Czechia 2024-2025 Team Preview

While the Czech Republic may not be one of the traditional powers in the biathlon world they seem to never be far behind. While the Norwegians, French, Italians, Germans, and Swedes are powering through the season battling for the top positions in the Nations Cup there is always a small group of nations pushing and fighting just behind them. One of the chief members of this “tier two” group for several years now has been the Czech Republic. While the Czech squad has occasionally risen to a top 3 finishing position it is much more of a rare thing.

Outside of Marketa Davidova the current Czech Republic teams don’t have any super stars that attract international attention. It’s been a few years since the Czech women had their golden generation including Gabriela Koukalova finishing 2nd in the Overall. Even so, they have a number of high quality athletes who are capable of pushing for top 10s (or better). And the relay teams especially have made some noise in the last few seasons.

In the 2021-2022 season the women secured 5th Overall in the Nations Cup. In the 2022-2023 season the men finished 6th. Last year, though, was a small step back as the women finished 7th and the men finished 8th. As a result there was significant turn over on the coaching staffs. Former Italian biathlete Luca Bormolini was joined by Lucas Dostal to lead the women while former Czechia start Ondrej Moravec returned to the team as an assistant to Michael Malek guiding the men. It’s year one under their tutelage, so will there be an immediate impact?

Women The Czechia women enter the 2024-2025 season with an intriguing mix of youth, experience, and high ceiling talent. There is Marketa Davidova who has finished top 10 in the World and Tereza Vobornikova for whom that level feels almost inevitable. Jessica Jislova has certainly had her moments. Lucie Charvatova can ski fast which gives her potential. And then a 5th spot currently occupied by the enticing rookie Kristyna Otcovska but could also feature a number of young athletes. They also come in with a new coaching staff that feels like they have reinvigorated the team.

Coaches: Luca Bormolini and Lucas Dostal

Quota: 5 Athletes to Start

The World Cup

The Czechia women will be running five women each week of the World Cup. There are four women who have a leg up on starting spots for every week. It would be a pretty big surprise if these women, barring injury or illness, aren’t present for every week of competition in the 2023-2024 season. However, the 5th spot, which will be occupied by Kristyna Otcovska to start. She has the opportunity to own the spot!

Czechia World Cup Roster:
– Marketa Davidova
– Tereza Vobornikova
– Jessica Jislova
– Lucie Charvatova
– Kristyna Otcovska

Markéta Davidová (27)

After two straight finishes in the top 10 of the women’s World Cup Overall standings last season was a little bit of a step backwards as she slipped back to 18th. To give you an idea of what an aberration this season was it was her first without a podium since the 2017-2018 season when she ran just 11 races and had only two top 20’s. Her five top 10’s were the least since the 2018-2019.

Davidová’s drop in performance was entirely due to her shooting. Her overall skiing remained quite good, ranking 12th overall. That’s tied for her “worst” since 2017-2018 but is unchanged year over year. Her shooting though took a major drop down to 81% after a career high 87% in the 2022-2023 season. Looking at prone vs. standing and you can see it was primarily the standing that dropped as it went from 84.5% down to 76.7%. Meanwhile her average shooting time dropped from 27.6 to 29.8.

	Prone %	Standing %	Total %	Shooting Time
2017-2018	79.4	71.7	72.4	36.1
2018-2019	81.2	77	79.4	37.9
2019-2020	86.9	73.1	80	35.6
2020-2021	89	76.5	82.8	32.8
2021-2022	85.5	84	84.8	32.6
2022-2023	89.5	84.5	87	27.6
2023-2024	85.2	76.7	81	29.8

Clearly, when she was hitting 87% at the fastest shooting speeds of her career she was able to withstand the slight decline in ski speed. However, drops in ski speed and shooting percentage and shooting speed all leads to a decrease in performance. I am not going to be too concerned about this though. She’s 27 years old so there is no reason to believe that she can’t recover some of her ski speed. Also, the general trajectory of her shooting has been good and I am optimistic it will rebound upwards again. Maybe she won’t get all the way back to the top 10 but I believe she’ll make a movement back in that direction.

Tereza Voborníková (24)

One athlete whose trajectory is undeniably great is Tereza Voborníková. Those of you who listen to the podcast know that I’ve been a fan of hers for several years now. It’s clear why. She’s moved from 66th to 43rd to 16th the last three seasons in the Overall and she even finished above her teammate Davidova last season. On the way she collected three top 10’s (more than she had in her entire career before that) and a new career best of 5th which she earned in the Oslo Individual race.

Voborníková has done this without a clear undeniable strength. Instead she’s just a solid all around biathlete that has been improving across the board every season. Her skiing is moving up every season and last year she ended up 32nd overall in that aspect. Meanwhile she continued her solid if unspectacular shooting. She hit 86.9% of her shots with a fairly even prone/standing split. It ranked 26th in shooting which is very good but it wasn’t like she was Lou Jeanmonnot or Lisa Vittozzi out there knocking down almost all of the targets she faces. And her shooting time was okay at 29.8 but there is still plenty of room to grow.

	Prone %	Standing %	Total %	Shooting Time
2021-2022	88.3	90	89.2	30.9
2022-2023	82.8	85.5	84.4	28.5
2023-2024	87.8	86.1	86.9	29.8

What can we expect to see out of Voborníková next? How about more of that same trajectory? Everything looks good right now and there is no reason to think that she’s going to take a step backward now. The only thing to watch out for is she is 24. Sometimes the progress towards the top 10 of the Overall isn’t linear. You’ll see seasons that at the time look alarming but are just bumps in the road towards a very good season.

