Breakthrough Seasons

One of my favorite parts of a biathlon season is watching the improvements that occur. There is also something really exciting about an athlete reaching their potential or finding a level that you didn’t know was even possible for them. This pieces is dedicated to those athletes who achieved that this season!

Breakthroughs come in all shapes and sizes so here are just a few examples:
– Rising from being very good to a true great of the sport.
– Coming up from occasional top 10 to consistent top 10 contender.
– Moving from middle of the pack to make a name for themselves as a top 25 biathlete.

We’re going to try to break these up into categories just because that’s more fun.

Before we start a few notes:

• We’re trying to focus primarily on young athletes here usually 25 or younger. Not that older athletes aren’t eligible to “breakthrough.” It’s just usually that by the time they are further into their careers it’s more incremental improvement rather than breakthrough. That’s completely subjective.

• I have a separate piece on Rookies coming up later so many of them are not listed here. Basically a Rookie is anybody who had never raced more than 1/3 of a World Cup season before. Example: Juni Arnekleiv ran 7 races last season. She’s not a rookie this year.
• There are some subtle differences between breakthrough and just improvement. I can’t put it into words though. Basically you know if when you see it. If you disagree with me I want to hear it!

Category 1: Already Very Good and now GREAT

🇫🇷 Lou Jeanmonnot

Age	25
Overall Rank	2
Career Best Rank	11
Total Career Races	55
Key Statistic	Top 10 Median Back = +0.88%

The 2023-2024 season was Lou Jeanmonnot’s declaration of intent. Coming into this season we all knew that Jeanmonnot had the talent to be good. We thought there was a chance that she might be able to compete for the Globe one day. After this season we know that without a doubt she is going to be able to compete for a Globe and sooner rather than later. Heck, without having missed two races in Lenzerheide due to COVID she may very well have won it this season. Although she was humble in her interview with RJ saying that the added pressure may have changed the way she raced late in the year, there is no denying that from start to finish this season Lou Jeanmonnot was one of the best.

Jeanmonnot has always been a great shooter. Across all seasons of competition at all levels of the IBU Cup the worst she has ever finished a year was at 87.1%. On the World Cup level she has never finished a year below 90% including this season’s gorgeous 92.8% total hit rate, good enough for the third best of any woman behind only Vanessa Voigt and Lisa Vittozzi.

However, that wasn’t her breakthrough. Her breakthrough was in skiing. She went from an already respectable 19th in overall skiing up to 8th. She was just 0.88% slower than the median top 10 biathlete this season. There were just two women who were in the negative in that category: Lampic and Braisaz-Bouchet. That’s going from very good to being on par with some of the faster women in the sport including Lisa Vittozzi, Franziska Preuss, and Hanna Oeberg, and just a touch slower than Julia Simon.

Lou Jeanmonnot is just 25 years old and she’s made the leap from very good to great. It’s the hardest leap to make. There is no reason at all to expect her shooting to droop as she’s always been one of the best. If she can keep up this ski speed we’ll be seeing her in the mix for the Overall Globe for years to come.

🇳🇴 Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold

Age	27
Overall Rank	3
Career Best Rank	6
Total Career Races	166
Key Statistic	Wins = 3

It feels like Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold has been around for awhile hasn’t it? We had seen the potential. She’s had her real coming out party way back int he 2018-2019 season when she finished in 11th Overall. That was six full seasons ago. Since then she’s been competing at a very high level. We’ve been waiting and waiting for her to establish herself. She was sitting and learning behind Tiril Eckhof and Marte Oslbu Roeiseland as they were winning Overall Globes. Add to that she is Norwegian so we automatically expect that she’s going to be contending for Globes and medals. It had almost got to the point where it felt like she was going to be a disappointment because she hadn’t done it yet.

