 points back she ranked 9th in points scored in the 2nd trimester and 8th in average finish per race.
Why Won’t She Win? She had by far her worst skiing of the season during the recently completed 2nd trimester. After finishing top 5 in course time rank every race for the first 11 races of the season she went 8th, 21st, and 14th in ski time over the last three races. Meanwhile she hit just 84% during the races in Oberhof, Ruhpolding, and Antholz. All of that lead to just two top 5’s and no podium finishes in that stretch. If you’re goal is the Overall Globe that’s absolutely not the way to go. Also as we mentioned with Lou Jeanmonnot, she has to get past four very good biathletes to get to the top of the rankings and that is going to require their assistance.
Why Might She Win? Just as mentioned with Lou Jeanmonnot, the women leading this are not goliaths. There is no super woman standing between her and the Overall title. Elvira Öberg performing at her top level is good enough to get the results to take her to the top of the standings. She’s still skiing 3rd fastest even with those poor races and she has nearly a month to get ready for the 3rd trimester. If she can find her form again, and get her shooting a little closer to where it was last season (88.6%) she’s one of the best.
Long story short Elvira Öberg has the ability to get the results, but she is trending in the wrong direction and she needs help to get there.
Julia Simon
| Statistic | Current Rank |
| Overall Rank/Points | 4th / 662 (-57) |
| 2nd Trimester Points (Rank) | 345 (1st) |
| Average Finish | 8.2 (Rank = 5) |
| 2nd Trimester Average Finish | 6.2 (1) |
| Podium Percentage | 28.6% |
| Overall Ski Rank | 5th |
| Back from Median | -4.34% |
| Shooting Percentages | 89.6/84.4/86.9 (Rank = 31) |
| Shooting Speed | 24.4 seconds (Rank = 2) |
Now we get to the real contenders and Julia Simon, even in 4th, may be the most dangerous one of all. Simon publicly said that she’s focused on the World Championships and not the Overall Globe. However, in aiming for a World Champs peak the defending champion turned in the best 2nd trimester on the women’s World Cup and thrust herself squarely into the Overall race.
In the 2nd trimester Julia Simon used two victories Oberhof and Antholz and a 2nd place finish to collect the big points and moved herself from 6th to 4th and within 60 points of the Overall race. In particular, it was while the top three women in the Overall had a less than stellar week in Antholz that Simon pounced with one of her wins and her 2nd place finish to dramatically close the gap. It’s important to note, though, that she wasn’t invincible as she still had two 10th place finishes and a 13th.
Why Might She Win? Simon’s skiing has improved significantly from 1st trimester to 2nd trimester. She went from 3.87% faster than median to 4.34% faster for the season. Her average course time rank went in trimester 1 was 10.2 and in trimester 2 it was improved to 5.2 which is a relatively huge jump. Compared to her Globe winning season last year her average course time rank of 5.2 in trimester 2 was actually a tiny improvement. Also, her year to date skiing of 4.34% faster than average is right on par with last year. Simon also continues to shoot at an unbelievably fast pace. She’s averaging 24.4 seconds per shooting and that was especially on display in her win in the Antholz Mass Start when she averaged 17.5 seconds per standing shooting. In that race she was a wild 10.1 seconds faster than Lena Haecki-Gross in range time.
Why Won’t She Win? Her shooting isn’t quite as tight as it was last season. Her overall shooting is 86.9%, down 1.4% from last season. Meanwhile her shooting has actually trended slightly downward as this season progresses as she hit just 86% in trimester 2. Above we noted that while she was the 2nd highest point earner in January but she still had some relatively poor showings as well. When you look at her shooting you can easily pick out the days she competed and when she didn’t. While it’s not quite as extreme as it used to be for Simon, and there are more highs than lows these days, her shooting performance more closely resembles her “boom or bust” from prior to her Overall Globe year. In half of the races she shot 80% or less. The days she shot 90% or greater though, she went 🥇🥈🥇.
