Oberhof Recap

The Winners – Top Performers of the Week

Nations Medal Table for the Week

Nation	Medals
France 🇫🇷	🥇🥇🥇🥈🥈🥈🥉
Norway 🇳🇴	🥇🥈🥈🥈🥉🥉
Sweden 🇸🇪	🥇🥉
Finland 🇫🇮	🥇
Germany 🇩🇪	🥉
Bulgaria 🇧🇬	🥉

Athlete Medal Table for the Week

Athlete	Medals
Maren Kirkeeide 🇳🇴	🥈🥈
Paula Botet 🇫🇷	🥇
Quentin Fillon Maillet 🇫🇷	🥇
Lou Jeanmonnot 🇫🇷	🥇
Sturla Holm Laegreid 🇳🇴	🥇
Fabien Claude 🇫🇷	🥈
Tarjei Boe 🇳🇴	🥈
Milena Todorova 🇧🇬	🥉
Emilien Jacquelin 🇫🇷	🥉
Elvira Oeberg 🇸🇪	🥉
Johannes Thingnes Boe 🇳🇴	🥉

Men’s Athlete of the Week: Quentin Fillon Maillet – When you get your first victory since March of 2022 then you make the list. QFM is underrated amongst biathlon fans. He’s been dramatically overshadowed by Martin Fourcade and JT Boe. With this win, though, he has 17 and ties Frank Ullrich for 7th most in the history of men’s biathlon. The stretch from March 10, 2022 to January 10, 2025 was 59 races. That was the longest in his career without a victory outside of the first 120 races he went until he attained his first victory.

During that stretch of 59 races QFM hasn’t been bad, he just hasn’t been as great as he was prior to that. Well this week he reclaimed his spot on the top of the podium. He followed that up with a 4th place finish. He now has two podiums and four top 5’s this season. He’s climbed up to 7th in the Overall. That would be his best finish in the Overall since he won the Globe at the end of the 2021-2022 season. His ski form appears to be building towards a peak, hopefully for him in Lenzerheide. His shooting, though, has been a struggle as he’s only hit 85% or better in three races this season, including 10/10 in his Sprint win. He went just 15/20 in the Pursuit and was still able to hang on to 4th.

QFM has entered a phase of his season where the ski speed is there. He had the 3rd best ski time in the Sprint, easily his best in a Sprint this season compared to 10, 12, and 17. If he can hit 85% or better he’s going to be in the battle for flowers. If he gets to 90% or better he’s going to be able to find the podium. This make him a dangerous man as we head towards the World Championships.

Women’s Athlete of the Week: Maren Kirkeeide & Lou Jenmonnot – The real athlete of the week is Maren Kirkeeide who was the only woman with multiple podiums. However, we’re going to honor her as Young Woman so that we can get another athlete in here. How about Lou Jeanmonnot who started the week with a solid 7th in the Sprint, but closed it out with an absolutely perfect Pursuit. We noted in the first trimester that there were a couple of moments where she came to the final shoot with a podium or a win on the line and she got a little shaky, never more so than in Annecy. This time around she showed no fear at all.

Jeanmonnot took the lead when she hit her first five standing shots. At that point she held an 11 second lead over Milena Todorova with Paula Botet and Oceane Michelon still within a penalty loop as well. By the time she got to the final shoot she had pushed that lead out to 24 seconds on Todorova with five women 35 seconds back, needing multiple misses from Jeanmonnot now to take the lead. Jeanmonnot slammed the door shut. She hit all 5 with a nice steady 26.8 second shoot. That was the ballgame. Kirkeeide was the only other woman to hold her nerve and hit all five shots. With this win, and picking up a pile of points on Franziska Preuss, Jeanmonnot answered a few questions and once again looked unbeatable.

Men’s Young Athlete of the Week: Campbell Wright – Campbell Wright with yet another solid weekend as he finished 9th in the Sprint and 15th in the Pursuit. That marks his 3rd top 10 of the season and his 8th top 20. He’s now up to 12th in the Overall. Every part of his biathlon is better this season. He’s skiing faster with his average course time rank up to 23 from 29 last year and he’s 1.6% faster than the median biathlete vs. 1.2% last year. He’s also hitting 86.7% this year compared to 84.7% last year. That includes a 92% prone hit rate! He’s opened up a 72 point lead on Vitalii Mandzyn for the u23 Globe. It’s a long way from over but Wright is looking very good to take home a Globe for US Biathlon this year.

Women’s Young Athlete of the Week: Maren Kirkeeide – The true athlete of the week was Maren Kirkeeide. She had the most quiet back to back podiums and career best finishes I can remember recently. Even though she finished 2nd twice she was completely overshadowed by Paula Botet’s remarkable win, Jeanmonnot’s win, and Elvira’s freight train podium coming from 37th to 3rd.