While most people feel like this season was a disappointment for Tandrevold we have to turn it around and look at it as a success. This season was a major leap. She went from being a woman who could complete for a podium every so often to being a woman who could compete for a woman every week. She went from being a women who could compete for a solid top 10 in the Overall to being a woman that we all thought could win the Overall until the very very end. Just like with Jeanmonnot going form really good to great is a very difficult leap to make and make no mistake Tandrevold did it this season. Here’s the thing…she’s still just 27 years old and what she did this season indicates an athlete who should be at this level for several more years.

So what did Tandrevold do? She did two things. First off she improved her skiing even further and ended the season ranked 3rd overall in skiing. That’s Tiril Eckhoff level and better than Marte Olsbu Roeiseland. That’s the level of an Overall Champion. The other thing she did was learn how to win. Prior to this season Tandrevold had just 1 win in 15 podiums which is 6.7%. This season she had 3 wins in 8 podiums. That’s a much more successful conversion rate of 37.5%. She set career bests in wins, podiums, top 5’s, top 10’s. She came within one weekend of winning the Overall Globe. All of that with the worst overall shooting of her career. I have no reason to believe that she can’t do it again next season. And remember this: The first time that Tiril Eckhof finished top 3 in the Overall standings she was 29. The first time Marte Olsbu Roeiseland finished top 3 in the Overall she was 30. Tandrevold is 28 next year. Her time may well be coming very soon.

🇫🇷 Justine Braisaz-Bouchet

Age	27
Overall Rank	4
Career Best Rank	6
Total Career Races	197
Key Statistic	Total shooting = 82.9%

Truth be told I didn’t know what to expect from Justine Braisaz-Bouchet this season. In her career leading up to this season she had consistently been one of the fastest women in biathlon. However, she was gone for a season on maternity leave. Furthermore, even as one of the fastest women in biathlon, she was an erratic shooter. When she was good she could win. Far too often though she was less than good. Just look at her yearly finishes and you see that every season there would be at least 9-10 races per season where she would finish outside of the top 20 much less the top 10. However, that didn’t stop her from finishing as high as 6th in the Overall. Still there were questions and inconsistencies.

This season we needed to see how she would respond to the time away. As early as the summer biathlon races you could see she was going to be okay. By Oestersund she was fast. By Hochfilzen she was finishing on the podium. By Lenzerheide she looked unbeatable.

While she slipped out of yellow by Ruhpolding, Braisaz-Bouchet remained a top threat to the Overall race until the very end of the year. She no longer had the excessive inconsistency. While previously she had 9-10 finishes outside the top 20 per season, this season she was outside the top 10 just six times. Meanwhile, she was outside of the top 20 just three times.

How did she become so much more consistent? It was the shooting. She shot 82.9% with equal prone/standing splits. It was the best shooting of her career, and just the fourth time in eight seasons that she hit better than 80%. With the improved shooting came an improved floor to her performance. The end result was by far the best season of her career. Six wins just this season, more than she had in eight full seasons before that. The wild thing is 82.9% really isn’t even that good. If she, just like Tandrevold, can creep that up just a little bit more, then look out!

Category 2: The Mid-Career Surge from Occasional Top 10 to Regular Top 10 and Higher

🇨🇭 Lena Haecki-Gross

Age	28
Overall Rank	6
Career Best Rank	19
Total Career Races	199
Key Statistic	Podiums = 5

Lena Haecki-Gross is just about the perfect definition of breakthrough biathlete. Who was more exciting and fun to watch this season? At first it felt like an amazing early season story when she secured the second podium of her career in Hochfilzen. She is a fan favorite and when it happened it felt like just a great moment. However, that great moment turned into a story that just didn’t end. It kept rolling. She won the Short Individual in Antholz for her first career victory. Then she won again in the Mass Start in Oslo. Haecki-Gross started this season, her 10th on the World Cup, with just 5 career top 5’s and a single podium. She ended the season with her first 2 wins, 5 podiums, and 8 top 5’s.