Being just 57 points back Julia Simon really does control her own destiny. She only needs to gain 7.2 points per race to overtake the lead. If you take her at her word she is aiming for a peak in Nove Mesto. However, she’s the definition of competitor and she doesn’t know how to go any less than 100%. If she’s lining up in a race she running to win. No way on Earth is she going to let the Overall title go without a fight. Bet against Julia Simon at your own risk. Even starting from this far back she might be the favorite.
Lisa Vittozzi
| Statistic | Current Rank |
| Overall Rank/Points | 3rd / 671 (-48) |
| 2nd Trimester Points (Rank) | 285 (4th) |
| Average Finish | 6.4 (Rank = 2) |
| 2nd Trimester Average Finish | 6.8 (4) |
| Podium Percentage | 28.6% |
| Overall Ski Rank | 9th |
| Back from Median | -3.42% |
| Shooting Percentages | 92.3/93.9/93.1 (Rank = 5) |
| Shooting Speed | 28.0 seconds (Rank = 23) |
Lisa Vittozzi is one of the most quiet 3rd Overall competitors we’ve seen in awhile. She hasn’t yet had a weekend where she made us all turn our heads and go “Oh dang here comes Vittozzi!” There is a certain smoothness to her performance that isn’t always flashy like Justine Braisaz-Bouchet, fiesty like Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold, or firey like Julia Simon. It certainly feels like she is 4th or 5th in the conversation and yet here she is squarely in the mix. She’s in 3rd Overall just 48 points back. One big weekend and she could be wearing Yellow.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing that she hasn’t had that one big weekend? Is it a good thing because it means that it is still to come while everybody else has had theirs? Or is it a bad things because she doesn’t have that higher gear that will allow her to get there? A little bit of a quirk, she’s actually been the 4th in points per trimester in both the 1st and 2nd trimester which a bit reflects that she hasn’t had an explosive weekend. She is just consistently sweeping up points.
Why Might She Win? Lisa Vittozzi has had a remarkably even performance for basically the entire season. She has the 2nd best average finish on the year with just two finishes outside the top 10. With that said it makes sense then that her stats really check all of the boxes. Her total shooting percentage of 93.1% ranks 5th overall and is clearly better than all of the other top contenders outside of Jeanmonnot. Meanwhile her overall skiing of 9th is solid. No, it’s not as amazing as some recent Overall champs, but it’s good enough to win an Overall title. Look, if I told you that someone was shooting 93.1% and was 9th fastest in the World Cup and asked if they could win the Overall Globe you would unequivocally say yes. Here’s where the last five champions rank in those categories.
- 22-23 Julia Simon: Ski Rank = 3rd Shooting Percentage = 88.3%
- 21-22 Marte Olsbu Roeiseland: Ski Rank = 4th + Shooting Percentage = 90.8%
- 20-21 Tiril Eckhoff: Ski Rank = 1st + Shooting Percentage = 84.5%
- 19-20 Dorothea Wierer: Ski Rank = 7th + Shooting Percentage = 83.8%
- 18-19 Dorothea Wierer: Ski Rank = 8th + Shooting Percentage = 84.9%
Why Won’t She Win? Well take a look above Her skiing is close but not quite up to the level of those past champions. Critically it is also the slowest of all but Lou Jeanmonnot, and in some cases fairly dramatically. More worrisome as skiing goes, her course time ranks are trending in a negative direction. Four of her top five course time ranks occurred in the first six races of the season. After finishing top 8 in skiing in half of the races of the 1st trimester she has failed to reach that level even once in the 2nd trimester.
Lacking that explosive speed that most of her top competitors has means that she has to shoot near perfectly to win. The good news is that Lisa Vittozzi’s near miraculous return to near the top of the shooting rankings means that she is quite capable of doing that nearly any time out. And in 8 of the 14 races so far she has either 0 or 1 miss giving her opportunities for wins and podiums. With over half of the remaining races in the Overall race being made up of Individual, Pursuit, or Mass Start she has plenty of opportunities to use that exceptional shooting to her advantage. She’s going to need to. She hasn’t yet had that huge weekend that made us talk about Lisa Vittozzi yet, but any one of the last three could be that weekend. A Lisa Vittozzi Overall win would be quite popular to say the least.