Assuming all things work out I’m guessing we see a Voborníková that is a little faster, improves her shooting maybe 1-2% overall, and shoots maybe 1 second faster. What does that look like? It looks like Janina Hettich-Walz’s 2023-2024 season. Last year Hettich-Walz was ranked 23rd overall in skiing at +3.39% back from the top 10 vs. Voborníková ranked 32 at +4.37%. Alternatively you can look at avg course time rank and Hettich-Walz averaged a ski rank of 20.2 vs. Voborníková at 27.5. Meanwhile Hettich-Walz hit 87.75% of her shots compared to Voborníková’s 86.9. Last season Janina Hettich-Walz was 10th in the Overall. She may not quite get to that level but it’s definitely within reach and sooner rather than later.

Jessica Jislova (30)

Two seasons ago Jessica Jislova became a fan favorite as she made an unpredictable breakthrough to move up from a 68th Overall finish in 2020-2021 to 17th in 2021-2022. Prior to that season her best ever finish had been just 59th. While that 17th remains her career best, she definitely has proved that it wasn’t a fluke as she finished 2022-2023 in 36th Overall and last year bumped it back up to 26th. Last season she had five top 20’s including a season highlight of 10th in the Hochfilzen Sprint. She also narrowly missed two more top 10’s when she finished 11th in both the Antholz Short Individual and the Oslo Individual. She actually finished 13th in the Individual discipline standings.

When Jislova made her enormous improvement three seasons ago she did it by improving both her skiing and shooting immensely. While the skiing is still a little better now than it was before the breakthrough she hasn’t let the shooting slip at all. You can see in the table below that the shooting remains quite strong and she is actually shooting a little faster the last two seasons.

	Prone %	Standing %	Total %	Shooting Time
2017-2018	91.8	77.3	84.6	30
2018-2019	84	78	81	31.7
2019-2020	82.5	78.8	80.6	32.5
2020-2021	79.2	75	77.1	31.9
2021-2022	92.5	89.5	91	30
2022-2023	96	85.6	90.8	28.3
2023-2024	88.4	88.4	88.4	29.6

Jessica Jislova’s breakthrough a few seasons ago was, for me at least, one of those really fun stories that makes being a biathlon mega fan so exciting. Maybe the casual fan wasn’t aware it was happening and hasn’t continued to take note of her. But you and me (because you are taking the time to read this!) saw it happening and were so happy for it. Seeing her be able to keep most of that level over the last two seasons has been so gratifying. She’s still only 30 so she has several more seasons of run left if she wants to. She can still shoot a little faster, and we know there is more life in her legs as shown by that 25th overall skiing in the 21-22 season. Hopefully we see some of that again. Even if we don’t and she again finishes 25-30th in the Overall standings I’m going to be rooting for her.

Lucie Charvátová (31)

What a return to form last season was for Lucie Charvátová! After a career best Overall finish of 27th in the 2019-2020 season she had failed to finish in the top 40 until last season. She scored three top 20’s and her first top 10 since the 2020-2021 season when she finished 8th in the Sprint in Ruhpolding. Most importantly though was her consistency as she finished in the top 30 10 times or exactly 50% of her races which was the 3rd best of her career.

Charvátová’s racing style is defined by fast skiing and shooting just well enough to get the job done. The problem is that over the previous two seasons she had seen her skiing drop from 12th down to 35th for both seasons. Last year though Charvátová roared back to 18th in skiing. Interestingly enough, but hitting 73.3% she actually had the 2nd best shooting year of her career just 0.2% behind her 2022-2023 season. Encouragingly her prone shooting breached the 80% mark for just the 2nd time in her career. The boost in her shooting has occurred as she has seemingly deemphasized shooting speed.

	Prone %	Standing %	Total %	Shooting Time
2017-2018	75	52.5	63.8	28.1
2018-2019	73.8	71.3	72.5	29.7
2019-2020	71.9	68.8	70.3	27.9
2020-2021	73.6	58.2	65.9	29.6
2021-2022	81.4	64.3	72.9	30.2
2022-2023	79.2	67.7	73.5	28.3
2023-2024	82	64.7	73.3	30.1

When you race like Charvátová you usually have a decent floor to your performance because you’re just fast enough to make up ground on the course. Unfortunately you also have a pretty hard ceiling on your performance because if you can’t hit your shots, particularly your standing shots, it’s really hard to consistently find the top 10. If she can have a good day and hit 8/10 in a Sprint she can compete. She did that in three Sprints last season and finished 8th, 26th, and 16th. If she can somehow find a way to get over 75% in standing without any other slip in her performance that would give her just that many more opportunities for top 10’s. It’s hard to predict if her age 31 season is going to be when it happens but you know she’s out there working on it.

Kristýna Otcovská (24)

We haven’t seen a ton of Kristýna Otcovská over the last few seasons on the World Cup, with just two races, but that’s not a huge surprise as she is just 24 years old as the 2024-2025 season gets underway. Instead she’s been getting her experience in on the IBU Cup and showing nice growth. Last season she finished 37th on that level, coming in two places ahead of teammate Vinklárková. In her 20 IBU Cup races last season she had 16 top 40’s, 9 top 30’s, and a very good five top 20’s. Otcovská had the SIX best finishes of her career and just missed her first top 10 when she finished 11th in the Obertilliach Pursuit. That was a great race for the Czechia team as you remember Vinklárková also had her first career podium in that race.

