Hochfilzen Recap

The Winners – Top Performers of the Week

Nations Medal Table for the Week

Nation	Medals
Norway 🇳🇴	🥇🥇🥈🥈🥉🥉
France 🇫🇷	🥇🥇🥈🥈🥈🥉
Germany 🇩🇪	🥇🥇🥈🥉
Sweden 🇸🇪	🥉🥉

Athlete Medal Table for the Week

Athlete	Medals
Johannes Thingnes Boe 🇳🇴	🥇🥇
Franziska Preuss 🇩🇪	🥇🥉
Sturla Holm Laegreid 🇳🇴	🥈🥉
Lou Jeanmonnot 🇫🇷	🥇
Sophie Chauveau 🇫🇷	🥈
Emilien Jacquelin 🇫🇷	🥈
Vanessa Voigt 🇩🇪	🥈
Karoline Knotten 🇳🇴	🥉
Fabien Claude 🇫🇷	🥉

Men’s Athlete of the Week: JT Boe – The King is the King. JT Boe didn’t look like his absolute best in Kontiolahti as he had just one podium. He still doesn’t look like his world dominating self in Hochfilzen but he came away with two victories and he’s taken the Yellow bib with a narrow lead over Sturla Holm Laegreid. He won the Sprint in pretty classic fashion as he had 1 miss but still beat out Laegreid and Fabien Claude who went clean. The Pursuit had some late race drama but at the end of the day he had himself in the mix on the final shoot and the final lap. Two victories in two races…can’t do better than that and JT Boe is back on top!

Women’s Athlete of the Week: Franziska Preuss – What a weekend!!!!! Franzi won again! It seems like she’s been bumping her head on either 2nd or 4th for years now. Every time she had a chance to win it seems like somebody else had the race of her life to steal the win out from her. Not this weekend though! She was absolutely brilliant in the Sprint. While she’s not on the level of Anamarija Lampic, Justine Braisaz-Bouchet, and Elvira Oeberg (I mean who is?), she was the fastest of the “mortal” women. Combine that with 9/10 and she was able to sneak out the win over Sophie Chauveau and Karoline Knotten.

While the Pursuit showed a couple of cracks in the armor, particularly with her standing shooting, she still finished with yet another podium and even more firmly established herself in Yellow. Then she went into the Relay final leg going head to head with Lou Jeanmonnot who looks to be her toughest competition for the Overall at this early stage of the season. The final leg looked like a battle within a battle. A head to head not only to win the race but to just get a little confidence edge in their bigger Overall battle. Preuss showed absolutely no fear and was absolutely fierce going perfect in her shooting to get Germany clear for the win. It is so much fun seeing Preuss finally break through to be the top dog at least for now.

Men’s Young Athlete of the Week: Campbell Wright. I think that as long as he remains healthy we should expect to be seeing Campbell Wright in this position many times. He seems like he’s ready to not just be the strongest young man, but a regular competitor for top 10’s every week. He followed up his 4th place Sprint in Kontiolahti with a 10th place Sprint in Hochfilzen and another strong relay leg to boost the US Men to yet another top 6. He’s shooting 87.5% at this early stage of the season and even coming in after an illness disrupted his preparation he is still skiing a little bit faster than last season. We should expect to see the skis continue to get stronger this year!

Women’s Young Athlete of the Week: Selina Grotian and Maya Cloetens. Selina Grotian was technically the strongest woman this week with her strong 5th place finish in the Sprint. She had shown very good speed in Kontiolahti but just wasn’t hitting the targets. 9/10 in the Sprint and she was top 5. 10/10 would have had her on the podium! I feel like it is just a matter of time now before we see her back on the podium. The race between her, Oceane Michelon, Sara Andersson, Jeanne Richard and Julia Tannheimer for u23 is going to be great!

Maya Cloetens deserves major appreciate too though. The young Belgian woman turned in easily the best weekend of her career with what would have been the best race of her career, 19th place in the Sprint, if she hadn’t gone ahead and finished 12th place Pursuit! She was already a good shooter hitting in the mid 80’s the last two seasons but this year she has bumped it all the way up to 91.7%! She’s gone from being a little slower than average skiing to now a little faster than average. All together she three top 30’s in four races and stands in 5th in the u23 behind four of the brightest young names in women’s biathlon!

Men’s Race of the Week: Pursuit. The Sprint was close but the Pursuit was just too exciting. The top 3 of the current Overall going head to head in the back half of the race to decide the victory is special. When that top 3 includes arguably the best of all time, one of the most exciting active biathletes (for good and bad sometimes!), the definition of steady it’s even better. Truly for the 4th lap and into the final shoot I think I argued myself into every conceivable possibility: Jacquelin is going to shoot uber fast and run away! Laegreid will be clean while both Jacquelin and Bø go for speed and hit the penalty loop! No, JT Bø is ultimately going to have more wins than anybody this is just what he does!

I honestly wasn’t shocked when all 3 left the range within 3 seconds of each other! The final lap Laegreid got gapped a little early and then the incident on the climb. I think we all know and can see that it was just two guys battling in a tight space and as sometimes happens one went down. In this case Jacquelin. Kudos to him for getting up and still outfighting Laegreid for 2nd though! The best part of the whole race? Watching them laugh about it afterwards!