Who could have seen this coming? Haecki-Gross has been in our biathlon lives for a decade, and remarkably is still just 28 years old. She’s been slowly improving for a years but really who could have seen this coming. This was just good old fashion across the board improvement. Pick a category:
– Skiing: Up from 15th in skiing to 9th. Average course time rank up from 16th to 11th
– Shooting: Up to 84.3%, the best shooting of her career and just the 2nd time she’s ever shot over 80% for a full season. This included hitting 87% prone which is the best she’s ever hit in a single type of shooting by a full 5%.

Along the way she had the best season in the history of Swiss women in biathlon. The results were magnificent to see!

🇳🇴 Karoline Knotten

Age	29
Overall Rank	9
Career Best Rank	18
Total Career Races	104
Key Statistic	Median Back = -1.6%

This one I didn’t see coming. Karoline Knotten has been a very good shooter in her career. She consistently hits in the mid to high 80% range including a spectacular 92.1% in 2022-2023. Unfortunately Knotten had never shown the ski speed to match it. She’s always run just a little slower than the average biathlete and well back of the median top 10 biathlete.

This season was a true breakthrough in her skiing. She moved from 47th overall in skiing up to 24th. This included moving from 0.3% slower than the median biathlete to 1.6% faster. Compared to the top 30 median biathlete she went from 3% slower to 0.8% slower. Just to put that in perspective that is gaining roughly 30 seconds over the course of a Sprint race and nearly 1 minute in a Pursuit/Mass Start.

Even with her shooting dropping from 92.1% to 87.6% that significantly improved skiing took her to five top 5’s and 12 top 10’s. Both of those were significantly greater than her career totals entering the season. While she only had the one podium she was putting herself in position far more than she ever has before. It’s amazing what happens when you aren’t losing huge chunks of ground on the course! She’s 29 years old so she should be in the prime of her career. If she can hold that ski speed (or even improve it!) and get back closer to 90% with shooting not only could she add to her career podium mark but could very well get her first win!

🇩🇪 Janina Hettich-Walz

Age	27
Overall Rank	10
Career Best Rank	30
Total Career Races	90
Key Statistic	Average Total Shooting Time= 26.7 sec

Janina Hettich-Walz was one of my predictions for a breakthrough this season and I am happy to see that it came true. It seemed like the set up was there for some good performance. She was slowly and steadily improving in both ski speed and shooting. It seemed like at age 27 she was going to be primed for a breakthrough. Fair to say that moving from a previous best Overall finish of 22 to 10th qualifies.

Hettich-Walz continued to move forward with solid improvements in both skiing and shooting over the last 3 seasons:
– Ski Ranks: 21-22 = 36th; 22-23 = 30th; 23-24 = 24th
– Shooting Percentages: 21-22 = 8.6%; 22-23 = 86.3%; 23-24 = 87.8%

The big jump from Hettich-Walz this season, though, was in her average shooting speed:
– 21-22 = 30.1 sec
– 22-23 = 28.1 sec
– 23-24 = 26.7 sec

Interestingly, starting after Hochfilzen that average shooting time drops closer to 26 seconds for the remainder of the year. Not surprisingly it was after Hochfilzen that she really hit her stride. From Lenzerheide through the end of the season she had eight top 10’s in the final 18 races for a 44.4% top 10 rate. That included her career achievement to date, the Silver medal in the Individual at the Nove Mesto World Championships.

It was by far the best stretch of racing in her career. Prior to that run she had just six career top 10’s and zero podiums. She truly was a top 10 Overall biathlete. Sure she wasn’t competing for the podium on a regular basis, but nobody was surprised to see her finding the back half of the top 10 and that was new. There doesn’t appear to be any sign of it stopping. Should she do that for the entire year next year, which her career path does indicate she is capable of, she can move up a few more spots in the Overall!

Category 3: Young, Hungry, and Moving Up Fast – The Eric Perrot group. Three seasons into his World Cup career and is he ready to take over the top of the French team?