One thing that I don’t mention that often but is worth discussing here particularly due to her age is her summer biathlon performance. In the Czechia summer championships she won the bronze medal in the Sprint and followed that up with a 4th place finish in the Pursuit.

So far in her career she hasn’t proven to be a great shooter or a great skier. She’s merely been pretty good at both. That can be a really good thing because there is no weakness! At this early point in her career it also means that she hasn’t shows a strength yet. Last season on the IBU Cup she finished 38th in skiing and 39th in shooting as she hit 84% prone, 72% standing, and 78% total. That was a nice improvement from 72.4% total hit rate the season prior. Her average shooting of 30.2 seconds was actually good enough for 8th best on the IBU Cup, just behind Vinklárková at 29.9 seconds.

In the battle for the 5th spot Otcovská gets the first opportunity to prove she can hold it. Regardless of what level she’s racing on this season, though, we’re going to hopefully see Otcovská come through with broad improvement. Shooting taking another step forward with a total hit rate into the low 80s or higher would be exceptional. Considering where she was two years ago, that would constitute a very solid improvement. That, plus another improvement in skiing would be expected as she is just 24 years old. All of that would put her near the performance of Lea Rothscopf who finished 20th Overall on the IBU Cup in just 18 races and battled her way to the World Cup where the she had three top 40’s. I think the Czechia group would be more than happy with that season from Kristýna Otcovská.

The IBU Cup…and World Cup? These athletes will start out the season on the IBU Cup. However, should Otcovská or even Jislova or Charvatova not perform up to the appropriate level, then there would be an opening for one of these women to jump up pretty quickly. They just need to keep proving themselves as the season gets underway! We’ll discuss both the season opening IBU Cup roster plus a few other women we expect to be there.

IBU Cup Roster:
– Tereza Vinklarkova
– Katerina Pavlu
– Svatava Mikyskova
– Eliska Sibravova

Tereza Vinklárková (25)

The second Tereza of this Czechia team, Tereza Vinklárková comes into this season with a bit of an odd career. She’s usually splitting time between levels which has limited her ability to race consistently on any level. Lots of movement up and down. The most she’s run on the World Cup was seven in the 2021-2022 season.

Last season she ran 13 on the IBU Cup along with four on the World Cup. She started out the season on the World Cup and over the first trimester had finishes of 70th, 91st, 75th, and 76th. Back on the IBU Cup her performance was steady. She had 12 top 40’s in those 13 races, but just one top 10 which was a podium finish 3rd place Pursuit race in Obertilliach. To be fair that was her first career top 10 and her first career podium! It was also a VERY good race as she bounced back from 19th place. But again, that was her only top 10 of the season. However, at the end of the year she finished 39th on the IBU Cup which is her best ever Overall finish on the IBU Cup and another consistent step forward as she’s moved up from 61st to 54th to that 39th.

It’s a bit difficult to nail down exactly what Tereza Vinklárková’s style of biathlon is in just a few sentences. She’s a decent skier. Vinklárková made her big improvement two seasons ago and since then, on the IBU Cup, she’s been able to get her average course time rank up to 28.7 last year. On the World Cup level there hasn’t been a noticeable change as she continues to finish much further back. Her shooting is inconsistent, usually between the mid 70’s to as high as the low 80’s in total shooting. Interestingly she usually is better in shooting prone or standing but it isn’t consistent as to which is her better area.

For Vinklárková to take over the 5th spot on the World Cup on a routine basis then she needs to show a jump in the ski speed this season. If she can move from an average ski rank in the 70’s to even 50’s or low 60’s that would put her in range of Lora Hristova or Lena Repinc. If she can hit in the low 80’s that’s good enough for Vinklárková to race competitively on the top circuit. As was noted above she isn’t consistent with her shooting, but the point is she doesn’t have to do any better than she has proven already that she can do. She just needs to do it.

Katerina Pavlu (21)

After a successful 2022-2023 season that saw Katerina Pavlu get her first Juniors podium she found a new type of success in the 23-24 season with her first IBU Cup top 20. And while she didn’t have a podium on the Juniors level she last year she did have another top 10 with a 7th in the Junior European Individual race to go along with six top 25 races. That added level of consistency brought her average finishing place up just a couple of places year over year to 21.9.

Last year she was just a little bit faster on the Juniors level as she had an average course time rank of 28.8 vs. 30.4 the year prior. And she was just a touch closer to the top 10 in terms of ski speed as well. Importantly she continued to be a very good shooter with a total hit rate of 88.6% including 91.4% standing. Even in her five IBU Cup races last year she was still able to hit 88.8%.

Pavlu is already a very good shooter. She doesn’t need to improve any there to be competitive. She’s just 21 years old and she’s already got one aspect as good as she will ever need it to be. The tricky part not is keeping it there while also adding ski speed. Let’s hope we see that improvement in the next few years because she could be a lot of fun to watch!

Svatava Mikyskova (21)

The 21 year old Svatava Mikyskova came off of a very full year of racing in the 2022-2023 season and ran just seven races across the Juniors and IBU Cup. She ran four Juniors races in which she finished 27th, 21st, and 40th followed by a silver medal in the Mass 60 at the Junior European Championships. She then went to the IBU Cup races in Arber where she finished 52nd, 50th, and 50th.

On the Juniors level Mikyskova had a very nice improvement year over year in skiing. Her average course time rank improved from 38th to 27th. Meanwhile her shooting percentage rose from 81% to 83.3%. With only three IBU Cup races there isn’t really enough to look at there for comparison.