Kirkeeide, though, was just steady the whole weekend. She hit 37 of 40 shots in the two individual races while anchoring the Norway Mixed Relay into bronze position. She was the the third fastest woman in the Sprint and 11th in the Pursuit, which is a little misleading as she was all alone in 2nd place so she didn’t quite have to push the whole last lap. She now has a top 5 in three of her last four races. Kirkeeide really could be establishing herself as a new Norwegian threat. Once Tandrevold comes back in Antholz, and with Knotten looking a little better, that Norwegian squad is coming together pretty well now!

Men’s Race of the Week: Sprint – The two men’s races this week weren’t exactly bangers. The Sprint resulted in a French sweep while the Norwegians flipped the tables and swept the podium in the Pursuit. The Sprint takes the race of the week title today mostly because I just like the total top 10 better than the Pursuit. Dmytro Pidruchnyi had his best race in five years and 2nd best finish ever. Martin Uldal had another top 5 finish. Nik Hartweg again in the top 10. Campbell Wright collected his third top 10 of the season. Emilien Claude also had his career best finish of 8th!

I do have to admit that from a spectator perspective that this new start list strategy is working out well. It is just more exciting to see successive waves of athletes who continue to put up faster and faster times. It’s also fun to pull for the underdog who puts up the early fast time, hoping for a career best or a rare top 10. So for this week, it was the Sprint that held my fascination the most.

Women’s Race of the Week: Pursuit – This was a Pursuit race that had it all. We had an epic charge to the podium for all time by Elvira Oeberg. We had Lou Jeanmonnot looking like Lou Jeanmonnot, one of if not the best biathlete in the world right now. And we had young Maren Kirkeeide just having a solid all around race for her 2nd career podium. In the middle of all of this there was Oceane Michelon having her best career finish of 4th, Selina Grotian and Jeanne Richard continuing the extra strong day by young women in 5th and 6th, and Milena Todorova having yet another top 10 finish.

We’ll discuss Elvira more at length below, but to sum it up she started the day in 37th place and 1:45 off the podium. She was absolutely relentless in driving forward every lap. Even with a miss in her last shoot she climbed all the way to 3rd. An absolutely stunning performance by one of the strongest athletes we’ve ever known.

Lou Jeanmonnot started the day much closer to the lead, just in 7th place. She had an early miss and after that looked stunningly brilliant. She had course time ranks of 4th, 3rd, and 2nd in the middle laps of the race. She also shook off the last shoot nerves she showed in the 1st trimester and looked completely nerveless as she hit her last 5 shots and ran away for the win.

Meanwhile, with a rather boring race, Maren Kirkeeide started in 2nd and finished in 2nd. The best part is that it was boring. There was no miraculous charge for 2nd place. She had the 8th best isolated pursuit. It’s wonderful to see this highly talented 21 year old Norwegian starting to declare herself not just as a future contender, but a present contender. She’s up to 4th in the u23 Globe race.

Just off the podium we saw the future of the women’s field:
4th Oceane Michelon a 22 year old with a career best finish
5th Selina Grotian, a 20 year old who already has a win this season
6th Jeanne Richard, another 22 year old French woman with her third top 10 of the season

The future is now.

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 🇳🇴	662
Sturla Holm Laegreid 🇳🇴	589 (-73)
Emilien Jacquelin 🇫🇷	468 (-194)
Eric Perrot 🇫🇷	449 (-213)
Sebastian Samuelsson 🇸🇪	395 (-267)

Sturla Holm Laegreid took a significant chunk out of JT Boe’s lead cutting it from 115 down to 73 with his 6th place Sprint and especially his Pursuit win. That puts him definitely within striking distance going forward. Can’t say that he’s going to keep gaining but JT Boe didn’t continue to put this race to bed. None of the rest gained a single point on Boe this week but Laegreid definitely made this a race!

2) Women’s Top 5:

Athlete	Total Points (Points Back)
Franziska Preuss 🇩🇪	599
Lou Jeanmonnot 🇫🇷	483 (-116)
Elvira Oeberg 🇸🇪	440 (-159)
Julia Simon 🇫🇷	375 (-224)
Suvi Minkkinen 🇫🇮	372 (-227)

Well Oberhof did not go nearly as well for Franziska Preuss as the 1st trimester did. Preuss only managed a 28th and a 20th. As a result Jeanmonnot cut the lead by 78 points. That a HUGE cut and she really got herself back in the race. Meanwhile Elvira’s massive Pursuit race not only was so much fun to watch but also helped her cut into her deficit on Preuss as well. Simon and Minkkinen cut their deficits by about 25 points each which was helpful but doesn’t meaningfully get them into the mix as they would have to do that for every race (every race not every weekend!) the rest of the season to get close to Preuss at the end.