🇫🇷 Eric Perrot

Age	22
Overall Rank	11
Career Best Rank	34
Total Career Races	55
Key Statistic	Wins: 1 (1st career!!)

It’s hard to believe that it took this long for us to get to a man but here we are! Eric Perrot, though, had a phenomenal year. There were times during the year where it was completely reasonable to assert that he was the most consistent French man. This isn’t completely out of the blue as we’ve all been monitoring Perrot’s steady ascension up the ranks of the French squad, but it is still so much fun to watch.

This season Perrot made the move from “he can fight for a top 10 on the right day” to “he’s consistently in the top 10.” He ended the season with 12 top 10’s in 25 races so basically every other race he was top 10. From the start of the World Championships through the end of the season he finished in the top 10 eight of the final 11 races of the season. And it wasn’t like these were “backdoor” top 10’s where he just ended up there at the end of the race. Frequently he was fighting his way into the top of the field to be in the mix for podiums. Four of those eight top 10’s at the end of the season were top 4’s. While he only ended up with two podiums on the season he did earn his first of what will surely be many career victories in the Sprint at Soldier Hollow.

Perrot is really coming along as a skier. At just 22 years old he finished the season ranked 12th overall in skiing. That puts him alongside Benedikt Doll, Johannes Kuehn, and Jeremy Finello who are all well respected skiers. Based on his past performance and his age, if he receives the proper training and coaching there is no reason to think he won’t eventually advance towards the top 5 in skiing over the next few seasons. His shooting also is slowly but surely coming along. He’s basically improved by 1% each season over the last two years and hit 84.8% last year. A couple more years with that improvement, along with the skiing, and he’s going to be competing for a lot more wins.

Category 4: You Don’t Have To Be Fast When You Shoot Like This – He gets his own category because he doesn’t quite fit in with the athletes around him on this list.

🇩🇪 Justus Strelow

Age	27
Overall Rank	14
Career Best Rank	21
Total Career Races	51
Key Statistic	Total Shooting Percentage: 93.8%

This has really been a breakthrough spread across two separate seasons for Justus Strelow. The 2022-2023 season saw Strelow make his big skiing improvement. In the 21-22 season, which he spent primarily on the IBU Cup, Strelow was the 16th ranked skier on that level. He ran three races on the World Cup and finished with course time ranks of 52, 84, and 61 respectively. In the 22-23 season though, he leapt up to 43rd on the World Cup in skiing. This past season he improved that up to 36th. He’s not nearly as fast as some of his other German contemporaries like Nawrath or Kuehn, but he’s come a long way from where he was.

The reason why he was able to improve from 21st Overall in 22-23 to 14th Overall in 23-24 was because his shooting came back to form. Strelow has always been a very good shooter. However, during the 22-23 season his Standing shooting fell dramatically down to 82.5% So while he was still hitting 97.5% prone, he just couldn’t convert that into more than three top 10’s in 2022-2023. This season he brought that standing shooting all the way back up to 93% and his total hit rate to 93.8%. Combine that shooting with his just slightly better than average skiing and suddenly you’ve got a guy who is knocking on the door of the top 10.

Over the course of last year Justus Strelow was consistently getting himself on camera by shooting his way into contention and then hanging on during the skiing. He was able to end the season with six top 10’s, far outpacing his career total prior to the year of three. This included his first career podium.

Strelow has exceptional shooting abilities. He truly has the ability to be the best shooter, or at least top 5, every single season for the foreseeable future. He’s shown that with that kind of hit rate you only have to be a little faster than average skiing to get into the top 10 or find the podium. Can you imagine what he can do if he can find just a touch more speed? If he can go from 36th in skiing to maybe 25th? That could be very fun for the German fans!

Category 5: Young Women Where Top 10 is No Longer a Dream but Not Quite Expected…Yet – Two really fun athletes who made a big push this season. One showed off her high ceiling while the other made the leap by building a solid floor to her performance.