Justine Braisaz-Bouchet
| Statistic | Current Rank |
| Overall Rank/Points | 2nd / 689 (-30) |
| 2nd Trimester Points (Rank) | 262 (6th) |
| Average Finish | 10.5 (Rank = 9) |
| 2nd Trimester Average Finish | 12.2 (9) |
| Podium Percentage | 42.9% |
| Overall Ski Rank | 2nd |
| Back from Median | -5.91% |
| Shooting Percentages | 82.6/81.7/82.2 (Rank = 56) |
| Shooting Speed | 30.0 seconds (Rank = 47) |
Justine Braisaz-Bouchet was the shining light at the end of the first trimester. She burned so bright in Lenzerheide that for a brief time she obscured pretty much everybody else. Unfortunately for her, and fortunately for everybody else, that light dimmed considerably during the 2nd trimester. That’s not to say she was bad. She’s still in 2nd in the Overall and just 30 points out of the Yellow bib.
When Braisaz-Bouchet started out Oberhof with her come from behind victory in the Sprint there was a brief moment where it felt like one of those Johannes Thingnes Boe seasons where he was just so much faster than everybody else that the end result was not even close. She overcame 2 penalty loops against Franziska Preuss, one of the top women in the World Cup this season, and still won the day. It looked like what had started as a very exciting Overall race might become the Justine Braisaz-Bouchet domination campaign.
That day proved to be the perfect encapsulation of both why Braisaz-Bouchet can win the Overall as well as why she may not.
Why Might She Win? If Justine Braisaz-Bouchet wins the Overall the primary reason why will be because she’s really freaking fast. She’s fast in a way that allows her to win every possible type of race. She can use her speed to overcome a bad day on the range like she did in the Oberhof Sprint. She can use her speed to just easily pull away from the field like she did in the Lenzerheide Sprint. And she can use her speed to take all of the drama out of a race like she did in the Lenzerheide Mass Start. She can even use her speed to salvage a race as she did in the Ruhpolding Pursuit where she managed a 7th place, and crucial points, even though she had four misses. Her speed is a weapon that no other woman in the World Cup has outside of Lampic, and she’s not yet a threat in the Overall at this stage of her career. It just gives her so much leeway on the range that when she hits she can win with significant margin for error and if she doesn’t hit she can still make up huge amounts of ground (and points).
Why Won’t She Win? Since her absolutely transcendent period of racing in Lenzerheide and Oberhof she has started to lose her way with the rifle a little bit. For Justine Braisaz-Bouchet’s entire career the saying has always been “if she can just get a little better with the shooting she can be unbeatable.” And that’s absolutely still the case. The problem is that she’s been so far off recently that even her amazing speed hasn’t been enough to save her. Here’s a breakdown of her season by her shooting numbers:
- In the 1st trimester as a whole she shot 84.6%.
- During the Lenzerheide and Oberhof peak she hit a tremendous 90%.
- In the whole 2nd trimester as a whole it was down to 79%.
- During Ruhpolding and Antholz dip it was just 77%.
That’s just nowhere near enough to be in contention for the Overall no matter how fast you are. There does appear to be a little bit of bad luck involved too as she has said that she was sick in Antholz which may have contribute to that unsightly 42nd place finish.
Nobody else on either the men’s or women’s World Cup has looked as unstoppable as Justine Braisaz-Bouchet did during her incandescent stretch earlier this season. The question now becomes was that a once in a career stretch of brilliance or something that she can reach back and recreate? It appears that the peak of Justine Brasiaz-Bouchet’s performance is higher than that of the other women. It’s all a matter of finding that again.
Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold
| Statistic | Current Rank |
| Overall Rank/Points | 1st / 719 |
| 2nd Trimester Points (Rank) | 302 (3rd) |
| Average Finish | 6.9 (Rank = 3) |
| 2nd Trimester Average Finish | 8.7 (5) |
| Podium Percentage | 42.8% |
| Overall Ski Rank | 4th |
| Back from Median | -5.29% |
| Shooting Percentages | 96.5/78.3/87.4 (Rank = 29) |
| Shooting Speed | 29.8 seconds (Rank = 44) |
Last, but certainly not least, we have Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold, the woman who will be sporting Yellow when World Cup racing returns in Oslo. Just taking a quick glance at the numbers above and it’s really not hard to see why she is in this enviable position. A steady force throughout the season, she is tied with Justine Braisaz-Bouchet for the best podium rate of the season. She was in 2nd at the end of the 1st trimester just 10 points back of Justine Braisaz-Bouchet. She followed that up by accumulating 3rd most points in the 2nd trimester, just 35 points shy of Julia Simon’s total. All put together it landed her on top of the pack.
It feels like pretty much every week, except for Antholz which she traditionally does not perform well at, she has done something very good. She’s had a couple of great weekends like Hochfilzen and Ruhpolding. Most of all though, she’s just been steady. She’s up to eight top 5’s in 14 races this season. Mostly this is due to her skiing, always good, now placing her as regularly one of the top 3 on the course (7 of 14 races). Meanwhile her shooting, while not phenomenal, is near the best of her career.
Why Might She Win? Tandrevold is currently skiing at a level that she’s never quite been able to reach before. Overall in the ski rankings she is coming in right behind Elvira Öberg. And by the numbers she really isn’t that far off of Elvira so far. As noted above she’s been top 3 on the course in half of the races this season. It’s impossible to express how much of an asset this has been for her. She’s been able to make up serious ground to salvage some days such as in her 12th place in the Short Invidual in Antholz with 3 misses that may have helped her hold Yellow through Worlds. On other days she’s used it to be unbeatable like she was in the Ruhpolding Sprint. It’s a tool she’s never had in her bag before and she’s making great use of it.
We would be remiss if we didn’t also mention that her prone shooting right now is at 96.5%. That’s better than any other woman on this list including renown sharp shooter Lou Jeanmonnot. We’ll touch on her standing shooting in a minute but when you only miss four prone shots for the first 2 trimesters that is a HUGE boost to your efforts. Basically every race you’re in the mix at least for for the first half. It’s why she is leading the field in top 5’s this season.
Why Won’t She Win? Okay let’s talk about the elephant in the room. That standing shooting is really scary. She’s hitting just 78.3% this season and in the 2nd trimester it was just 74%. That’s ugly. It has to get into her head too. In an Overall race that we know is going to be so terribly close, there are inevitably going to be several races down the stretch where just one or two standing shots makes the difference between a critical podium or even a win and being outside the top 5. It’s been one of the knocks on Tandrevold for a couple of seasons. So far this year her performance in skiing and prone shooting has superseded it but might it still come back to bite her?
Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold has been as consistently good as anybody in biathlon this season. She has more top 5’s than anybody else and she has “survived” the one obvious venue that she just doesn’t perform well in. She’s skiing fast and she’s shown a really fun competitive fight this season. The result is that right now she’s wearing Yellow. This is certainly not a done deal though. That standing shooting makes me incredibly nervous.
So Who Is Going To Win?
This feels like a race amongst the top 4 with two contenders (Elvira Öberg and Lou Jeanmonnot) needing a lot to break right to win it all. That’s actually about as wide open as it has been at this stage of the game in quite some time. If I was going to try to rank the contenders in order I think I would break them up in groups of 2:
The Favorites
– Julia Simon – Defending champ and the hottest biathlete in the field right now.
– Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold – The most consistent biathlete all season could just keep collecting top 5’s to the title
Tier 2
– Lisa Vittozzi – Under the radar gliding along towards at the very least a very very high finish
– Justine Braisaz-Bouchet – The highest peak performance of all…but might she have just peaked so early?
Need Some Help
– Lou Jeanmonnot – Needs help but without missing two races she would be right in the mix. She can get the results and she is getting the results
– Elvira Öberg – The potential is all there. We’ve seen it before. We just haven’t seen it this year…yet.
So there it is. If any of the top four win this thing I won’t be stunned. I would be a little surprised if Jeanmonnot or Elvira do but not because they can’t perform at that level, only because I would be surprised about what affected all of the top four. I cannot wait for the last few weeks of this season!