Oberhof helped us define the terms of this race a little more sharply. Preuss with her big 1st trimester already in the bank is the favorite but Jeanmonnot and Elvira aren’t going to let her get away with it yet!

3) A Week for Underdogs and Smaller Federations – Can we just take a mnute and appreciate how well some of the underdogs did this week? Just a brief listing:
– Finland wins the Single Mixed Relay!
– Milena Todorova finished 3rd in the Sprint and a more than respectable 7th in the Pursuit
– Dmytro Pidruchnyi finished 4th, tied for the 2nd best ever finish of his career. Then he followed that up with a 6th place in the Pursuit
– Sonja Leinamo finished 8th in the Sprint, easily her career best
– Campbell Wright in 9th with his third top 10 of the season
– Amy Baserga finished 11th in the Pursuit, her career best finish

4) 🇫🇮 Suvi! Suvi! Suvi! – This unbelievable career year from Suvi Minkkinen somehow continues to get better. On her own she added another top 5, finishing 5th in the Sprint, along with an 8th in the Pursuit. That now gives her three top 5’s and six top 10’s on the season as she has climbed to 5th in the Overall just a mere three points back of Julia Simon. At this point it isn’t surprising to see Minkkinen in the top 10 anymore. She’s just become an all around really really solid biathlete.

Suvi spent the offseason training at altitude in the Alps. It clearly paid off. Her avg ski rank this season is 25, well up from her career best 44 two seasons ago. She has the eight best ski ranks of her career this season in just 10 races. And she’s still shooting over 90% just like she has each of the last three seasons.

At least until this weekend, the peak of her career came this weekend. She partnered with Tero Seppala to win the Single Mixed relay. That was the first time that she has climbed to the top of the podium in any event (and it was the first time Seppala has climbed on any podium). It was the 5th ever victory for a Finnish relay team and their first win since the races in Antholz in January of 1990.

The key of the race came down to the final leg of the relay. She took over from Seppala in 3rd position for the last leg and was matched against Lou Jeanmonnot and Selina Grotian. She was 12 seconds back of the lead and 9 seconds back of Jeanmonnot in 2nd. She went clean in the prone to take the lead and then went clean in the standing to hold a 3 second lead entering the last lap. It was all determination and will on that last lap as Minkkinen didn’t let Jeanmonnot close down those precious few meters and she came home with the win by a 5.8 second margin!

5) 🇸🇪 Elvira’s Massive Pursuit – We already touched on it above, but the performance that Elvira Oeberg showed us in the Pursuit is one of the great all time Pursuit performances we have ever seen. She moved up from 37th to 3rd which makes it the largest Pursuit climb ever for a woman. It is the 2nd largest ever behind only Tarjei Boe’s 42 place climb in the 2011 Oslo Holmenkollen Pursuit when he finished in 2nd.

She won the Isolated Pursuit race by a ridiculous 1:01.8. What’s crazier is that the woman in 2nd in that competition was none other than Lou Jeanmonnot. Not exactly a pushover! That was the 3rd best Isolated Pursuit margin of victory of all time behind only:
– 🇳🇴 Linda Grubben by 1:03.9 over 🇩🇪 Martina Beck in Antholz on February 4, 2007. She went from 18th o 2nd.
– 🇨🇿 Katerina Houbcova by 1:03.7 over 🇫🇷 Sandrine Bailly in Hochfilzen on December 14, 2003. Houbcova rose from 51st to 5th.

Elvira was absolutely relentless all day. Here is her progression by lap:
– Start: Position 37
– Entering range for 1st shoot: 30th
– After 1st shoot (5/5): 23rd
– Entering the range for 2nd shoot: 17th
– After 2nd shoot (10/10): 15th
– Entering the range for shoot 3: 11th
– After 3rd shoot (15/15): 6th
– Entering the range for 4th shoot: 5th
– After 4th shoot (19/20): 7th
– Finish: 3rd

It was an unbelievable climb that relied of course on hitting her first 15 shots, but also on one of the great ski performances of the last few seasons. Her skiing by lap:
– Lap 1: 3rd fastest 5.9 seconds behind Justine Braisaz-Bouchet. Pace: 2:39/km
– Lap 2: 1st fastest. 2.5 sec faster than Anamarija Lampic. Pace: 2:43/km
– Lap 3: 1st fastest. 3.6 sec faster than Ida Lien. Pace: 2.43/km
– Lap 4: 1st fastest. 0.7 sec faster than Lou Jeanmonnot. Pace: 2:45/km
– Lap 5: 1st fastest. 3.2 sec faster than Oceane Michelon. Pace: 2:18/km
– Total: 1st fastest. 31.8 sec faster than Anamarija Lampic. Pace: 2:38/km

Elvira was a machine. I included the pace to illustrate that she was keeping a remarkably steady pace for much of the race. And by looking at who was 2nd on the lap you can see that this just wasn’t something else anybody was doing. She finished an absolutely terrific 31 seconds faster than Anamarija Lampic.