🇨🇿 Tereza Vobornikova

Age	23
Overall Rank	16
Career Best Rank	43
Total Career Races	54
Key Statistic	Top 20 Finishes: 15 (out of 22)

If you’ve been following me here, on Twitter/X, or listening to the podcast you know I’ve been talking about Tereza Vobornikova for the last 2-3 years. There is good reason for that! Every season she keeps getting better. n 22-23 she flashed a touch of potential by finishing 7th in the Pursuit at the Oberhof World Championships and then 6th in the Oslo Sprint. This season was another important step. Not only did she have three more top 10’s including a new career best of 5th in the Oslo Individual, but she had dramatically improved consistency which is a huge marker for her going forward. The key for her was that she was able to finish top 20 in 15 out of her 22 races this year. That comes out to a 68% top 20 rate compared to just 22% in 2022-2023.

This is a perfect example of an athlete who makes a breakthrough by putting a solid floor beneath her performance. For Vobornikova basically every time out she was guaranteed of finishing top 20. That got even better to close the season. From the end of the Nove Mesto Worlds through Canmore she went 7 for 7 in finishing top 20 including two of her three top 10’s.

There was nothing miraculous about her statistical performance this season. Vobornikova improved with small but steady steps in both skiing and shooting. As a Junior she was on the back half of the top 10 in ski speed so we should expect her potential to be good but not amazing ski speed. That’s about the trajectory that she’s on. This year as a 23 year old she improved to 32nd overall in skiing, up from 44th last season. She went from 0.3% slower than median to 0.8% faster. Meanwhile her shooting which is usually mid to high 80’s bounced back to her career norm at 86.9% in 23-24 compared to 84.1% in 22-23.

There was nothing miraculous about Vobornikova’s improvement this past season. It was a really nice step up and it got her to 16th in the World. Based on her Juniors performance we should expect her to get a little faster yet. If she can keep her shooting between 86-88% then we should expect her to increase those top 10’s just a bit in 2024-2025 and maybe a first career podium!

🇦🇹 Anna Gandler

Age	23
Overall Rank	19
Career Best Rank	32
Total Career Races	39
Key Statistic	Total Shooting last 11 races: 90%

Anna Gandler, just like Tereza Vobornikova, is another personal favorite of mine. Professional plug, but if you haven’t listened to our interviews with her that we’ve done the last two seasons I can’t recommend them highly enough. Once you listen to them you’ll be a fan of hers for life. These two are inexorably linked in my head. They are both 23 years old from Central European nations and both joined the World Cup full time in 2022-2023. They also both had their first big moments at the 2023 World Championships followed by big moments to end the season in Oslo. And here once again they are side by side in these rankings.

Anna Gandler’s 2023-2024 campaign was a tale of two seasons. For the first half of the season it actually looked like Anna Gandler wasn’t quite going to match the hopes we had for her. She had a couple of illnesses and just couldn’t quite get momentum. While the Hochfilzen week was great it was isolated…until Worlds. Once Worlds came around it was like she flipped the switch. The start of Worlds marked the exact halfway mark in her season with 11 races before Worlds and 11 races from the start of Worlds to the end. In the 11 races before Worlds she had just one top 10 and for the first half of the season her average finish was 38.5. From the start of Nove Mesto through the end of the season she had six top 10’s in the final 11 races including finishing with five straight top 8’s. Over those final 11 races her average finish was 10.2. Now that’s a breakthrough. She went from being a woman who could manage the very occasional top 10 to being in the top 10 nearly every single race. Not only that but she was a regular in the flower ceremonies to close the season. It was just expected to see Anna Gandler up there competing with the best in the sport.