Svatava Mikyskova has one last season of Juniors eligibility but I with her starting out on the IBU Cup it may be that she will return to the Juniors simply for Junior European Championships and Junior Worlds.

Eliska Sibravova (22)

Even without much of a prior IBU racing history Eliska Sibravova has earned a position on the IBU Cup team to start the 2024-2025 season. She ran just two Juniors races last season and finished 68th and 61st. It’s hard to glean too much from two races. Meanwhile the Czechia coaches aren’t telling us anything from the races that took place in Finland. You have to believe, though, that she must have shown well to have earned a spot already!

Veronika Novotná (21)

Veronika Novotná deserves inclusion as she was listed on the National team roster and specifically not the Juniors roster. She so far has just 22 races in her IBU biathlon career. Last year she ran five more Juniors races with a best finish of 13th in the Junior European Individual race and the rest of her finishes between 24 and 46. She also ran the first six events on the IBU Cup calendar with all finishes between 39th and 76th but was improving with almost every race. She also finished 7th in both the Sprint and the Pursuit at the Czechia summer biathlon national championships.

It might be a little unfair to expect too much from a 20 year old on the IBU Cup level. We do see some spectacular 20-22 year olds on the IBU Cup but usually those are the ones who are going on to very good World Cup careers. That’s not to say that Novotná won’t do that. However, we’re just going to start with focus on the IBU Cup because it is the easiest to compare to the other two women on this list.

In those six races she ran on the IBU Cup last season she was 86th in skiing and hit 72.5% total shots, with much better prone shooting than standing, and with an average shooting time of 36.7 seconds. In the Juniors races she was 8th in skiing in the Junior European Individual race. After that her course time ranks were 24-38. In those races she hit 80% with 90% prone and 70% standing.

It’s probably too much to expect for Novotná to make a push for the World Cup this season. However, the Czechia team has seen enough to put her on their national team roster and not the Juniors squad. I would expect that we see a similar split this season from her, starting on the IBU Cup and then going to the Juniors for the major competitions of the season. So far the strength is the prone shooting. The standing shooting can improve as well so hopefully we see her hitting in the low to potentially mid 80’s. That would be good for this stage of the career. More importantly to me, though, will be seeing her skiing improve. Last season her average course time rank on the IBU Cup was 57.7. Hopefully we see that take a very nice step forward. The other two women on this list were 28.7 and 31.2. That’s where I would want to see Novotná next season. If she can do that she should be able to put up the kind of season at age 21 that Vinklárková and Otcovská did last season.

Eliska Vaclavikova (25)

Over the last several years Eliska Vaclavikova has run a handful of races on the World Cup, but she’s primarily spent her time on the IBU Cup. Last season she raced full time on the IBU Cup without a single World Cup race for the first time since the 2019-2020 season. It was really was a really not a season to remember for the 25 year old as she had just a single top 30 finish and only 3 top 40’s in 21 races. Finishing at 116 in the IBU Cup Overall it was her least successful season to date.

While she saw improved shooting time and mildly improved shooting accuracy there was a significant deterioration in her skiing. Vaclavikova’s average course time rank fell from 31st to 51st which was her worst in three seasons. This came as she also saw a big improvement in her standing shooting that brought her shooting percentage back up to 76.6%, the second best of her career.

After the slip in performance she has been left off of the national team roster for the upcoming season. More than likely she will still see significant time on the IBU Cup. I don’t know enough about her to know if she had a nagging injury last season that led to the slide in her ski form. Hopefully that is the case and she’s able to come back to this season in full health. If she can she has a chance to get back to her previous performance regularly in the top 30 or even the top 20.

Junior and Up and Comers

Just in case you happen to tune in to a few Juniors races this season and see some Czechia flags I wanted to give you something to look at to help you know a little bit more about them!

Heda Mikolasova (18)

The very young Heda Mikolasova ran her first races of her IBU career last year and had some excellent success. In eight races last year she had three top 10’s including the first podium of her career, 3rd place in the Junior European Individual to go along with 7th in the Youth Worlds Individual and 9th in the Youth Worlds Sprint.

Her performance thus far has been elevated by her tremendous ski strength. Last season in her first two races she had course time ranks of 23 and 20. In the final six races of her season, though, the worst course time rank was no worse than 7th. The only reason she didn’t have an even more successful year last season was her shooting. She hit 72.7% of her shots including 78.2% prone and 67.3% standing.

She’s very early in her career, but definitely worth keeping an eye on. Just 18 years old with very nice ski speed. If she can get the shooting to come along over the next few seasons she could have a very nice Juniors career and could start seeing some IBU Cup run sooner rather than later.

Ilona Plechacova (17)

At just 17 years old Ilona Plechacova already has run 16 Juniors races over the last two seasons with 11 coming in the 2022-2023 season and five more in the 2023-2024 season. She came into last season following a year in which she four top 10’s including 6th and 4th in the Youth Worlds Sprint and Pursuit races. Last season she followed that up with a silver medal in the Youth Worlds Individual and a 10th in the Youth Worlds Pursuit.

Plechacova did that even with a slip in performance across the board. She’s still incredibly young so hopefully she has a great season with a step forward in every aspect of the sport!

Katerina Gotvaldova (20)

After another season of splitting time between the Junior and IBU Cup levels Katerina Gotvaldova had some successes worth celebrating. On the Juniors she had two top 20’s. On the IBU Cup she also scored two top 20’s, twice 16th, for her best finishes of the IBU Cup career.

