Breakthrough and Career Best Seasons

Every year we see improvement coming from all over the place. It’s one of my favorite aspects of the season to see these men and women and celebrate them throughout the year. Think of my love of Suvi Minkkinen this season! There is also something really exciting about an athlete reaching their potential or finding a level that you didn’t know was even possible for them. This pieces is dedicated to those athletes who achieved that this season!

Breakthroughs come in all shapes and sizes so here are just a few examples:
– Rising from being very good to a true great of the sport.
– Coming up from occasional top 10 to consistent top 10 contender.
– Moving from middle of the pack to make a name for themselves as a top 25 biathlete.

We’re going to try to break these up into categories just because that’s more fun.

Before we start a few notes:

• Most athletes you see listed here are younger. That doesn’t mean older athletes aren’t eligible to “breakthrough.” It’s just usually that by the time they are further into their careers it’s more incremental improvement rather than breakthrough. That’s completely subjective. To be sure this is NOT an ageist thing and I’m more than willing to celebrate breakthroughs no matter when they come!
• There are some subtle differences between breakthrough and just improvement. I can’t put it into words though. Basically you know if when you see it. If you disagree with me I want to hear it!
• I have a separate piece on Rookies coming up later so many of them are not listed here. In my definition of the word, a Rookie is anybody who had never raced more than 1/3 of a World Cup season before. For example, Oceane Michelon is a rookie and Jeanne Richard is not.

Below you’ll find the athletes listed by the position in which they finished. This isn’t about the degree of improvement just what their final Overall ranking was.

Eric Perrot

Age	23
Overall Rank	3rd
Career Best Rank	11th
Total Career Races	80
Key Statistic	Wins: 3

If I were to ask you right now who is the best French male biathlete? You might say Quentin Fillon Maillet because of his history and how well he closed out the season, you might say Emilien Jacquelin because his ceiling is so high, and you might even say 23 year old Eric Perrot. Last year he had three wins, which was tied with Sturla Holm Laegreid for 2nd most on the men’s circuit. One of those victories made him the World Champion in the Individual this year. He also won bronze in the Pursuit! He wore the Yellow bib for the first time in his career after winning the Mass Start in Kontiolahti. That’s a damn good year for any athletes and especailly a 23 year old.

We’ve had high expectations for Perrot for several years now. Some have gone so far as to compare him to a young Martin Fourcade. Expecting anybody to have that level of success is a little wild. However, it’s clear that Perrot has a level of talent that could make him one of the dominant forces in the men’s World Cup for the next decade. He’s already a top 10 level skier, last season ranking 8th running 3.55% ahead of the median biathlete. That put him on the same level as Sturla Holm Laegreid, who just happens to be the 2024-2025 Overall Champion, and Tommaso Giacomel, one of the other top young talents in the sport. Perrot also hit 89.8% last season, ranking 7th in on the men’s World Cup. This included a very strong 6% improvement in his standing shooting from 86.2% to 92.9%.

Perrot already skis and shoots like an Overall champion. His statistics aren’t that far behind Laegreid. He had three wins last season tying hm for 2nd most on the World Cup. Eric Perrot is no longer an up and coming biathlete. He’s now definitively one of the top men and will likely contend for the Overall for much of the next decade.

Jeanne Richard

Age	22
Overall Rank	6th
Career Best Rank	39th
Total Career Races	37
Key Statistic	Standing Shooting: 86.2%

Speaking of women who are likely to be in contention for the Overall sooner rather than later there is fellow French biathlete, 22 year old Jeanne Richard. After a solid showing as a 21 year old including top 10’s in her first two races, she absolutely showed out in year two. She had ten top 10’s in 25 races including one podium and finishing 4th a simply crazy five times. Simply put, this season it was no surprise at all to see Jeanne Richard mixing it up with many of the top established names in the sport in the late states of a race.

Richard came to the World Cup already a top-20 skier and she improved on that just a little bit as well. The big jump in her performance, though, was her standing shooting. In the 2023-2024 season she hit 94.7% of her prone shots and she somehow improved on that hitting 95.2% this season. However, she improved from 73.7% to 86.2% in her standing shooting. It was this leap that put her in contention for podiums late in the races. That put her total hit rate at 90.7%.

Jeanne Richard finished 6th in the Overall last season. With her now excellent shooting she only needs a modest level of continued growth in her skiing to be in contention for the Overall in the next few seasons. Considering her young age I have to believe that this is within her reach.

Tommaso Giacomel

Age	24
Overall Rank	6th
Career Best Rank	8th
Total Career Races	108
Key Statistic	Top 5’s: 10

Another young promising athlete who made the leap up to the top tiers of the sports this season is 24 year old Italian Tommaso Giacomel. Over the last three seasons he’s moved from intriguing talent, to u25 globe winner to consistent contender. During his rise he had a combined six top 5’s in the last five seasons. This past season alone he had six podiums and 10 top 5’s.

