World Cup biathlon returns!!! And this week the biathlon family will be returning to one of its normal kick off locations, Kontiolahti! This is our first time visiting Kontiolahti since the opening weekend of the 2022-2023 season. That week we saw the first signs that maybe Johannes Thingnes Bø was in pretty good shape as he won the Sprint and the Pursuit. It was just a sign of things to come. We also saw Julia Simon win the Pursuit that week, the first of what would become four wins and a fairly dominant Overall Globe winning season.
When I think of Kontiolahti I always think of how lovely the fans are. There is something that almost feels like a youth event where the fans are so overwhelmingly supportive of pretty much everybody. The range always feels so cozy and the fans just seem genuinely happy to be out there supporting the biathletes.
Unfortunately the first thing that we’ve seen from the teams as they’ve started training in Kontiolahti is that it doesn’t look like winter at all. The weather is warm and foggy at least to start the week. It’s actually supposed to be a little warmer and maybe rainy this weekend as the races get underway. The hope is that a small cold front will at least bring colder weather and maybe a little snow later in the week. That’s the hope anyway. It sort of feels like this is just the way things are with biathlon as we go forward. But I think that’s a discussion for another day.
Schedule:
– Saturday November 30: Single Mixed Relay (W+M) + Mixed Relay (W+M)
– Sunday December 1: Men 4×7.5km Relay + Women 4x6km Relay
– Tuesday December 3: Men 15km Short Individual
– Wednesday December 4: Women 12.5km Short Individual
– Friday December 6: Men 10km Sprint
– Saturday December 7: Women 7.5km Sprint
– Sunday December 8: Men 15km Mass Start + Women 12.5km Mass Start
I really like what the IBU is doing with the opening week now. It is basically like a small World Championships that opens the World Cup over a 9 day stretch of races. The only thing missing this season is a Pursuit race! The result is we get two full weekends and a full week of racing to satisfy our hunger for biathlon after the long long break!
Course Overview
-Stadium altitude: 120 meters
– Highest Altitude on Course: 128 meter
– Lowest Altitude on the Course 88 meters
– Stadium capacity: 15,000 spectators
– Course capacity: 6,000 spectators
Courses are listed above by length. The maps listed above:
– 1.5km: Single Mixed Relay
– 2km: Mixed Relay + Women’s Relay
– 2.5km: Men’s Relay + Women’s Short Individual + Women’s Sprint + Women’s Mass Start
– 3km: Men’s Short Individual + Men’s Mass Start
– 3.3km: Men’s Sprint
What’s funny about Kontiolahti is that while it is one of the more flat courses in biathlon with not a ton of elevation change in most courses, the thing that always stands out to me is the long climb in the middle. You can see it prominently in the course map for Sprints. Hopefully with the warmer weather the snow is able to be maintained on that slope!
Weather
This is the weather for Kontiolahti for the next week. It’s going to be rough for the first couple of days of competition. I really hope that this is accurate because that cold front and snow later in the week will be crucial to holding the course together, particularly with the Short Individuals on Tuesday and Wednesday.
For the first half of last season, whenever the weather was warm the Norwegians had a big wax advantage. As the season went on, though, that gapped really closed down. By the end the French were seemingly on level footing with wax and grinds and we saw some really good days from many other nations as well. It will be fascinating to see what the Wax Mafia has up their sleeves for this weekend. The first few days are when these men and women really earn their big bucks.
News and Notes
1)Illness and Injury: Unfortunately even in week one we already have several athletes who are going to be missing out:
– Lisa Vittozzi: Missing week 1 due to a back injury. The back injury appears to be better but she missed several weeks of training and is just trying to get her legs back before the season gets away from her. From the sound of things she’s feeling well and then plan is she returns closer to full strength in Hochfilzen
– Rebecca Passler: Made it almost to the team plane for the flight to Finland when she got sick. She will miss the week. The Italians already didn’t fill Vittozzi’s slot so now they are down two women for this week
– Linn Gestblom: We’ve probably all seen this but she is going to miss the entire season as she recovers from her 2nd shoulder surgery in two years. The shoulder surgery was in the spring of 2024 but it’s been a very long process
– Hanna Öberg: She has been sick and missed the selection races in Idre Fjaell and has been unsure about starting this week. Hopefully she is feeling full strength!
– Campbell Wright: Was sick once the team got to Finland for their last training camp. It took a bit for him to get better. He may be starting off on the back foot this week.
2) The French men have only brought four men to Kontiolahti to start: QFM, Emilien Jacquelin, Eric Perrot, and Fabien Claude. These men will make up the relay team. The IBU Cup is competing in Idre Fjaell this week. The best two performing men will join the team before the Short Individual and will be with the team the rest of the week and presumably in Hochfilzen as well. It’s an interesting strategy! We’ll see how it plays out.
