Annecy-le Grand Bornand Recap

The Winners – Top Performers of the Week

Nations Medal Table for the Week

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

Athlete Medal Table for the Week

Nation	Medals
Franziska Preuss 🇩🇪	🥇🥈🥈
Johannes Thingnes Boe 🇳🇴	🥇🥈🥉
Martin Uldal 🇳🇴	🥇
Justine Braisaz-Bouchet 🇫🇷	🥇
Tarjei Boe 🇳🇴	🥇
Selina Grotian 🇩🇪	🥇
Eric Perrot 🇫🇷	🥈
Julia Simon 🇫🇷	🥈
Danilo Riethmueller 🇩🇪	🥈
Sebastian Samuelsson 🇸🇪	🥉
Anamarija Lampic 🇸🇮	🥉
Emilien Jacquelin 🇫🇷	🥉
Vanessa Voigt 🇩🇪	🥉
Paulina Batovska Fialkova 🇸🇰	🥉

Men’s Athlete of the Week: 🇳🇴 The Boe Bros – After he finished 2nd by 1.4 seconds and then won the Pursuit comfortably its difficult to put anybody else here. JT Boe continues to look stronger and stronger as the season goes on. One of the best ways to look at his strength is to look at his ski performance vs the rest of the field in a Sprint. He’s gone from being 6.8% faster than median in Kontiolahti to 7.1% faster in Hochfilzen and then 7.8% faster in Annecy-le Grand Bornand. You can also check how hard he’s working by his course time ranks in a race like the Pursuit. In that race his ranks were 24th, 16th, 4th, 6th, and 43rd. There was a slight moment when he felt a little pressure but a 19/20 shooting day and he won by 27 seconds even with completely resting the last lap. As the first trimester comes to an end he has a solid 115 point lead in the Overall and appears firmly in control during yet another solid JT Boe season.

Tarjei Boe possibly saved his season with a win in the Mass Start. He was in a very tenuous position. The Norwegian men have way too many talented athletes and it’s very much a perform or get sent down situation. Before this weekend Tarjei, the defending #2 Overall, had just three top 10’s and no top 5’s. While that’s a great season for most men, on this team it had him on the ropes. Already Johannes Dale-Skjevdal had lost his position to Martin Uldal. Then, when the Norwegian men had to cut down from seven starters to six for the sprint this week, Tarjei was the odd man out. That meant he had fresh legs for the Mass Start and boy did he use them. It was an amazing throw back performance and Tarjei proved to be the strongest man in the race of kings. He got the win, moved back up to 11 in the Overall, and seemingly secured his position for at least a few more weeks.

Women’s Athlete of the Week: 🇩🇪 Franziska Preuss – I thought Hochfilzen was going to be Franziska Preuss’ peak moment of the 1st trimester but I was wrong. In Annecy Preuss was the golden girl. Just like her fellow yellow bib wearer, Preuss finished 2nd in the Sprint just 1.4 seconds back of Justine Braisaz-Bouchet. She had a very comfortable Pursuit win as she hit 19/20 and appeared to be under minimal pressure as she won by 27 seconds. Then in the Mass Start she was perfect 20/20 in what became a very heavy wet snowfall and cruised to a 2nd place. It was just Selina Grotian’s day as she used her superior legs to carry herself to the win.

So at the end of the day she finished 2nd, 1st, and 2nd. To make it an even better weekend she did it while her top rivals for the Overall Elvira Oeberg and Lou Jeanmonnot had just two top 10’s between then, both by Elvira. The topper to all of this is that Preuss did it while being a little sick. Previously in her career it seemed like every illness would completely knock Preuss down. This time though she fought through it and had the best weekend of her career! I don’t know how long this run will go for her, and she may very well take Yellow all the way to Oslo, but it’s so much fun to watch it happening!

Men’s Young Athlete of the Week: 🇺🇸 Campbell Wright – Before this season a weekend in which Campbell Wright finished 16th and 15th would be one of the best weekends of his entire career. This season, though, it’s just another weekend. He now has five consecutive top 20’s and that doesn’t include his 4th place finish in the Kontiolahti Sprint. Dating back to Ruhpolding last season is 21 races for Campbell Wright. Over that stretch he has 17 top 20’s. That’s a remarkable run for the 22 year old New Zealand American. Nothing about that is fluky. He’s just a young guy who is clearly highly talented and has a chance to make a real mark on the future of American biathlon. For now, he’s taken control of the Blue Bib with a 46 point lead through the first trimester. It’s certainly not locked up, but he has a very good chance of taking the u23 Globe this season.