If you take the cumulative time of each woman who was the fastest not named Elvira Oeberg for every lap, in this case Justine Braisaz-Bouchet’s lap 1 time and then the times for Anamarija Lampic (2), Ida Lien (3), Lou Jeanmonnot (4), and Oceane Michelon (5), that fictional super woman would still have finished 4.1 seconds slower than Elvira. It was an absolutely stunning show of strength!

Elvira like this is a woman who can absolutely win the Overall. The problem is she just can’t have days like the Sprint where she finished 37th…

6) 🇨🇭 Niklas Hartweg Returns To Form – Since Nik Hartweg’s glorious breakthrough 2022-2023 season where he wore the Blue Bib for nearly the entire season. That season he captured it by opening the season with an eye opening 2nd place finish and then wore it every race of the year until Tommaso Giacomel took it heading into Oslo. Giacomel held it for two races until Hartweg stole it back in the very last race of the year when he had a magical 2nd place finish to win the u25 Globe.

Since then Hartweg seems to have been afflicted by a never ending series of illness and injury peaking with his major shoulder injury this summer. Nevertheless he didn’t give up. He kept working hard every week. He had a slight step backwards last season where he had just a single top 10. This season he was already looking better and had a 9th place in the Hochfilzen Sprint. But then, of course, he got sick and had a rough Pursuit falling to 31 and then he missed the whole weekend in Annecy-le Grand Bornand.

In Oberhof we saw a Hartweg we haven’t seen in two years now. He finished 7th in the Sprint and 8th in the Pursuit. He hasn’t had back to back top 10’s since Oslo in 2023. His course time ranks of 20 and 10 were the best ski weekend he has had since Ruhpolding last year. He also hit 26/30 shots which was his best shooting weekend of the season as well. After being one of the top shooters in the 22-23 season 86.7% last year and was even lower in Kontiolahti and Hochfilzen. If he carries this over to Ruhpolding then I can’t tell you how excited I am to see Niklas Hartweg rejoin the ranks of the top 10-15 biathletes in the world!

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

1) 🇫🇮 Finland – It was the 5th ever victory for a Finnish relay team and their first win since the races in Antholz in January of 1990.

1) 🇫🇷 Paula Botet – After absolutely killing it on the IBU Cup in the 1st trimester, Botet gets the call up to the World Cup. She immediately proved she belongs as she won her very 1st race back on the World Cup. It was a massive personal best over her 21st place finish in the 22-23 Oslo Sprint.

2) 🇳🇴 Maren Kirkeeide – A rough season for the Norwegian women, Maren Kirkeeide is showing some signs of taking a big step forward. She set a new career best of 5th in the Annecy Pursuit. This week she goes back to back in 2nd. That’s now three top 5 finishes in her last four races!

3) 🇧🇬 Milena Todorova – Todorova’s career season hit a new peak as she attained her 1st career podium. She followed that up with a 7th. Both of those were better than her prior career best of 8th at the 2020-2021 Östersund Sprint in March of 2021. This is now three of her four best ever finishes this season.

4) 🇫🇷 Oceane Michelon – Yet another young French woman who has bumped her head on the podium, Oceane Michelon joins Jeanne Richard in setting a career best of 4th this season with her performance in the Pursuit. She actually started the weekend with a career best of 6th which was one spot better than her prior best of 7th in the Kontiolahti Short Individual to start this season.

8) 🇫🇮 Sonja Leinamo – Sonja Leinamo becomes the third Finnish woman with a personal best this season! That ski work has paid huge dividends this season. Leinamo started out the season with a 27th in the Short Individual in Konthiolahti. Her 8th place in the Sprint in Oberhof obliterated that personal best!

8) 🇫🇷 Emilien Claude – Emilien Claude had easily the best weekend of his career in Oberhof. He started out with an 8th in the Sprint and followed that up with a 13th in the Pursuit. Prior to this he had just one career top 10, the season opening Individual in Östersund last year.

11) 🇨🇭 Amy Baserga – Joining Nikolas Hartweg as Swiss athletes appearing to build towards a peak for Worlds is Amy Baserga. Her career best finishes are 9th and 10th both in Mass Starts last season in Antholz and Canmore. This is a really good sign that she’s starting to get ready to get the Switzerland fans cheering in Lenzerheide!

16) 🇮🇹 Michela Carrara – Italian Michela Carrara set a new career best of 16th in the Sprint just squeaking past her prior career best of 19th last season’s Soldier Hollow Sprint. She followed up her 16th Sprint by matching last season’s 19th as well!