Looking at the statistics from her IBU Cup races you can see a solid improvement in her skiing as she went from 2.4% slower than median biathlete up to the exact median in terms of ski speed. Her shooting showed a nearly 10% improvement in hit rate going up from 72.5% to 81.1%. Similar improvements can also be seen in her Juniors levels as well.

For the 2024-2025 season let’s see if we can have some similar improvement in Juniors and IBU Cup racing this season. Maybe she can crack the top 10 on the IBU Cup!

Valerie Krizova (18)

Coming off of a solid debut on the Juniors level in the 2022-2023 season that included finishing 19th, 11th, and 12th at Youth Worlds Valerie Krizova didn’t quite see the same level of success last year. Last year she ran five races and finished 60th and 52nd followed by a Youth Worlds where she finished 61st, 50th, and 33rd. It was a bit of a step back but she was just 17 and 18 years old last season so still exceedingly young.

In her debut season Krizova showed very good ski speed and solid shooting but she just wasn’t able to replicate it last year. However, 2024-2025 is a new season so hopefully she can find that success again!

Miroslava Cervena (19)

Miroslava Cervena ran just three races last season in her IBU debut. She raced three races at Youth Worlds and finished 36th, 17th and 12th. It’s pretty silly to try to glean too much from just three races but she did seen to run pretty well including a course time rank of 4th in the Youth Worlds Pursuit race. Let’s see what else we can see out of Miroslava Cervena this season.

Anna Matejkova (18)

Just like Miroslava Cervena, Anna Matejkova made her IBU debut last season and ran three races all of which were at Junior European Championships. She finished 59th, 49th, and 48th displaying decent skiing with some shaky shooting. However, as we stated above, it’s a little silly to try to make declarations from just three races. Hopefully we see more racing from Ms. Matejkova this year.

Agatha Moskova (19)

It’s a similar story with Agatha Moskova where she ran just three races last year, all of which were Youth Worlds. She fininshed 24th, 54th, and 47th. She actually did shoot very fast relative to the other youths as she averaged just over 30 seconds per shoot. For 19 year olds that’s pretty good. I’ll be curious to see if she can improve on that and her shooting accuracy this season.

Lucie Janurova

Lucie Janurova joins the Czechia juniors team this season. We’ll see what happens with her as she hopefully makes her debut this season!

Men The Czechia men will start the 2024-2025 season led by Michal Krcmar, by far their most experienced vet. However, the new generation of Czechia men, starting with Jakub Stvrtecky down through Tomas Mikyska and Jonas Marecek area all taking strides. I anticipate this season will be a season of growth as new coaches help shape what will be the next wave of Czech biathlon.

Coaches: Michael Malek and Ondrej Moravec

Quota to Start: 5 Athletes

The World Cup

The Czechia men will be running five men each week of the World Cup. There are four men who have a leg up on starting spots for every week. It would be a pretty big surprise if these men, barring injury or illness, aren’t present for every week of competition in the 2023-2024 season. They will be joined by Vítezslav Hornig to start off the year.

Season Opening World Cup Roster:
– Michal Krcmar
– Jakub Stvrtecky
– Jonas Marcek
– Tomas Mikyska
– Vítezslav Hornig

Michal Krcmar (33)

Old Czechia World Cup stalwart turned in another solid season in 2023-2024 as he finished 28th Overall in the World Cup. It was his ninth straight season with a top 10 result and top 30 Overall finish in the World Cup standings. Unfortunately, though, that single top 10 was tied for his least most in that nine year stretch and he had his fewest top 20’s since 2014-2015. So was it a fluke year or a the start of a decline as he hits latter half of his career?

Looking at his statistics he actually maintained his skiing quite well showing no significant drop off in the last decade. His average course time rank of 25.8 was is basically unchanged besides a spike in his performance in the 2022-2023 season. For Krcmar last year’s decline was more related to his shooting. His shooting dropped down to 83.3% and his shooting time slowed just a little bit as well.

Michal Krcmar has given us no reason to think that his performance is about to fall off a cliff. In fact the only warning sign can’t be found in his recent performance but rather from earlier this summer when the new coaching staff noted that he didn’t respond as well to the increased training load as the younger athletes did. I still believe that when the seasons starts we’ll see similar performances from Krcmar as we have the last several years. Hopefully that leads to him finishing once again in the top 30 of the Overall with a few top 10’s and more top 20’s.

Jakub Stvrtecky (25)

I can’t help but feel like Jakub Stvrtecky is walking right around the edges of a career breakthrough. Over the last five seasons there has been no appreciable change in his his World Cup Overall ranking ranging anywhere from 44th to 59th. It didn’t come last season as he was unable to build off of his three top 20’s and first career top 10 in 2022-2023, but I remain optimistic.

In his last couple of years Stvrtecky has shown good improvement in his skiing. He finished 13th in skiing in the 2022-2023 season and had an average course time rank of 18.6. Last year he slipped back just a touch to 23rd in skiing with an average course time rank of 28.3. Being just 25 years old I believe that we can hope to see that ski performance take another step forward once again. f he can return to top 10-15 in skiing that would put him where Eric Perrot was last season. That is more than good enough to compete. It’s all about his shooting where he has been stuck in the mid to low 70’s for the last several years. While that’s still an improvement from where he started his career, he needs to find a way to get that to the 80’s if we want to see the best of Jakub Stvretecky.

Do we get that this season? I sure hope so. He had a very good summer including winning the Summer Worlds Sprint gold medal. The path forward is clear, but that doesn’t make it easy. Get back to where he was skiing two seasons ago and start taking the next steps towards improving his shooting. Do that and he can start progressing from the middle of the World Cup pack towards the top 20-30 range.