Women’s Young Athlete of the Week: 🇫🇷 Jeanne Richard and 🇩🇪 Selina Grotian – While Annecy-le Grand Bornand was dominated at the top by Franziska Preuss, it was also a weekend for the young women. Selina Grotian scored the much anticipated first victory of her career. I feel like we’ve been taking about Grotian for a decade now, but she’s only 20 years old. She now has three top 5’s this season and she’s running top 15 as a skier. Being one of the talented young Germans she is inevitably burdened by comparisons to Neuner and Dahlmeier so seeing her have success and not be overwhelmed by that makes me very happy.

Meanwhile Jeanne Richard had a great and nearly phenomenal weekend! She finished 4th in the Pursuit, just six seconds off the podium. Then in the Mass Start, when she seemed to have the podium in her grasp, she was surpassed at the very very very last second by a hard charging Paulina Batovska Fialkova. Regardless of that, she had a GREAT weekend. This weekend her finishes are as follows: 11, 12, 12, 35, 14, 12, 4, 4, That’s a remarkable run of consistency for the 22 year old French woman. She’s currently shooting 93.1% which is incredible. I’m excited to see what she can do the rest of the season including possibly getting to the podium finally!

Men’s Race of the Week: Mass Start – We already discussed how important this win was for Tarjei Boe above. He sat out the Sprint and the Pursuit due to the Norwegian men number crunch. He used those fresh legs to stay out front the entire race. It got a little tight there when he missed during the very last shoot but the rest of the field gave him an opening and he took it. He ran away on the last lap for a much needed victory.

Behind Tarjei Boe was a very steady Danilo Riethmueller. Steady is pretty much the perfect word to describe that performance. He had just a single miss in the 2nd prone shooting. His shooting times weren’t insanely fast or slow. He was 7th in skiing during the race. He actually put in a strong last lap to hold off a hard charging JT Boe who ended up in 3rd. That led to a hilarious exchange after the race where Tarjei Boe noted to Riethmueller that he didn’t expect Riethmueller to come on that strong on the final lap and Riethmueller responded that “his brother” was coming on strong and he is “pretty fast!” When JT Boe came across the line it was all celebration, but not for himself, it was all for his brother! Another Boedium…who knows how many more of these we’ll get!

Women’s Race of the Week: Sprint – The Sprint rarely makes the race of the week for me, but this week it’s for great reason. It was a podium that everybody can be happy with. Justine Braisaz-Bouchet had struggled this year to recapture the magic of last season. Last year there was so much joy in her performances. This year that seemed to be draining out of her culminating with the relay in Hochfilzen where she just seemed crestfallen. She took an extra day at home to spend with her daughter and it seemed to recharge the batteries. She came back strong and sprinted to the win using the old Justine Braisaz-Bouchet speed and finally hitting 90% for the first time. It led to her first win of the season and hopefully not the last!

The other two places on the podium were also happy sites. There was some fear that Franziska Preuss was going to not race due to illness or that if she did she wouldn’t look great. Well she went 10/10 and finished just 1.4 seconds back of Braisaz-Bouchet with the 7th best ski time of the day. Then there was the inaugural podium of Lampic’s career which we discuss more of below!

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 🇳🇴	569
Sturla Holm Laegreid 🇳🇴	454 (-115)
Emilien Jacquelin 🇫🇷	373 (-196)
Eric Perrot 🇫🇷	368 (-201)
Sebastian Samuelsson 🇸🇪	354 (-215)

After three weeks things are settling into an unsurprising place with JT Boe and Sturla Holm Laegreid locked into the top places. No fluke about it either. Boe now has three wins and six podiums in eight races while Laegreid has four podiums and hasn’t been outside of the top 10 all season. While Jacquelin, Perrot, and Samuelsson have all shown the ability to be at the top of the sport, none have yet been as consistently good as the the top two men. Will anybody be able to knock them out of the top spot the rest of the way?

2.Women’s Top 5:

Athlete	Total Points (Points Back)
Franziska Preuss 🇩🇪	565
Elvia Oeberg 🇸🇪	371 (-194)
Lou Jeanmonnot 🇫🇷	352 (-213)
Julia Simon 🇫🇷	315 (-250)
Vanessa Voigt 🇩🇪	307 (-258)

Franziska Preuss has easily been the best and most consistent woman so far this season. While Jeanmonnot and Elvira both had their moments Preuss has been there every single race. She’s on aggregate the 4th fastest woman this season and her 92.3% hit rate is 5th best on the World Cup. That’s just a really difficult combination to beat. So far this season Elvira has shown the skiing ability and Jeanmonnot until this weekend was shooting just as well as her. However, neither of them have been able to put it all together consistently. As a result Preuss continues to stretch out her lead. Her lead is of 194 points is already well larger than the largest lead we saw at any point last season which was Justine Braisaz-Bouchet’s 91 point lead after the Oberhof Pursuit. I still wouldn’t say this race is over though as all of Elvira, Jeanmonnot, and Simon can collect points in bunches! Speaking of Simon she was the big riser in Annecy-le Grand Bornand coming from 9th all the way to 4th.