Over the course of the last 14 races he finished outside the top 8 just a single time. In that stretch he had the first win of his career and six podiums. That stretch put him in the top point earners for the 2nd half of the season. Prorated over an entire season, while he wouldn’t have defeated Sturla Holm Laegreid for the Overall Globe, he would have been in contention for it alongside fellow Breakthrough Athlete Eric Perrot.

Giacomel has always been fast but he keeps getting faster. This season he was 3.9% faster than the median biathlete, the best of his career and 5th best on the World Cup. Most importantly, though, he hit over a career best 82.6% of his shots. This was just the 2nd time he’s hit more than 80% in his World Cup career. To rise all the way to the top of the sport that hit rate is going to have to keep improving but this was a monumental and exciting step!

Suvi Minkkinen

Age	30
Overall Rank	7th
Career Best Rank	27th
Total Career Races	132
Key Statistic	Skiing Median Back: -1.0%

Readers and listeners will not be surprised at all to know that this was my favorite story of the season. At age 30 and seven seasons into her World Cup career, Suvi Minkkinen appeared to be pretty “locked in” to who she was going to be which was a very good shooter that was held back by her skiing. Up until this season she was able to be competitive in races in which she hit 100% and had her very best skiing. However, that led to a total of just one top 10 and 11 top 20’s prior to this season in 108 career World Cup races.

Going into this season Minkkinen made the decision to go train in the Alps. She knew that she needed to do something different and for her that meant training at altitude. Unfortunately for her there aren’t a lot of mountains in Finland so she wanted to go to the Alps. She trained there all summer and this led to a massive breakthrough. Prior to this season the best skiing in her career was in the 2022-2023 season where she was 2.1% slower than the median biathlete. This season she was 1% faster than the median biathlete. That’s a HUGE breakthrough!

Amazingly so, Minkkinen did all of this without a drop in her shooting. In fact, not only did she not have a drop, she had the single best shooting season of her career as she hit 92.5% of her total shots, 91% prone and 94% standing.

The result was something beautiful: 3 podiums including the bronze in the Sprint at the Lenzerheide World Championships. She had seven top 5’s, 17 top 10’s and 21 top 20’s. Again, just compare those numbers to her career totals above. She ended up finishing 7th in the Overall compared to her prior career best of 27th. This is a massive career year! Suvi Minkkinen confirmed to us after the season that she will be following the same training strategy again this offseason so hopefully we’ll see more of the same next year!

Selina Grotian

Age	21
Overall Rank	9th
Career Best Rank	29th
Total Career Races	41st
Key Statistic	Top 10’s: 11 in 23 races

This is our fifth athlete on this list and our fourth that is 24 year old or younger. Selina Grotian is, indeed, our youngest athlete on the list. In her 2nd career season on the World Cup she rose from 29th in the Overall up to 9th. We’ve been hearing about the “next Laura Dahlmeier” for several years now so it is no surprise to see her show up on this list. It’s actually quite a wonderful thing to see her not outwardly appear to be too overwhelmed by the comparisons.

The young German simply has “the look.” At her young age she already was running 2.3% faster than the median biathlete which ranked 17th on the World Cup last season. That’s an improvement over the 1.3% faster than median she skied at in the 2023-2024 season and her average course time rank jumped from 24.9 to 18.0. She hit 84.7% of her shots with relatively even prone/standing splits which represented an improvement of 3.3% over the last year. Her average shooting time improved from 28.0 seconds to 26.7 seconds.

She’s well rounded and she’s making improvements in every aspect of her performance. All of this led to her finishing in the top 10 in just under half of her races including the first win of her career in the Annecy-le Grand Bornand Mass Start. and five total top 5’s. It would be no surprise to see her show up again on this list in the next year or two as she jumps from consistent top 10 finisher to Overall Globe contender.

Vebjoern Soerum

Age	26
Overall Rank	9th
Career Best Rank	26th
Total Career Races	39
Key Statistic	Races: 23

Almost more impressive than Vebjoern Soerum finishing 9th Ovearll this season is that he established himself, at least for this year, as a consistent member of the Norwegian men’s World Cup team. It’s the most difficult team in biathlon to be a part of. It’s highly competitive with so many young and highly talented athletes fighting to move up. Just this season we saw reliable veteran Vetle Sjaastad Christiansen, who had three consective top 5 Overall finishes, and Johannes Dale-Skjevdal, who last season finished 3rd Overall, get demoted at various times to the IBU Cup.

Last season Vebjoern Soerum was one of those who lived in the liminal space where he was a borderline World Cup athlete. In the 2023-2024 season he raced 13 times on the World Cup and 10 times on the IBU Cup. Really what happened is he raced the first two weekends on the World Cup with the “extra bib” awarded to the Norwegian team for Endre Stroemsheim’s 2022-2023 IBU Cup victory. In those five races he accumulated enough points to allow him to race the Lenzerheide, Antholz, and Oslo Mass Starts before returning to the World Cup for Soldier Hollow and Canmore with the expanded rosters.