So, what changed at that perfect moment? Well, pretty much everything. She skied faster. She shot better. And she shot faster. The big one was her shooting. For the season she hit 86.4% which was almost exactly what it was in 22-23 (86.8%). However, over those terrific last 11 races she hit exactly 90% compared to just 83% in the first 11 races. Combine that with skiing faster all season (up from 33rd in skiing to 26th) and you can see how she made that leap into being a consistently top 10 biathlete. Also, one of Gandler’s big goals has been shooting faster. Her average shooting time for the season was 30.1, exactly the same as 22-23. However, once again, if you look at those final 11 races, you see see it was a touch lower at 28.8 seconds.

Anna Gandler has all the tools. 11 races is a solid half of a season. Her average finish of 10.2 over that stretch tied Tandrevold’s mark for the season. 11 races is a long way from a full season but it clearly shows that next season we could be writing again about Gandler except she could be up near the top of this list.

Category 6: Making the move from Middle of the Pack to Top 25

🇮🇹 Didier Bionaz

Age	24
Overall Rank	21
Career Best Rank	46
Total Career Races	77
Key Statistic	Avg Course Time Rank: 16.7

Didier Bionaz and Tommaso Giacomel both feel like they should be in their mid/late 20’s. They joined the World Cup at such a young age that we have already developed a decently strong relationship with them. Giacomel of course has leapt to the top of the men’s field winning the u25 Globe this season after narrowly missing last season. Giacomel is so fast that if he can keep working on his shooting we’ll see him at the top of the sport for the next 5-7 years or more. Bionaz, while not quite at the same left of Giacomel at this stage, has really come on nicely the last two seasons.

For Bionaz this was by far his best season on the World Cup. He had 10 of his top 12 career finishes including a new career best of 11th in the Canmore Mass Start. That was really a 10th as he crossed at the exact same time as teammate Lukas Hofer. Another way of looking at how good this season was is looking at his top 20’s. Prior to this year he had four top 20’s in 53 races (7.5%). This season he had 10 top 20’s in 24 races (41.7%).

This big improvement came down entirely due to ski speed. His shooting year over year actually got worse from 83.8% to 80.5%, but that’s in line with where he has been for most of his career. His skiing, though, was by far the best of his career. Below are his year by year ski ranks and comparison to median:
– 21-22: 0.8% slower than median = ranked 60
– 22-23: 0.3% faster than median = ranked 38
– 23-24: 2.6% faster than median = ranked 20

Bionaz joined the World Cup at such a young age that we really don’t have that much good Juniors data to go off of. However, in his age 19 season he was 6.5% faster than the median Junior in the 2019-2020 season which put him just a touch faster than Vebjoern Soerum who is one year older than him. Just shows us that he has certainly not maxed out his ski potential yet. However, for him to reach his career potential he has to harness the rifle. He’s never hit more than 83.8% for a season at any level. If he can get that to 85-86% then he’s going to be consistently fighting for the top 10.

🇪🇪 Tuuli Tomingas

Age	29
Overall Rank	23
Career Best Rank	46
Total Career Races	114
Key Statistic	Races Run: 21

In the 2023-2024 season Tuuli Tomingas had the single best season in the history of Estonian women’s biathlon. That’s not bad at all! It was also a HUGE jump in performance for her as well. In the midst of all of this she and the Estonian women had the relay story of the season, and one of THE stories of the season, by finishing 4th in the Women’s Relay at the Nove Mesto World Championships. All of this considering she came off of shoulder surgery in April of 2023!

I noted for Tuuli that she ran 21 races this season. Why is that important? Because it means for the first time in her career she qualified for every single Pursuit race and every single Mass Start. Obviously more races = more points = higher ranking. But also shows that her week in and week out level was just at a higher plane than it had been before.

Once again, for Tuuli Tomingas, as with so many athletes on this list, the improvement was based around her skiing. Her shooting was actually her worst since the 2020-2021 season (although to be fair every one of those seasons she’s been between 80-82.9%). Her skiing, though, saw her go from 31st to 20th in skiing. Her average course time rank up from 36th to 27th. She finished the year 2.1% faster than the median woman and 2.5% slower than the median top 10. Those aren’t amazing statistics, but they put her alongside Vanessa Voigt and Janina Hettich-Walz and they both finished in the top 10 of the Overall this season.