3. Moms! It was a big week for Moms in Annecy-le Grand Bornand with two mothers finding the podium with Justine Braisaz-Bouchet’s 🇫🇷 win in the Sprint and Paulina Batovska Fialkova’s 🇸🇰 amazing sprint to the podium in the Mass Start. I don’t say this to be weird or to reduce their entire lives down to the fact that they are moms, it’s actually just because I’m completely in awe of them.

First of all, if any other organ of the body goes from the size of a fist to taking up the entire abdomen we would all freak out. Except that for pregnant women it happens all the time all over the world and it’s just totally normal. While being pregnant a woman gives enormous amount of energy to helping their babies grow. This includes to the point where they start breaking down their own bodies including their bones to help feed the baby. That’s wild! And that’s also just the start because childbirth is a whole different craziness. Moms either have to push a baby out of their body which is an enormous feat of strength or they have their abdomen cut open and the baby removed. Either way that’s just incredible!

And still the hard work is only just beginning. Then there is the whole act of actually taking care of and raising a newborn. It takes so much energy! You’re constantly tired! Well these women, along with Milena Todorova and Baiba Bendika are doing the amazing impossible task of all of that AND training as world class athletes.

I’m in awe of all moms. Anybody who is able to take on that incredible journey is so strong. To be able to do that and continue to reach these high levels of success is absolutely wild. So congratulations to Justine Braisaz-Bouchet and Paulina Batovska Fialkova on their success this weekend. And congratulations to all of these moms for just being awesome!

4. 🇸🇮 Anamarija Lampic Ready to Dominate? Well it finally happened! Ever since she finished in 5th in the very first World Cup race of her career it seemed like just a matter of time until she would find the podium. It took a little over two full seasons, but during the Sprint in Annecy-le Grand Bornand she hit just enough targets to find the podium. She hit all five prone shots and had just two standing misses. She then used her incredible ski speed, skiing 19 seconds faster than the Justine Braisaz-Bouchet who ultimately won the race, and snuck onto the podium 5.4 seconds ahead of Yulia Dzhima.

So is this it? Are we living in the Lampic era? Is it going to be Lampic on the podium ever week now? Well I wouldn’t go there quite yet. After her great success in the Sprint she hit 14/20 in the Pursuit and just 10/20 in the Mass Start. For the season she is shooting just 58.2% including 43.6% standing. So for now at least the World Cup is safe from Lampic domination. However, the story is that she found something in her shooting that she is very excited about. While I don’t think she is going to crush the competition I am quite optimistic that we haven’t seen the one and only Lampic podium and that we will see her there several more times over the next few seasons!

5. 🇧🇪 Belgian Biathlon What a first trimester for Belgian biathlon! Let’s take note of the major moments:

• Thierry Langer scored the first top 10 of his career when he finished 9th in the Kontiolahti Short Individual. Since then he has four more top 20’s and six top 30’s. Before this season he had just one top 20 ever in his career. Now he has five this season. He had nine career top 30’s before this year and now he has seven just this season. And it’s not like he’s a young gun, he’s a 33 year old with now 102 total solo races in his career. So congratulations to Thierry Langer!
• The Belgian women’s relay had a phenomenal relay in Kontiolahti. Through the first three legs of the relay including Lotte Lie, Maya Cloetens, and Eve Bouvard they were running in the top 6. The top 6!!! This was just the 2nd relay the Belgian women have ever run on the World Cup. So Rieke de Maeyer wasn’t totally able to close it out. Doesn’t matter this was one to remember!
• Maya Cloetens is just 22 years old but she’s showing some big time improvement this season. So far this year in seven races she has six top 30s and the first two top 20’s in her career including a career best 12th in the Hochfilzen Pursuit. She’s currently sitting 28th in the Overall. Considering the best ever finish by a Belgian woman is 28th in the Overall accomplished twice in the last three years by Lotte Lie this is a hell of a season for the young Belgian! More on her coming soon!
• Lotte Lie who has become the face of the Belgian women’s team the last few seasons is having the best season of her career. She’s currently in 19th in the Overall. She already has four top 20’s while the most in a season in her career is seven. She also has the 2nd top 10 in her career when she set a new personal best as she finished 7th in the Annecy-le Grand Bornand Mass Start. Her avg ski rank is up to 28, easily the best of her career and for the first time in her career she skiing faster than the median biathlete!

