Kontiolahti Recap

Biathlon is back!!! I think we all share the same feelings that the offseason of biathlon at times feels interminable. Summer biathlon season is a brief reprieve. Then you get to the fall and you’re hearing about the training. Suddenly there is racing in Sjusjoen and Idre Fjall and more and all of a sudden the season is here!

Not we’ve already had two full weekends of racing plus the Individual races in the middle of the week. It was an incredible week highlighted by some phenomenal performances and underdogs fighting their way into contention. So let’s take one more look at the racing in Kontiolahti before we move on to Austria!

The Winners – Top Performers of the Week

Nations Medal Table for the Week

Nation	Medals
France 🇫🇷	🥇🥇🥇🥇🥈🥈🥈🥈🥈
Sweden 🇸🇪	🥇🥇🥇🥈🥈🥈🥉🥉🥉
Norway 🇳🇴	🥇🥇🥈🥈🥉🥉🥉
Germany 🇩🇪	🥉🥉🥉
Czechia 🇨🇿	🥇
Finland 🇫🇮	🥉

Athlete Medal Table for the Week

Athlete	Medals
Elvira Oeberg 🇸🇪	🥇🥈🥉
Surla Holm Laegreid 🇳🇴	🥉🥉
Endre Stroemsheim 🇳🇴	🥇
Lou Jeanmonnot 🇫🇷	🥇
Emilien Jacquelin 🇫🇷	🥇
Marketa Davidova 🇨🇿	🥇
Eric Perrot 🇫🇷	🥇
JT Boe 🇳🇴	🥈
Ella Halvarsson 🇸🇪	🥈
Sebastian Samuelsson 🇸🇪	🥈
Quentin Fillon Maillet 🇫🇷	🥈
Julia Simon 🇫🇷	🥈
Philipp Nawrath 🇩🇪	🥉
Suvi Minkkinen 🇫🇮	🥉
Franziska Preuss 🇩🇪	🥉

Men’s Athlete of the Week: 🇫🇷 Emilien Jacquelin. The wins were spread out with three different winners for three different races. Actually only Sturla Holm Laegreid repeated a finish on the podium for the men. The moment of the weekend on the men’s side, though, was Emilien Jacquelin climbing the mountain once again and getting to the top for the first time since the 2022 Annecy-le Grand Bornand Mass Start, when he also last wore the Yellow bib. This win in Kontiolahti, coming off of the deep valley he had been in with his professed mental health struggles, and the clear ups and downs and ups last season, felt entirely cathartic. It really felt like the whole biathlon family wanted him to get this one!

Women’s Athlete of the Week: 🇸🇪 Elvira Oeberg. Was there any doubt? She finished on the podium each race while no other woman had more than one podium. She had some absolutely incredible ski speed. She finished on the podium in the Short Individual even with three misses. The next woman with three misses was her sister…in 25th. Elvira was actually just 56 sec back of the amazing Lou Jeanmonnot who was 20/20. In the Sprint she was 8/10 and finished 2nd between Davidova and Minkkinen who were both clean. The next woman with 2 misses was Justine Braisaz-Bouchet who was 32 seconds slower than Elvira. Then she closed out the weekend on top with a victory including going head to head with Julia Simon and coming out on top.

Men’s Young Athlete of the Week: 🇺🇸 Campbell Wright and 🇺🇦 Vitalii Mandzyn. Both Campbell Wright and Vitalii Mandzyn fired up the week with phenomenal 4th place finishes. Mandzyn did it in the Short Individual with a gorgeous 20/20. I may be biased but Campbell Wright’s was even more exciting. Part of that is because we’ve known him for so much longer and we’ve seen him dance just on the edges of the top 10 and now the podium. So when he went 10/10 it looked like he had a real chance to break through and find the podium for the first time and the first time for an American man since Lowell Bailey in 2017. These two men will lead the u23 competition out of Kontiolahti, and likely the rest of the season.

Women’s Young Athlete of the Week: 🇸🇪 Sara Andersson and 🇩🇪 Julia Tannheimer. Woo boy what a weekend for these two women. The 21 year old Sara Andersson finished 12th, 7th, and 13th. Those were all three her career best finishes and especially impressive the first top 10 of her World Cup career! Sara Andersson showed off some truly impressive shooting hitting 46/50 shots in those three races. 19 year old Julia Tannheimer started the weekend with just two previous World Cup races. She started out a little slow finishing 57th in the Short Individual but she rebounded so quickly with a 6th in the Sprint and 5th in the Mass Start. The 5th in the Mass Start was especially impressive as she came to the standing shootings in the back half of the field. But she had two steady and impressive 5/5 shoots in 26.0 and 25.3 seconds and moved herself up to 5th. Nails.

Men’s Race of the Week: Sprint. Well if the IBU wanted a proof point for why the new starting rules will benefit the fans, this is what they were looking for. Having the “big names” start midway through the race meant that there were already some recognizable names that had already finished. It’s just human nature that the first names and times that are up there you lock on to. And you know what it’s just relaly exciting when you see somebody coming along later in the ace who might have a chance to break into the top 10 or reach the podium! And then to have more and more fast times coming in! It was so exciting. Especially in this race where Vebjoern Soerum set a seemingly very good time that ended up being 8th. Then we had in short succession Campbell Wright in bib 49 seemed to have a podium level time only to be followed very closely by Jacquelin in bib 58, Philipp Nawrath in bib 60 and Sebastian Samuelsson in bib 62.