Tomas Mikyska (24)

The 2023-2024 season was a tough one for Tomas Mikyska. After showing tremendous potential at the 2023 Summer World Championships, he dislocated his knee on the last day of that competition. As a result he was out of competition until Oberhof. He ended up racing the Sprint in Oberhof, the Short Individual in Antholz, all of the Nove Mesto Worlds, and the Individual in Oslo before ending his season early.

Even in that brief bit of racing Mikyska proved why we should be excited for him. Five of those races he finished top 40 including finishing 10th in the Individual in front of his home crowd at Worlds that got him into the Mass Start. Mikyska has very high potential. In his brief career he’s already showing that his skiing can be quite good. He also has solid shooting averaging 86.7% in his first year of World Cup racing and 85% in his seven races last year. Meanwhile he’s done this while already having an average shooting time of 26.7 seconds.

Mikyska has very high potential. He is part of this core with Jakub Stvretecky and Jonas Marecek who are in place to bring the Czechia men into their next generation. He had another good showing in the Summer Worlds including bronze in the Super Sprint and 5th in the Mass Start. All indications are that Mikyska is going to be able to put together another solid effort this season. Assuming that he can stay healthy we will hopefully see another good shooting season with another step forward in shooting speed. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see him put up a few more top 20’s and hopefully even a top 10 or two. His talent is very real and I’ll remain quite hopeful on him.

Jonas Marecek (23)

The third member of this young World Cup core is Jonas Marecek. The 2023-2024 season saw him set a new career best of 28th along with five top 40’s. At the end of the season that led him to an Overall rank of 64th. One good sign of his improvement was that he went from qualifying for two Pursuit races in 2022-2023 two six in 2023-2024. It’s a good indication of a general rise in consistency in his performance.

The big improvement for Marecek was in his skiing. He moved from 79th in skiing up to 49th. His average course time rank went up from 68.6 to 45.3. That was the big driver of his performance last year. Otherwise his shooting actually regressed just a little bit. His hit rate went from 85.9% down to 82.1% and he actually shot a touch slower averaging 28.9 seconds last season after a brisk 26.3 seconds in 2022-2023.

Throughout his career Marecek has had inconsistent shooting, but the general progression is better. If he can regain some or even all of the shooting accuracy he lost a little bit of last season that alone would help boost him a little bit. And if he can gain a little ski speed as you would expect a 23 year old would be able to do, especially after the improvement he saw last season, it would boost him even further. Put those two things together and you get something near a top 30-40 Overall ranking. One good sign in his direction is he scored a silver medal in the Summer Worlds Mass Start. Also he apparently finished 2nd in the Czechia test races which included the Germans and Americans. That’s a pretty good start to the season and it indicates a higher ceiling for him this season!

Vitezslav Hornig (25)

For the first time in his young career, the 2023-2024 season saw Vitezslav Hornig spend more time on the World Cup (11 races) than the IBU Cup (8 races). In his 11 World Cup races Hornig scored his first career top 40 in a season of consistent racing. All of his finishes were between 40th and 67th with an average finish of 52nd. He didn’t join the World Cup until the start of the 2nd Trimester in Oberhof. In those four weekends of racing he qualified for every Pursuit race. The only week he didn’t race the Pursuit was the World Championships when he ran the Individual but did not race the Sprint, so he was not able to qualify for the Pursuit. Long story short, it Hornig displayed a steady performance with a relatively low ceiling but a high floor.

Meanwhile, on the IBU Cup where he spend the first trimester of the 2023-2024 season he had seven top 20’s in eight races. This matched the same level of racing that he had in the 22-23 season.

Hornig has proven to be an exceptional shooter. Above when we mentioned the hard floor that he had last year, it was the shooting that provided that floor. He hit 90.6% of his shots on the World Cup last year including 92.2% prone and 88.9% standing. That was good enough for 4th on the World Cup. His skiing rank, though, was only 80th, with an average course time rank of 65th.

Hornig’s pathway to the World Cup is clearly through his rifle. He has a shooting talent that nobody else on the Czech team can match at the moment. If Hornig can find a way to keep making progress with his skiing that is going to just keep raising that floor and especially raising the ceiling of his performance. His average course time rank has improved almost every season on the IBU Cup and the World Cup. It seems a good bet that he should at least be a little faster next season too. Every little bit helps!

Rounding out the World Cup and the IBU Cup

While Hornig gets the first crack at the World Cup spot, more thatn likely it will be a rotation of men. The rest of the time they will be fighting hard on the IB Cup. This is a pretty big collection of men and it will be fascinating to see what direction the new Czechia coaches go. Do they lean towards youth? Or go with whomever is performing best?

IBU Cup Roster to start:
– Adam Vaclavik
– Ludek Abraham
– Mikulas Karlik

Adam Vaclavik (30)

Adam Vaclavik has been splitting time between the IBU Cup and the World Cup over the last several decade or so. Last season, though, he ran 14 races on the IBU Cup, the most in his career, and just six on the World Cup, the fewest he’s run on the top level since the 2018-2019 season. It’s one of those things, when you have young talented athletes coming up somebody else has to either retire or move aside for them to get run on the World Cup. Unfortunately for Vacalvik he had to be one of the ones to move aside.

He raced decently on the IBU Cup finishing 26th Overall there. While he was on the World Cup his average finish was 49.2 which was the second best of his career. He had the second best average course time rank of his World Cup career at 27, and he hit 75% which was the best of his career. It just wasn’t quite enough to merit staying on the World Cup full time so when Tomas Mikyska returned healthy there just wasn’t room for Adam Vaclavik.