The difference for Voigt and Hettich-Walz and Tomingas is shooting. While Tomingas hit 80.3% last season Voigt and Hettich-Walz both hit above 87%. That’s the new goal for Tomingas. She’s just 29 so holding this ski form is absolutely possible. Now finding the range with the rifle and she can go from 23rd Overall up to the top 15-20.

🇺🇸 Campbell Wright

Age	21
Overall Rank	31
Career Best Rank	55
Total Career Races	45
Key Statistic	Ski Rank = 24th

As the year got underway there was immense excitement for the young Kiwi/American who had transferred to US Biathlon over the summer. We had first noticed Campbell Wright in the 2021-2022 season. Who was the teenager in the All Blacks who finished 15th in the Antholz Individual. After moving to the US Biathlon team full time in the summer of 2023 expectations and hopes were sky high.

The season did not start out well. With illness and subsequent poor training leading into the season Wright wasn’t able to get out on the right foot. He finished 90th in the Individual in Oestersund and didn’t race again until the Sprint in Lenzeheride where he finished 72. Then the season turned around. In his remaining 15 races from Oberhof through Canmore he had 11 top 20’s. This included a stretch over the last 10 races where his worst finish was 28th, he had five top 15’s and his first two career top 10’s. That was meeting and exceeding expectations! His average finish for the last 10 races of the year was 15.4, which extrapolated over the entire season would have been good enough for 15th best on the season. For comparison, Giacomel who won the u25 globe had an average finish of 14.8 for the season.

You don’t do that with improvement throughout your performance. However, for Wright it was more about skiing than shooting. For the season he ranked 24th overall in skiing. At just 21 years old he was the youngest man in the top 25 of skiing. The only other men under 25 years old in the top 25 of skiing were Perrot (22) and Giacomel & Bionaz (24). His average course time rank for the season was 29.3. When you look at it for the last 10 races of the season his average course time rank was 18.2.

Additionally he improved his shooting to match the skiing. He hit 84.3% for the season which was up from 81% in 22-23 and 78.9% in 21-22. He moved his standing shooting up a full 10% to his 85% this season. All of that while further improving his shooting speeds to 26.9 seconds.

This was a great season for Campbell Wright and he’s still only 21. We’re just starting to scratch the surface of where he can go. It’s still going to be 2-3 years before we really start to see what Wright can do so the important thing for us fans (me especially) to remember is that we need to give him the space and the time to get there. It won’t be a direct line to the top. There will be starts and stops. Great weeks and not so great weeks. However, this season, he showed over a decent stretch of time, that his potential is immense, and I cannot wait to see it!

Category 7: Making You Remember Their Name – These athletes you may not have known before this year, but they had just enough good races last year that you can recognize them now.

🇪🇪 Regina Ermits

Age	28
Overall Rank	48
Career Best Rank	54
Total Career Races	98
Key Statistic	Avg Course Time Rank: 38.5

If you just look at Overall rank then Regina Ermits didn’t have a “breakthrough.” For Ermits, though, this was more a case of improving her ceiling to the point where she started to breakthrough into our consciousness. During the 2023-2024 season Ermits had seven of her top nine career finishes. This included four of her five career top 20’s and all four of her top four finishes of her career. The peak of the season was easily at the World Championships in Nove Mesto where she finished 13th in the Individual, her then career best, and followed it up days later with 12th in the Mass Start, her new (and current) career best.

Ermits raised her ceiling by significantly improving her skiing. We can look at her skiing from any number of different directions:
– Avg course time rank of 38.5 was improved from 72.7 in 22-23. Her career best before this was 59.3. This is a HUGE improvement
– Finished the season ranked 42nd in skiing amongst those who raced at least 8 times. Her best prior finish was 70th.
– She was 0.2% slower than the median woman on the World Cup which is easily her best ever. Prior to 23-24 her best compared to the median was 2.2% slower in 21-22.