Women’s Race of the Week: Sprint. Look any time you have a podium that includes a beloved biathlete winning for the first time in several seasons, a top Overall contender, and a HUGE surprise, that’s going to likely be the race of the week! Marketa Davidova had shown good form in the relay races but she came out and looked so smooth in the Sprint while hitting 10/10. It was so amazing to see her climb back to the top of the podium the day after Emilien Jacquelin had a similarly cathartic win. Elvira Oeberg, as noted above, showed otherworldly speed, as she had two misses and still only finished 8 seconds from the win. Finally Suvi Minkkinen, just before her birthday, the day after Finnish Independence Day, thrilled the home crowd with her first career podium.

Super Sprints – A super quick hop through some top stories

Yellow Bib Updates

1.Men’s Top 5:

Athlete	Total Points (Points Back)
Eric Perrot 🇫🇷	165
Sturla Holm Laegreid 🇳🇴	164 (-1)
JT Boe 🇳🇴	159 (-6)
Emilien Jacquelin 🇫🇷	144 (-21)
Quentin Fillon Maillet 🇫🇷	136 (-29)

Just one week in so no surprise it is a very close race. But this is a VERY close race. Eric Perrot leading by just 1 point over Sturla Holm Laegreid and 6 points of JT Boe. Can’t get much closer than that! But that’s what happens when you have 8 different podium finishers across 3 races.

2.Women’s Top 5:

Athlete	Total Points (Points Back)
Elvira Oeberg 🇸🇪	230
Franziska Preuss 🇩🇪	170 (-60)
Lou Jeanmonnot 🇫🇷	151 (-79)
Marketa Davidova 🇨🇿	132 (-98)
Suvi Minkkinen 🇫🇮	126 (-104)

The complete opposite situation from the men as Elvira Oeberg has already jumped out to a 60 point lead. Last season it took until after the Sprint in Oberhof, the 9th races of the season, for a woman to have a 60 point lead. Now Lisa Vittozzi is out for two more weeks (at least). We don’t know when Tandrevold will return and in what manner she will be able to. Julia Simon appears to be building her way into shape and had the calf strain in Kontiolahti. Justine Braisaz-Bouchet showed a bit of shooting regression (but hopefully that bounces back!). Long story short, right now Lou Jeanmonnot and Franziska Preuss stand as the biggest challenges to Elvira. With Elvira’s current form, if she can hit 80+% she could stretch her lead out further this week.

3. 🇫🇮 Suvi Minkkinen’s Finnish Celebration –What an unbelievable weekend for the birthday girl. On the same weekend that she turned 30, and the same weekend as Finnish Independence Day, Suvi Minkkinen finished 10th in the Short Individual. That alone would have been good enough to celebrate. It was her 2nd career top 10…at the time. She followed that up with the unreal podium finish in the Sprint. Then she capped the weekend with a 11th in the Mass Start.

Suvi Minkkinen is showing a level of biathlon we have never seen from her before. She is always one of the top shooters on the World Cup and that was no different this weekend. She went 48/50! I mean that’s just unreal. However, the biggest thing for her was her skiing. Her ski ranks of 36, 15 and 16 in the three Kontiolahti races. 15 and 16 were the absolute best of her career. 36 would have been good before this season even! This is unreal though. I don’t know if the Finnish coaches nailed the offseason plan because Venla Lehtonen and Sonja Leinamo are skiing exceptionally as well. Maybe it falls apart but this is absolutely tremendous skiing and opens up and entirely new level for Suvi. She’s in the top 10 of the Overall. Maybe she won’t stay there all season but her career best Overall finish of 27 is absolutely in jeopardy!

4. 🇺🇸🇵🇱 US and Polish Relay Success –The US Men have now finished top 6 in three consecutive relays. That ties the longest stretch of top 6 finishes for the US men even. Just one more top 6 and they will have their best stretch and I think they can get it done in Hochfilzen!

It’s a similar story for Poland as well. They have two top 6 finishes in their last three relays. They haven’t had three in four since the 2009-2010 season.

The fun thing about these two teams is that it feels like they are just getting started. Both are being buoyed not by the men and women who are expected to be in the primes of their career. It’s actually been the young athletes like Maxime Germaine, Campbell Wright, Natalia Sidorowicz, and Joanna Jakiela who are leading the team. It feels like we can only hope that they are going to continue to get better over the next few years!!

5. Health Issues Dominate –Sadly it seems like one of the biggest stories this week was health and how it impacted the racing:
– 🇮🇹 Lisa Vittozzi missed the whole weekend with a back injury suffered in the preseason and we still don’t know when she’s coming back
– 🇫🇷 Julia Simon had a calf cramp that was bad enough to require an MRI between the relay races and the Short Individual. She rebounded for 2nd in the Mass Start but still doesn’t look quite right. But she has admitted she came into the season not quite in top form.
– 🇳🇴 Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold had a recurrence of her supraventricular tachycardia and will miss at least Hochfilzen. She was sure to reinforce to the fans that it is a benign condition.