Back on the IBU Cup he didn’t quite race the same way that might have been expected. His World Cup statistics from 2023-2024 were quite close to the 2022-2023 season. When he raced on the IBU Cup in 2022-2023 he had an average course time rank of 5.9 and an average finish of 13.7 so it would be expected that he would replicate that performance. In four fewer IBU Cup races in 22-23 vs. 23-24 he scored 47 more points. His average finish on the IBU Cup dropped from 13.7 to 27.7. He ran slower with the lowest ski rank of his IBU Cup career so even though he still hit 75% his finishes dropped.

Vaclavik faces an uphill battle to return to consistent World Cup starts. In his favor he has the history and his recent performance on the World Cup just last year was still near his career best. There is an open position and if he performs at that level he could stay there. However, also against him is his age. It may be that the Czechia coaches prefer to give more run to the younger members of the squad. Regardless I’ll be rooting for him.

Ludek Abraham (22)

Speaking of young men who are fighting to get that last World Cup position there is Ludek Abraham. At just 22 years old he would be one of the younger World Cup men even on a young roster. Last season Abraham spent most of the season on the IBU Cup, racing just four times on the Junior level. In those four Juniors races he finished 5th in the Junior European Individual followed by finishes of 36th, 8th, and 14th at Junior Worlds. On the IBU Cup he raced weekends 1-3, the European Championships, and the last weekend of the season. In those 13 races he had six top 30’s, three top 20’s and his first career IBU Cup top 10 on the way to finishing 42nd Overall.

Abraham, at just 21 years old, showed decent ski speed. He finished 41st in skiing on the IBU Cup with an average course time rank of 32.5. He was held back a bit by his shooting though, as he hit just 73.5% with even splits and averaged just 33.9 seconds per shoot. That means that he has plenty of room for improvement as he heads into his age 22 season.

It is more than likely that Ludek Abraham will spend the majority of his season on the IBU Cup. He’s very young but he has shown good ski speed on the Junior levels. Last year, looking at just his four races, his average course time rank of 6.8 ranked 4th best. That should show his potential. This season will hopefully show him building on that potential as well as improving his shooting as well.

Mikulas Karlik (25)

In the 2023-2024 season Mikulus Karlik split his time exactly evenly with nine races each between the IBU Cup and the World Cup. While on the IBU Cup he had 2 top 20’s and 4 top 30’s while on the World Cup he had one top 40. He had a season’s best of 36th in the Ostersund Pursuit following a 41st in the Sprint. That was really the high point of the World Cup season for him.

For Karlik the last two seasons have been on a downward decline. He had his best World Cup racing in the 20-21 and 21-22 seasons. He’s seen a decline in his skiing since then. He dropped from 2.7% slower than the median top 10 to 5.3% slower than median top 10. Correspondingly his average course time dropped from 27.5 to 44.3. Meanwhile his shooting hasn’t improved staying stuck in the low 70’s.

For Karlik to take advantage of his opportunity it’s fairly obvious what he needs to do. He needs to reverse the fall in his skiing and significantly improve his shooting. He’s still young so even if it takes him another year or two on the IBU Cup to get this done he still has time to find himself back on the World Cup. For now let’s hope that we see him moving back in a positive direction.

David Elias (19)

David Elias is by far the youngest man in this particular list. At just 19 he is listed on the Czechia Juniors roster and for good reason. The chances that he actually races on the World Cup are low. However, he had a very good run this summer so it can’t be entirely ruled out. Last season was his first IBU season and he spent it entirely on the Junior level. In 10 races he had two top 10’s including a 6th in the very first raceof his Juniors career. At Youth Worlds he finished 53rd in the Individual, 13th in the Sprint, and 47th in the Mass 60.

He followed that up with a very good summer of racing including at Summer Worlds winning gold in the Junior Super Sprint, 8th in the Sprint, and 7th in the Pursuit. He then won the Czechia Summer Biathlon Juniors Sprint and was 5th in the Senior level Pursuit.

Elias showed some decent ski potential last season including finishing 9th in course time at the Youth Worlds in the Sprint. He shot at a 73.6% with fairly even splits. The reason he was included here was primarily based on the progression he showed this summer. If that continues I’ll be curious to see what will happen with him this season. It would be stunning to see him go all the way to the World Cup but I can’t rule it out. Let’s see how things go this season!

Ondrej Manek (23)

The 23 year old Ondrej Manek has shown his best racing throughout his career at Youth/Junior Worlds. Of his 10 Juniors top 10’s five of them have come at Youth or Junior Worlds. Unfortunately last season he aged out of the Juniors last season. In his first complete IBU Cup season he raced 14 times with 4 top 40’s and a single top 30.

Throughout his young career he’s proven to have good shooting with a little below average skiing. Last year was actually a step back for his shooting as he hit just 81.4%. That was a little below the 82.7% in seven IBU Cup performances the prior year and consistently shooting mid to high 80’s on the Juniors level.

For Manek to take the next step he needs to take a solid step forward with his skiing while also rediscovering his shooting. While that will probably mean that he is able to find more success on the IBU Cup, it may actually mean that he has a chance at finding a few World Cup starts. If he’s able to do that on the IBU Cup, though, he’ll be able to make a significant jump up the IBU Cup Overall rankings towards Patrick Jacob’s IBU Cup performance which led him to be ranked 34th Overall.