She also was a much better shooter this season:
– Her shooting percentage for the year was 82.3%, just the 3rd time in her career shooting more than 80% on the World Cup level. This included a remarkable 90% standing shooting.

Ermits, a lot like Gandler, really turned it on around the World Championships. She dramatically raised her ceiling and absolutely made me take notice. I am really excited to see if she can carry over this newfound speed to next season!

🇵🇱 Natalia Sidorowicz

Age	25
Overall Rank	50
Career Best Rank	–
Total Career Races	35
Key Statistic	Mass Starts = 1

Natalia Sidorowicz was part of the Polish women’s team that really caught our attention this season. It seemed like throughout the season the women just kept popping up into the top 20-30 and making us pay attention to this. Sidorowicz was a bit of an out of nowhere for me at least. She had a single top 10 on the Junior level and a single top 10 in the 2022 European Championships. This season, while she didn’t make a World Cup top 10 she did have three top 20’s all of which occurred at the Nove Mesto Worlds where she finished 16th in the Sprint, 14th in the Pursuit, and 16th in the Mass Start (her first career!).

Sidorowicz did this by basically just being better in all aspects. She ran much faster on the skis. Her ski rank improved from 75th to 55th. Her ski improvement was even better than that as she went from 4.39% slower than average to just 1.3% slower than average and her average course time rank improved from 60 to 37. That’s huge. Her shooting hit rate stayed level right around 86% (actually she was within 0.6% of both her prone and standing shooting from 22-23). However, she did that with shooting on average 4.4 seconds faster per shooting. She went from ranked 61st in shooting time to 13th!

The end result was she ran a full season of 20 races, missing just two pursuit races and three mass starts. After never having a top 40 in her career before this season she had 10 of them this season. That’s the very definition of a breakthrough. At age 25, and with the general upward trajectory of the Polish women, there is no reason to believe she’s reached her peak.

🇵🇱 Joanna Jakiela

Age	25
Overall Rank	56
Career Best Rank	64
Total Career Races	42
Key Statistic	Top 40s = 10

We end the list with one more woman from the Polish team, which actually should make Polish fans exceptionally excited. Joanna Jakiela got us very excited right from the very start this season when she finished 11th in the season opening Individual in Oestersund. While she never quite reached that level again she had a few more highlights throughout the year including 17th in the Nove Mesto Worlds Pursuit, qualifying for the Worlds Mass Start, and finishing top 40 (and in the points) 10 times on the season after having done so just 4 times in her previous 23 World Cup races.

While the Overall rank only bumped up eight positions, there is no doubt that Jakiela showed off a higher ceiling this season than she has ever shown before. It wasn’t just the 11th in the Individual, though that was impressive. For me it was the 23rd in the Ruhpolding Sprint, the 23rd in the Nove Mesto Sprint, 17th in the Nove Mesto Pursuit, and the solid if not spectacular finish to the season going 38, 27, 46, and 39. Because of the nature of the Individual you can have some very erratic finishes. But those other races showed that she has improved her form and she is able to replicate it on a more regular basis.

Jakiela was moderately faster than average in her Juniors and IBU Cup career. It would be expected that based off of her prior performance we could expect to see her get to around average if not a little faster on the World Cup. However, thus far she had not quite reached that level. That’s not entirely surprising as she only just turned 25 in March. This season she improved all the way from 60th in skiing to 34th. She went from a bit slower than average to just a touch faster. That is why, even with her shooting declining below 80%, she was able to reach new heights.

Joanna Jakiela has never been an amazing shooter, but she can find herself in the top 20 more frequently if she can just find a bit more consistency with the rifle next year. She’s in good hands with Tobias Torgersen!