Lisa Vittozzi: A Dream Deferred

Mid afternoon on March 20, 2022 Lisa Vittozzi slid across the finish line at the Oslo Holmenkollen stadium in 24th place. There was barely a passing mention from the commentators other than just a note that she had three prone misses on the day. It was a final disappointing race of a disappointing season. The look on her face said everything. Nearly every other competitor came across the line with a look of joy at the end of another season. Vittozzi just looked blank if not a little sad. She had finished 24th with five misses including three prone. At that moment it seemed like the dream of Lisa Vittozzi as a post-Wierer leader of the Italian women may be coming to a sad ending.

Just three seasons prior, in the 2018-2019 season she had finished 2nd in the Overall, a mere 23 points behind teammate Dorothea Wierer. In that moment she was a 24 year old up and coming young woman who had finished 2nd behind the newly crowned Queen of Biathlon. It seemed that Italy may have corned the market on women’s biathlon for the better part of the next 5-7 years. Wierer was still in her prime, and right behind her was a Lisa Vittozzi who made biathlon just look so easy. Smooth unhurried skiing with very good shooting. That season she finished ranked 16th in skiing and shot 88%. She was still just 24, in just her fourth full season on the World Cup, with plenty of potential still to reach. It seemed to be just a matter of time before she succeeded her teammate and took the throne.

Then things went started to go sideways. The 19-20 season wasn’t a disaster by any means as she still finished top 10 in the Overall (10th exactly). Vittozzi still managed 9 top 10’s but the high level finishes weren’t there with just two podiums vs. six the season prior. The cracks were definitely starting to show. She was slower, ranking only 23rd in skiing, and more worrisome of for the future her total shooting dropped dramatically down to 80.3% including 78.8% prone.

Things deteriorated further in 20-21 when she had just a single podium and just four top 10’s on the way to 16th in the Overall. Her skiing slid further that year when she bottomed out at 35th in skiing. The alarms were truly clanging when it came to her shooting. Her prone shooting was down to 70.5% and her total shooting 78%. It was the first season in her career shooting below 80%.

The 21-22 season was rock bottom. Nothing went right. It became painful to watch. You wished that the cameras wouldn’t focus on her when she came to the range because you just didn’t want to see it. Her prone shooting was an abysmal 55.5%. That is the 3rd worst prone shooting of any woman who raced a full schedule in the last 20 years. That’s not an exaggeration. The fact that she shot 55.5% prone and still ran 20 races it just a statement to how deep her talent is that she was still able to qualify for that many Pursuit and Mass Start races.

There were so many races like that final race of the season in Oslo where she came across the finish line just looking blank. It wasn’t even disappointment or pain, just blank. Fellow biathletes at the time said that it was hard to watch. Not because the shooting was bad, but because she was such a good and likeable person and you just don’t want something like this to happen to a good person.

By the end of that race in Oslo she ended up 31st in the Overall. She looked like a shell of the biathlete who had once been 23 points from the Overall title. She was still just 27 years old. This was supposed to be the prime of her career. These were supposed to be her Globe winning years. This was supposed to be the time when she took the throne from Wierer (and Eckhoff and Roeiseland). Instead she finished without a podium for the first time since 15-16, her first full season on the World Cup. She managed an anemic two top 10s when three seasons before she had 16. Something had to change.

In the Spring of 2022 two events took place, one little and one massive, both of which changed the course of Vittozzi’s career. The first of these was a sinus procedure. Seemingly mild, but per Vittozzi’s own report afterward she said that it was great to finally be able to breathe out of both sides of her nose again. One can only imagine how helpful that could be trying to compete in high level sport like World Cup biathlon! When looking at her skiing stats it may be visible to see the evidence of her sinus condition. The plot above shows her skiing in relation to the median top 30 athlete. After being slightly faster in that 18-19 season she had regressed significantly.

The other, and much bigger change, was the Italian federation hiring Jonne Kahkonen has the new head coach of the women’s team. Jonne Kahknoen came to the Italian team after previously coaching the Finnish team from 2006-2010, including a young Kaisa Makarainen, and the United States team from 2011-2018. From his first meetings with Lisa Vittozzi he asked her a simple question, “are you open to hear what I have to say.” The answer was a resounding yes. They worked on, in Lisa’s words, “a natural way of shooting.”

The partnership turned out to be a match made in biathlon heaven. The first time that we the public got to see the results of this partnership was at the 2022 Summer World Championships. After just a short time the fruits of their labor was already visible. Vittozzi finished 8th in Super Sprint qualifiers, 2nd in the Super Sprint final, she won the Sprint, and was 5th in the Mass Start. For a Summer Worlds the competition actually pretty good with the Germans, Italians, Czechs and other sending top level athletes. The results weren’t even the major goal though, it was to assess progress, and there was definitely visible improvement. For the week she hit 22/25 prone which is 88%.