Josef Kabrda (23)

It is unclear if Josef Kabrda will be racing this season. He did not race last season in any IBU races. I didn’t see anything about him retiring but it is possible. His instagram account of private as well but the bio still lists him as a biathlete. I guess we’ll see!

This is what I wrote last year prior to the season. It may not be entirely accurate anymore but I’m pasting it here:

Josef Kabrda enters the 2022-2023 season with just one year left of Junior Cup eligibility but it’s unclear if he’ll use it as he was already up to the IBU Cup as of last season. Kabrda didn’t have the most heralded Juniors career with a career best finish there of 10th and most of his finishes in the 30-50s range. He started making IBU Cup starts a couple years ago, peaking with eight starts there last season. So far he’s finishing primarily in the 40-60 range.

As a biathlete Kabrda is a bit stronger with his shooting than his skiing. However it’s hard to say that either is a strength at this early point of his career. However, last year he did hit 80% of his shots which was the best for him at any level. He usually runs at least 10 points better on his prone than his standing including last season hitting 87.3% prone (the best of any type of shooting at any level of his career) and 72.7% standing. So that’s certainly something to build off of. Last year he finished 88th on the IBU Cup in skiing. So his two obvious areas to work on: Standing shooting getting closer to prone shooting, and a tad bit faster. Those are his next two check points to meet!

Junior and Up and Comers

Just in case you happen to tune in to a few Juniors races this season and see some Czechia flags I wanted to give you something to look at to help you know a little bit more about them!

Petr Hak (21)

Thus far in his early career Petr Hak has only ever raced on the Junior Cup. Last season he ran 11 races and accumulated enough point to finish 20th in the Overall standings. That included a 5th place Individual in the season opening races in Pokljuka and one more top 10. Against the best at Junior Worlds he finished 33, 23, and 18. The highlight of his Juniors career right now is his silver medal in the 2023 Junior European Championships Sprint.

Hak is so far a fairly well rounded biathlete. His average course time last year was 19.5. That was a pretty good representation of how well he raced on the skis last year. In the 2021-2022 season his average course time was actually 2.7 which may have raised our excitement just a touch too much. However, he has had pretty good skiing at times since then. His peak skiing since then has taken him near the top 10 in course time rank, it just isn’t a regular occurence. His shooting though has been steadily improving form the low 70’s up to 84% last season including 93% prone and 74% standing and an average shooting time of 35.4.

Hak still has one more year of Juniors racing. I’m sure that we’ll see plenty of him on the Juniors level. However, I would be curious to see how he would compete on the IBU Cup especially if he can ski vs. the competition like he did early in his career. That in addition to his rapidly improving shooting could make him quite competitive.

Ferdinand Jansa (19)

19 year old Ferdinand Jansa has run 10 solo races in his Juniors career but only two of them were last season. He ran both races in Ridnaun-Val Ridanna and finished 29th in the Sprint and 23rd in the Super Sprint. The year before he ran eight races with a season’s and career best of 12th in the Junior European Championships Sprint as well as three finishes on the 20’s at Youth Worlds. Overall Jansa usually shoots in the 70-80% range with course time ranks generally in the 20’s. It is clearly enough to give him a chance and if he can clean up the shooting just a touch and be just a little faster he could find himself in the top 10 once or twice this season, particularly at Youth Worlds.

Jan Gregor (20)

Jan Gregor started off his IBU Juniors career with good success at the 2022 Youth Worlds when he finished 9th, 10th, and 28th. After no IBU racing in the 2022-2023 season he returned last year and showed us some mixed results with four top 20’s including a 6th place Individual race in Jakuszyce as well as a couple of finishes outside the top 40. At Junior Worlds last season he finished 21st, 17th, and 44th. Gregor has looked a lot like Jansa with course time ranks generally in the 20’s and shooting averaging to 76% with even prone/standing splits. Gregor will be in the Juniors level again this year and will hopefully be able to raise his level just a little bit across the board.

Daniel Malusek (20)

In the 2023-2024 season Daniel Malusek made his IBU Cup debut with four races at the end of the season including a 22nd in the final Mass 60 of the year in Obertilliach. Prior to that he raced four weekends on the Juniors level, all of the regular Juniors Cup events in addition to the Junior European Championships. In those nine races he three top 20’s with most of his finishes being in the 40’s. Malusek’s statistics didn’t show any major year over year progression as he didn’t show any improvement in speed and his shooting fell from 86.3 to 76.9%. However, the 22nd in the Obertilliach Mass 60 was a great way to finish the season and surely gave him good feelings going into the summer. Hopefully he’s been able to carry that through!

Ondrej Jiranek (19)

Ondrej Jiranek has now raced parts of three seasons on the Junior level and last year started the first two IBU Cup races of his career. In these early days of his career he secured a single top to end last season and then started this season with another. Other than that though the majority of his Juniors races have seen finishes scattered between the 30’s and 50’s. Jiranek so far has looked a little slower than Jansa and Gregor with similar shooting usually in the 70-80% range. He’s still quite young so hopefully 2024-2025 is another season of growth!

Jiri Blaha (20)

In the 2023-2024 season Jiri Blaha scored his first career IBU level races as he ran 11 solo races on the World Cup level. He hit a career best of 11th in the Individual at the Junior European Championships. Otherwise his finishes were scattered inconsistently from as high as 20th down to 70th. Similarly his ski ranks were inconsistent from a season’s best of 29th down to a nadir or 76th as was his shooting where he hit 100% twice, 60% once, and nearly every possible shooting outcome in between. For whatever we see from Blaha this coming season, the most I want is some consistency. Hopefully that’s consistently high performance too!