6. IBU Cup Update –The first two weeks of IBU Cup racing are already complete from Idre Fjall and Geilo. We have a few standout stories already worth mentioning:
– 🇳🇴 Ida Lien didn’t make it to the World Cup roster and she immediately won the Sprint and Pursuit in Idre Fjall. She may have actually gotten the call up for Hochfilzen except it appears she hurt her back which led to the less than amazing finishes in Geilo. However, if she comes back healthy I expect we’ll see her on the World Cup next and not back on the IBU Cup.
– 🇳🇴 Norwegian men are dominating the Men’s IBU Cup right now. Isak Frey won twice in Idre Fjall and then once more in Geilo while Martin Uldal won twice in Geilo as well. The other race was won by, you guessed it, another Norwegian Sverre Aspenes. In total there have been 18 podium spots across both weekends and Norwegians have 16 of the podium finishes. Only Antonin Guigonnat (who moved to the World Cup after Idre Fjall) and Simon Kaiser (slated to move to the World Cup after Geilo) finished on the podium and weren’t from the Norwegian squad.
– 🇫🇷 French women continue to impress and will continue to provide upward pressure for the women on the World Cup. The French are carrying 7 bibs on the World Cup at present. Just cutting that 7 down to 6 is going to be difficult. Now Paula Botet has rediscovered her form with two wins, a second, a third, and a 4th already! Showing sensational ski speed she is easily the leader of the IBU Cup Overall at this time. But she’s not alone as Camille Bened (three podiums and a win) and a resurgent Chloe Chevalier (two podiums and four top 5’s) are sitting 2nd and 3rd in the IBU Cup Overall.

Flower Ceremony – We’ll recap some top finishes from the week!

2) 🇸🇪 Ella Halvarsson – Breakthrough of the weekend right here. She was a popular pick to be a breakthrough of the season but not sure that many people expected this (I can think of one!). She followed her 2nd in the Short Individual with a 24th in the Sprint and 19th in her first Mass Start.

3) 🇫🇮 Suvi Minkkinen – Prior career best was 8th from the Individual at the 2023 Worlds.

4) 🇺🇦 Vitalii Mandzyn – Easily beats out his 31st from the 23-24 Oberhof Sprint.

4) 🇺🇸 Campbell Wright – Two places better than his first trip to the Flower Ceremony, his 6th in the 23-24 Soldier Hollow Sprint.

4) 🇵🇱 Natalia Sidorowicz – 4th was a popular career best this weekend! Sidorowicz used her 20/20 shooting in the Short Individual to carry her to just 12 seconds off the podium! She beat our her previous career best of 14th from the 2024 Worlds Pursuit from Nove Mesto.

4) 🇩🇪 Danilo Riethmueller – Scored the third podium in his career with a 4th in the Mass Start. Before this he had a 7th in the Antholz Short Individual and 9th in the Canmore Sprint last season.

5) 🇩🇪 Julia Tannheimer – The German teenager score the first two top 10’s of her career in Kontiolahti with a 6th in the Sprint and 5th in the Mass Start. I have to imagine we’ll see this many many more times.

7) 🇸🇪 Sara Andersson – She used her perfect 10/10 to finish 7th in the Sprint, the first career top 10 for the young Swede. Before this her best finish was 16th in the 23-24 Ruhpolding Sprint.

8) 🇪🇪 Regina Ermits – Like Sidorowicz, she was carried through to her career best with perfect shooting in the Short Individual. Her 8th place just beat our her 12th from the 2024 Worlds Mass Start.

9) 🇧🇪 Thierry Langer – 33 year old Thierry Langer made the Top 10 in the Short Individual for the first time in his nearly 100 solo races. His previous best was 15th in the 20-21 Oestersund Sprint.

14) 🇸🇪 Anna-Karin Heijdenberg – The young Swede set her career best in the Short Individual but exactly 1 spot over her 15h place Sprint from Canmore last season.

16) 🇳🇴 Gro Randby – Her first weekend of racing her best finish was 16th in the Sprint!

20) 🇺🇸 Maxime Germaine – HUGE improvement from his previous career best of 45 in the 22-23 Oslo Pursuit.

23) 🇨🇭 Lea Meier – Lea Meier’s Short Individual performance just bumped out her prior career best of 24th by one position. She set her previous career best in the 22-23 Pokljuka Pursuit.

23) 🇧🇪 Maya Cloetens – A 23rd place Sprint was the best finish of her career thus far. This beats out her 33rd place Individual at the 23-24 Worlds.

27) 🇫🇮 Sonja Leinamo – She jumped her career best up from 47th in the Lenzerheide Sprint to 27th in the Kontiolahti Sprint.

32) 🇨🇿 Kristyna Otcovska – The Short Individual was just her 3rd career race but a significant improvement over prior career best of 62 from the 23-24 Soldier Hollow Sprint.