Women’s Race of the Week: Relay. The Women’s Relay brought Germany its first relay victory in over three full seasons. That seems impossible but it is true. It’s even more phenomenal when you think the only holdover from that team is Franziska Preuß. The relay team this weekend had Voigt, Tannheimer, and Grotian. Voigt hadn’t yet made her World Cup debut but she was at least on the IBU Cup where she won the Overall. In the winter of 2020-2021 Grotian was 16 and Tannheimer just 15. Those two precocious talents were phenomenal as they had just 3 combined spare rounds. Tannheimer brought them up to 2nd and Grotian held the position as they went head to head with Justine Braisaz-Bouchet and Sophie Chauveau respectively. The anchor took this race to another level.

The anchor leg saw Lou Jeanmonnot start with an 8.4 sec advantage on Preuß. These two women not only sit 1-2 in the Overall but they had traded wins already this week with Preuẞ victorious in the Sprint while Jeanmonnot came back to claim the Pursuit. In their final matchup of the week (but hopefully not the season!) Jeanmonnot held Preuß at bay until the first shoot. Her 2 extra rounds while Preuß went clean meant the Germans took the lead by 6 seconds. Preuß pushed the advantage to a full 10 seconds by the next shooting. She had the first 3 targets down before Jeanmonnot’s shot and later video would show Jeanmonnot’s teammate Julia Simon give and respectful nod acknowledging where it was headed even before the last targets were down.

Preuß came through big time and won the matchup of the week! I can only hope we get several more of those this winter. And if we do I would bet we see them split pretty evenly between these two amazing talents!

Super Sprints – A super quick hop through some top stories

Yellow Bib Updates

1.Men’s Top 5:

Athlete	Total Points (Points Back)
Johannes Thingnes Boe 🇳🇴	339
Sturla Holm Laegreid 🇳🇴	304 (-35)
Emilien Jacquelin 🇫🇷	246 (-93)
Eric Perrot 🇫🇷	222 (-117)
Sebastian Samuelsson 🇸🇪	208 (-131)

2.Women’s Top 5:

Athlete	Total Points (Points Back)
Franziska Preuss 🇩🇪	325
Lou Jeanmonnot 🇫🇷	296 (-29)
Elvira Oeberg 🇸🇪	283 (-42)
Marketa Davidova 🇨🇿	223 (-102)
Vanessa Voigt 🇩🇪	197 (-128)

3.🇩🇪 German Women’s Weekend To Remember – Doesn’t it feel like the German women have turned the corner? For the last couple of years it was the end of the last era with an eye firmly fixed on the future. It felt like there was a new generation just waiting to be unleashed led by Franziska Preuss, Vanessa Voigt reaching the potential we have dreamed of for her since 2022, and then the plethora of young women including Selina Grotian and Julia Tannheimer. Well that vision is now reality.

Franziska Preuss is having the best season of her career as she has stormed to the Yellow bib after two weeks of competition. She was just tremendous this weekend as she won the Sprint. She wasn’t even perfect as she went 9/10 but she was so fast and got that 2nd win that always seemed just out of her grasp. Then Vanessa Voigt seems like she has taken another step forward. She just seems to be a little faster and a little more confident. She seems like she’s supposed to be in the mix and she grabbed her first podium and already her 2nd top 5 of the season. The very young women are looking good too with Selina Grotian having supremely good ski speed in this young season and finding the top 5 in the Pursuit. Also Julia Tannheimer is right in the mix for the u23 Globe as well!

The highlight of the weekend had to be the Relay race. The German women with this mix of youth and veterans went head to head with the wildly talented French women and came away with their first victory since 2021. It was just amazing to see Tannheimer and Grotian seem to be completely at ease in legs 2 and 3. And then, Preuss going head to head with Jeanmonnot in in the final leg and coming away on top was the cherry on top. Congratulations to the German women on a great weekend and it feels like we’re about to see even more of it!

4. 🇸🇮 Slovenian Relay Success and 🇺🇸 US Men Set New Mark – The relays in Hochfilzen gave us some really cool moments from the underdogs! The Slovenian men and women both came away with 4th. It was the best finish for the women since they finished 4th in the 2007 World Championships. It was the best finish for the men since the 2020-2021 stop in Nove Mesto. It was the first time EVER that both the men and the women finished in the top 4 in the same weekend! For me one of the best parts of the weekend was seeing the Slovenian women get progressively happier as their teammates kept up the amazing race.

It is also worth noting that the United States men finished in 6th in the Men’s relay. This is not particularly notable on its own because this is their 4th straight time in the top 6. However, that is actually what is notable! It is the first time EVER that the USA men have finished top 6 in four consecutive relays!! With the young talent of Campbell Wright and Maxime Germain it feels like we should get used to seeing them in this position for several more years!