3) The Norwegian commentariat has been up to their normal things. It seems like everybody possible from Bjørndalen to Eckhoff has had something to say about how JT Bø isn’t in focused, the team isn’t in shape, etc. This seems to be a yearly thing. I don’t take it too seriously until we actually see the races underway this week. For what it’s worth Ida Lien had one of the top course time in Idre Fjäll today which is about what we would expect. Not too terrible.
Recent History
Women’s Top 5 Finishers Last 5 Competitions
– Does not include retired or ineligible athletes
| Athletes | Finishes |
| Lisa Vittozzi | 🥈🥈🥉🥉🥉, 4, 4 |
| Hanna Öberg | 🥇🥇, 4, 5 |
| Dorothea Wierer | 🥇🥈🥈 |
| Julia Simon | 🥇🥇, 5 |
| Elvira Öberg | 🥉, 4 |
| Karolina Knotten | 🥉, 5 |
| Emma Lunder | 4, 5 |
| Lisa Theresa Hauser | 🥇 |
| Ingrid Landmark Tandrevod | 🥈 |
| Franziska Preuss | 🥈 |
| Yulia Dzhima | 4 |
| Vanessa Voigt | 4 |
| Marketa Davidova | 5 |
It is a real bummer that Lisa Vittozzi isn’t good to go for this competion. She has easily the most success at this venue of any of the active athletes. With how good she looked this summer an in-form Lisa Vittozzi could have dominated this season. She could have staked herself to a nice little lead in the Overall competition! However I was not at all surprised to see Hanna Öberg and Dorothea Wierer high on this list too. Also, how about Julia Simon getting her first career win here in March of 2020!
Men’s Top 5’s Finishers Last 5 Competitions
– Does not include retired or ineligible athletes
| Athlete | Finishes |
| Johannes Thingnes Bø | 🥇🥇🥇🥇🥈4, 4 |
| Emilien Jacquelin | 🥉🥉🥉,4, 5 |
| Quentin Fillon Maillet | 🥇🥇🥉, 4 |
| Sebastian Samuelsson | 🥈, 4, 5, 5 |
| Sturla Holm Laegreid | 🥇🥈🥈 |
| Vetle Sjåstad Christiansen | 4, 4, 5 |
| Martin Ponsiuloma | 🥇🥉 |
| Martin Ponsiluoma | 🥈 |
| Niklas Hartweg | 🥈 |
| Andrejs Rastorgujevs | 🥈 |
| David Zobel | 🥉 |
| Lukas Hofer | 🥉 |
| Johannes Kuehn | 🥉 |
| Jakov Fak | 5 |
| Tarjei Bø | 5 |
Surprise, surprise, JT Bø laps the field when it comes to wins in Kontiolahti. I was actually mildly surprised to see the French duo of QFM and Jacquelin to ahead of Laegreid and Christiansen. Also in my memory Sebastian Samuelsson had a better history here, but that’s the failure of memory!
Recent Memorable Moments
– March 2020: Kontiolahti was the last weekend of racing before biathlon, like the rest of the world, shut down. It served to be a bit of a strange farewell for Martin Fourcade who did what so few athletes are able to do, and went out on top with a victory in his last race. Yet it was JT Bø, who won the Sprint, and did just enough in the Pursuit, to take home the Overall Globe. On the women’s side Wierer finished 19th and 11th but had more than enough of a lead to take home her second Overall Globe as well. By the way, take a look at the top 5 for the last women’s race. Just five seasons ago but it feels like a different era. That, by the way, was Julia Simon’s first career victory.
– Julia Simon
– Selina Gasparin
– Lisa Vittozzi
– Kaisa Makarainen
– Monika Hojnisz-Starega
– February/March 2022: This was the first race after the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. It was also the first weekend after the Russian and Belarusian athletes had left the World Cup. It was great to see the amount of support that the athletes gave for their Ukrainian fellow competitors but it also just felt strange not to see the Russians and Belarusians there. It doesn’t really feel strange anymore though. Also this week Stina Nilsson made it to the podium and everybody lost their collective minds believing that she was going to take over the World Cup. She is now racing long distance cross country races. That’s not a shot at Stina Nilsson. In fact, it just goes to support the biathletes out there as this sport is really hard!
– November 2022 Men’s Individual: Niklas Hartweg immediately declares his intention to chase the u25 Globe (as it was at the time) by coming in 2nd place. He showed off his great shooting (20/20) as well as a new level of skiing we had never seen from him. While Tommaso Giacomel nearly won the globe, Hartweg pulled it out in Oslo.
– November 2022 JT Boe: It was a memorable weekend for two reasons. First, he started the season finishing 12th. That was the only time all season that he finished off the podium. I’m not kidding. That was the only race for the entire 23 race season that he finished off the podium. Of course he won the Sprint and the Pursuit and he was off!
– November 2022 Women’s Sprint: Lisa Vittozzi came in 2nd place. There were signs that Vittozzi had correct her shooting difficulties, but when she came in 2nd it felt like this enormous exuberant celebration. She had done it! She had fixed herself! At times it seemed impossible but she did it! This race was also interesting because Emma Lunder finished in 4th! It was the first of several top 10’s in her career best season!