6. IBU Cup Update A quick update from the third weekend of IBU Cup competition from Obertilliach!

• 🇮🇹 Ilaria Scattolo – recently noted as having a great Juniors weekend in Ridnaun val Ridanna, the 20 year old Italian came up to the IBU Cup and immediately won the Sprint! She followed that up with a 7th in the Mass 60. Those are by FAR the best finishes of her IBU Cup career. Ilaria Scattolo has easily established herself as one of the young Italians to watch and if she keeps up the momentum she may find herself on the World Cup by the end of the season.
• 🇳🇴 Norwegian men continue to dominate taking all six podium spots on the weekend. Johannes Dale-Skjevdal is sent down from the World Cup as they had to cut to six starters for the Annecy-le Grand Bornand weekend. He immediately shows up and wins the Sprint and follows that up with a 3rd in the Mass 60. Meanwhile Johan-Olav Botn added his first win of the season in the Mass 60 bringing his season totals to one victory and six 2nd place finishes in eight races. Isak Frey was 2nd in the Sprint and Sivert Bakken scored a podium in the Mass 60!
• 🇫🇷 The French women were nearly as dominant as the Norwegian men. Paula Botet added two more podiums, a 2nd and a 3rd, to her totals as she now has two wins, six podiums, and seven top 5’s in eight races. She was joined by Gilonne Guigonnat who finished 2nd in the Sprint and Camille Bened who finished 3rd in the Mass 60. Camille Bened hasn’t quite been having the amazing season of Paula Botet but she does have a win and four podiums!
• No surprises in the Mixed and Single Mixed relays as the Norwegians, French, and Germans swept both podiums.
• 🇪🇪 Regina Ermits needed a “get right” weekend on the IBU Cup after some early season struggles. She finished 8th in the Short Individual to start the season in Kontiolahti but since then has struggled to find the top 40. Well this weekend she had two 6th place finishes!
• 🇳🇴 Ragnhild Femsteinevik added another top 10 to her totals this season as she finished 4th in the Sprint. That’s not six top 11 finishes in eight races. While the Norwegian women are struggling a bit on the World Cup maybe Femsteinevik might see some run there before the season is over.

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

1.🇳🇴 Martin Uldal – The Sprint was the first win of his career! I saw first because with these Norwegian men who knows how many we’ll see?!?

3. Anamarija Lampic – Already covered above but it was the first podium of her career! It surpassed her previous best of 5th which she had done twice in her first season on the World Cup including the very first race of her career.

4. 🇫🇷 Jeanne Richard – Jeanne Richard had two 4th place finishes this weekend which surpassed the 8th place she had in her very first World Cup race, the Oberhof Sprint from 23-24. She’s had a tremendous season so far. It seems like the podium is just about to happen.

5. 🇳🇴 Maren Kirkeeide – She actually had two career bests this week. First she finished 11th in the Sprint and then 5th in the Pursuit. Both were better than her 12th in the Individual in the Oslo weekend of races last season.

7. 🇫🇮 Venla Lehtonen – HUGE personal best for Venla Lehtonen. Before this weekend her career best was 36th in the season opening Individual in Pokljuka in the 2018-2019 season. This weekend she finished 13th in the Sprint, 7th in the Pursuit, and 22nd in the Mass Start. A personal best for Lehtonen seemed inevitable this season as she has shown easily the best skiing of her career. I’m sure we’ll see a few more top 20’s this season!

7. 🇧🇪 Lotte Lie – It was a 2nd career top 10 for Lotte Lie and a continuation of a terrific season. This beat out her prior career best of 10th in the season opening Individual in Kontiolahti in the 22-23 season.

9. 🇮🇹 Hannah Auchentaller – Hannah Auchentaller continues to score new career bests this season. She finished 12th in the Hochfilzen Sprint and now 9th in the Annecy Sprint. She was also 13th in the Mass Start and those are the three best finishes of her career in the last two weeks.

17. 🇮🇹 Martina Trabucchi – In just the 2nd week of her World Cup career Martina Trabucchi qualified for her first Mass Start after finishing 27th in the Sprint and 33rd in the Pursuit (both her best finishes of her young career)…and a few women dropping out due to illness. But she took advantage of the start and finished 17th in the Mass Start!

21. 🇨🇿 Jonas Marecek – One week after setting his personal bests with 26th and 22nd in the Sprint and Pursuit in Hochfilzen, Marecek outdid himself finishing 21st in the Annecy Sprint. Unfortunately he got sick and was not able to set an even higher personal best!