In the 2022-2023 season we quickly realized that Lisa Vittozzi was back. The very first weekend of that season she finished 3rd, 2nd, and 4th. That was almost as many podiums in a single weekend as the previous three years combined. The entire season felt almost surreal. It was never tiring to see Vittozzi have good races. The season, for her, reached it’s peak with a win in the Individual in Ruhpolding. It was her first victory since she had two wins in Oberhof in 2019, a span of 4 full years. She later won the bronze medal in the Individual at the 2023 Oberhof World Championships which was one of the most popular medals won that week.

Everything about her biathlon looked so much better. She was 7th in skiing, easily the best of her career. She shot 88.3% for the season including 86.1% prone and 90.6% standing. It felt like a miracle. By the end of the season she was up to 3rd in the Overall rankings. While nobody was catching Julia Simon in her triumphant campaign, Vittozzi had put herself squarely back in the conversation.

Over the leadup to the recently completed 2023-2024 season there was talk about how the Women’s World Cup was wide open for any number of women to reach out and grab it. It’s true. Throughout the year there were about 6-7 women that at various times felt like they might be about to take control. At the end of the day to win the Overall Globe you either need one of two things (or both). You either need to sweep up large numbers of victories and points or you need to be wildly consistent and limit the damage of your bad days.

This season there was no one woman who just vacuumed up the victories. While Justine Braisaz-Bouchet led the pack with six wins, there were five women with three or more trips to the top of the podium this season including Lisa Vittozzi with five. What made the difference for Vittozzi, then, was her remarkable run of consistency. She simply didn’t have bad days. Out of 25 total races (including Worlds) she finished top 10 a remarkable 22 times. That was the most of everybody in women’s biathlon. Her average finishing position of 5.6 was also, not surprisingly, the best in women’s biathlon. So while Braisaz-Bouchet had more victories, and Lou Jeanmonnot had more podiums, Lisa Vittozzi just steadfastly refused to have bad days.

This is one of those things that I think is best visualized in numbers. Here are her finishes by week:

World Cup Week	Results
Oestersund	🥇, 9, 9
Hochfilzen	5, 4
Lenzerheide	3, 14, 4
Oberhof	7, 8
Ruhpolding	🥉🥇
Antholz	16, 6
Nove Mesto World Championships	7, 🥈🥇🥈
Olso	4, 5
Soldier Hollow	4, 🥈
Canmore	🥇🥇, 21

If you were going to argue that she had a bad week it would be Antholz, but she still made the Flowers. Also, it helps that her main competitors for the Overall didn’t have good weeks then either. Otherwise, Oberhof was a “down” week with a 7th and 8th. It’s easy to see she limited the catastrophic finishes until the very end when she basically had it all wrapped up. She had a magnificent late season peak where she basically went from the Nove Mesto Pursuit to the last race of the season without missing the top 5.

While she only wore the Yellow bib for two days at the beginning of the season, and then the very last day, she kept herself in striking distance for the entire season because she never gave away bunches of points with bad finishes. By limiting the “bad days” to still collecting at least 30-40 points she made sure a big gap never formed. Then when she peaked at the end of the season she was right there to take advantage of the good form and the good finishes. The burst of points in the final weeks put her over the top and won the big Globe.

During those dark days in 21-22 when she could barely hit half of her prone shots it seemed impossible to think that she could one day she could turn it around. That year she ranked 156th in shooting percentage. Of the 93 athletes that finished at least 9 races (roughly 1 trimester of racing) she ranked 92nd. As mentioned above her prone shooting was the third worst of any biathlete who raced a full season in 20 years.

After two years of a new mindset and new training with Coach Jonne Kahknoen Lisa Vittozzi wasn’t just better and she wasn’t just high ranked. Lisa Vittozzi finished the season ranked 2nd of all women who raced more than 9 races. She shot 93.1% overall including an absolutely stunning 93.3% prone. For the season she missed a total of 14 shots prone. If you consider that you shoot 5 shots per trip to the range Vittozzi took 42 trips to the range to shoot prone this season. She missed 1 shot every 3 trips to the range for prone shooting. Consider that 2 seasons ago she missed just about every other shot. That’s unreal improvement.

When Jonne Kahknoen was hired on as coach he quickly pointed out that he didn’t just want to see Vittozzi’s shooting improve, he also wanted to see her skiing reach its full potential. Above is the same plot that we looked at earlier showing her skiing in relation to the median top 30 athlete but now continued to include the 22-23 and 23-24 seasons.

It is plain to see how she improved her skiing to reach her potential over these last two seasons. The last two seasons she’s ranked 7th and 9th respectively in overall skiing. The only other time she’s been top 15 was that 2018-2019 season. Now, though, she sits amongst the fastest in the world including Lou Jeanmonnot and Lena Haecki-Gross.

The comeback is complete. She went from being the heir apparent, to dark depths that many athletes are unable to see their way out of, and all the way back to the top. As she ascends to the throne as the reigning Queen of Biathlon it’s fair to wonder how long will her reign be? Going into next season it’s easy to name a quick seven women who can battle for the Overall Globe. Not the least of those is that bulldog Lou Jeanmonnot who was nipping at Vittozzi’s heels all the way down the stretch this year.

Now Lisa Vittozzi is once again living the dream. Not the nightmare that it became, but the symphonic victory that she fought to make it become.