5. 🇨🇿 Hornig’s New Speed – This is a true Super Sprint. I just wanted to point out that Vitezslav Hornig has some crazy new speed this season. Here’s just a few ways it has showed itself:

– Best single ski rank of his career before this season: 45th
– Ski Ranks so far this year: 24, 15, 18, 33, 19
– Best Avg Ski Rank of his career: 65.6 (2023-2024)
– Avg Ski Rank this year: 24.4
– Best ski speed vs. Median in his career: +3.6% (2023-2024)
– Ski speed vs. Median this season: -1.7%

The result is that he’s given himself a new ceiling to his performance. So far this season he’s had finishes of 27, 22, 15, 34, and 26. Before this season his career best was 40th. That was the only time he had ever scored points. Whatever the new coaches did this offseason it unlocked something new in Hornig. He currently sits 28th in the Overall and he’s having a major breakthrough season!

6.Junior Cup Updates (No IBU Cup this week!) – Just a few highlights from the first week of racing in Ridnaun-Val Ridanna!

• 🇩🇪 The Germans had a very good weekend. They started out strong with the top 2 women in the Individual Charlotte Galbronner and Alina Nussbicker. Linus Kesper followed up and won the Men’s Individual. Elias Seidl was easily the fastest man on the Juniors level and won the first Sprint. They also had Lena Siegmund 2nd in the final Sprint of the weekend.
• 🇮🇹 20 year old Italian Ilaria Scattolo had a great weekend showing the best ski speed of her young career. She used that to finish 13th, 2nd, and 7th. The 2nd was a new career best for her!
• 🇮🇹 Davide Compagnoni gave the Italian fans even more to cheer for as he finished 3rd in the Individual and 2nd in the first Sprint. His “worst” finish of the week was 11th! He hit 36/40 for the week which is by far his best shooting weekend of his career.
• 🇱🇻 The Latvian women of Estere Volfa and Elza Bleidele showed surprisingly good speed. They were consistently finishing top 10 in ski ranks and Volfa combined that with good shooting to finish 9th, 5th, and 3rd. Those are easily the best finishes for the 19 year old. Definitely one to keep an eye on!
• 🇵🇱 Grzegorz Galica is just 17 years old, but the young Pole reinforced that he is one to watch !He finished 6th, 9th and concluded the weekend with his first career podium as he finished 2nd. He now has eight consecutive top 10 finishes on the Juniors level. The most impressive part of his performance is his skiing. Even at just 17 years old he was top 10 ski time in every race.
• 🇫🇷 The French women proved to be very strong. Is anybody surprised? Just pick a race and look at the best skiers and you’ll see French women crowded at the top. Amandine Mengin came away with two podiums and Violette Bony won the first Sprint of the weekend.

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

2) 🇫🇷 Sophie Chauveau – The 2nd career podium for Sophie Chauveau sets a new personal best after she was 3rd in the Sprint last season in Oberhof.

5) 🇳🇴 Martin Uldal – He started out the weekend with a career best 7th. He outdid himself in the Pursuit getting to 5th. Before this he only had 2 career WC races with a career best of 20th.

10) 🇧🇬 Milena Todorova – Milena Todorova returned to the top 10 for the first time since the last week of racing in 2021 when she finished 8th. So while this wasn’t a career best it is a return to the top 10 worth celebrating!

12) 🇮🇹 Hannah Auchentaller – After finishing 13th in the Kontiolahti Mass Start, Hannah Auchentaller upped her personal best by one place in the Sprint!

12) 🇧🇪 Maya Cloetens – What a weekend from young Maya Cloetens! First she sets a career best with her 19th in the Sprint, then she moves all the way up to 12th in the Pursuit! She set her previous career best of 23 all the way back in the Kontiolahti Sprint.

20) 🇧🇬 Blagoy Todev – A very good weekend for Bulgaria as two of their young athletes had excellent finishes. Todev’s 20th was a big career best over his 32nd in the Soldier Hollow Sprint last season.

22) 🇨🇿 Jonas Marecek – 23 year old Czechia athlete Jonas Marecek is a definite bright spot for the Czechia squad. He set two new personal bests this weekend. First he finished 26th in the Sprint before moving up to 22nd in the Pursuit. Both were better than his 32nd from the season opening Individual last year.

25) 🇦🇹 Anna Andexer – A career first race obviously leads to a career best. Anna Andexer did herself proud finishing 25th in front of home fans in her World Cup debut.

25) 🇩🇪 Simon Kaiser – Same goes for Simon Kaiser. After being the strongest non-Nowegian on the IBU Cup Kaiser came up to the World Cup and finished 38th in the Sprint. He then moved himself up to 25th in the Pursuit while having the 11th best ski time. Actually pretty optimistic he’ll break this personal best soon.

29) 🇵🇱 Jan Gunka – Clearly inspired by their friend and teammate Grzegorz Galica on the Junior Cup both Jan Gunka and Konrad Badacz had career bests this weekend. Jan Gunka’s 29th place broke his previous career best of 37th set in Oestersund last season.

30) 🇵🇱 Konrad Badacz – Badacz broke his personal best by 1 spot. He previously finished 31st in the World Championship Pursuit last season.

31) 🇩🇪 Julia Kink – While not having quite as much success as Tannheimer and Grotian have, Kink did set a career best this week finishing 31st in the Pursuit! Hopefully that’s a springboard for her!