This season Soerum laid a definitive claim to his spot early on. He was determined not to end up in the same “in between” zone and he succeeded. Utilizing a new level of ski speed, where he ran 2.9% ahead of the median biathlete this season compared to just 0.6% ahead in the 2023-2024 season, Soerum quickly four top 8 finishes in the first two weeks to secure continued on the competitive squad. He continued collecting top 10’s in Annecy-le Grand Bornand and Oberhof before his first career World Cup victory in the Ruhpolding Individual that will only ever be remembered as the JT Boe race before his retirement. The rest of his season was quite as successful with a 4th place Sprint at the World Championships but just one more top 10 the rest of the way. By that time though it was already a successful year.

It doesn’t look like Soerum will ever be a consistent contender for the wins and the Overall with a shooting percentage that hovers in the low 80’s. If he can work on that though and move to the mid to high 80’s there is one more big step for him to take!

Maren Kirkeeide

Age	22
Overall Rank	10th
Career Best Rank	54th
Total Career Races	35
Key Statistic	Overall Ski Rank: 7th

For the Norwegian women it was mostly a season to forget. There were some memorable moments to be clear, but with Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold and Karoline Knotten having less than stellar seasons, it was overall a season of disappointment. Except, that is, in the case of Maren Kirkeeide.

Maren Kirkeeide took a major leap up in performance primarily regarding her skiing. She has always been a highly talented skier in the Juniors ranks and this season, at the young age of 22, she started to show not just her potential but what she can already do. She skied 3.3% faster than the median biathlete which put her just ahead of Franziska Preuss and in 7th in the overall ski ranks. That’s some very heady company.

The result was seven top 10’s in 24 races including three podiums, two of which came in back to back 2nd places in Oberhof. The highlight of the season, undoubtedly, was winning bronze in the Mass Start at the Lenzerheide Worlds. The really exciting part is that Krikeeide still has room to grow. This season she shot 83.8%. Compare that to the 89% she shot last year on the IBU Cup. There is real hope that next season she can improve on her 10th place finish and compete for the u23 Globe!

Milena Todorova

Age	27
Overall Rank	15th
Career Best Rank	46th
Total Career Races	93
Key Statistic	Standing Shooting Percentage: 79.5%

After missing the 2023-2024 season for maternity leave, Milena Todorova rejoined the World Cup this season, and just like fellow moms Justine Braisaz-Bouchet and Baiba Bendika amongst others, reached new highs in her career. Thus far, the still young Todorova, has been remarkably consistent in her year to year performance. Her Overall finishes the last four seasons before missing last season were in reverse order 52, 48, 46, and 47. In those seasons she consistently had about six top 30’s and 1-3 top 20’s.

This season for Todorova, similar to Suvi Minkkinen, was a breakthrough on a huge scale. Prior to this season she had 69 career races in which she achieved nine top 20’s and a single top 10. This season alone, in 24 races, she had 12 top 20’s, seven top 10’s, her first three top 5’s including her first two career podiums in the Oberhof Sprint and the Pokljuka Mass Start.

While Minkkinen made a massive ski breakthrough, for Todorova it was her shooting. She ended up skiing 1.2% faster than median which is right in line with where she was the three most recent seasons of her career. Her overall shooting improved to 85.3%. The last four seasons her total hit rate was between 76.9% and 79.5%. While she had become a very good prone shooter in her last two seasons hitting 93.1% and 88.8% she was well behind in her standing shooting. This season it surged from the upper 60’s to 79.5%. That’s not quite “good” but for Todorova this season it was certainly good enough!

If Todorova can continue this trajectory, meaning continued skiing at this level, holding her prone shooting around 90% and improving her standing shooting into the low to mid 80’s, she has a real chance to make another upward surge towards the top 10. She’s still just 28 years old. This is definitely possible!

Amy Baserga

Age	24
Overall Rank	16
Career Best Rank	25
Total Career Races	66
Key Statistic	Top 20’s: 12

Sometimes improvements aren’t huge. Sometimes they don’t come in the form of getting onto the podium or regular top 10’s. Sometimes it’s as much about raising your competitive floor as raising the ceiling. That’s where Amy Baserga improved this season. She did get her first career podium this season, which was amazing to see with her 3rd place in the Individual in Ruhpolding. She also had four top 10’s which was a nice step up from the first two top 10’s of her career in the 2023-2024 season. However, one of the big reasons she climbed from 25th to 16th this season was she improved from five top 20’s in each other last two seasons to 12 this year. That means that she finished in the top 20 in over half of her races this year.

Breaking down her statistics, her skiing has been very even the last three seasons as she’s hung right around the median skier. She was exactly the median skier in the 2022-2023 season and then 0.2% and 0.1% slower the last two seasons. What raised her floor was her standing shooting improvement. She continued to be a stellar prone shooter as she’s hit between 87.6% and 92.1% prone each season. Her standing shooting improved to 87.9%, her best over a full season in her career.

So now Amy Baserga has raised her floor with particularly her shooting. The next step is raising her ceiling with her skiing. If she keeps shooting like this she doesn’t need to be blazing fast. Just look towards Suvi Minkkinen who was 1.0% faster than median with similar shooting and ended up with 17 top 10’s. That’s absolutely in reach within the next few seasons.

Campbell Wright

Age	22
Overall Rank	17th
Career Best Rank	31st
Total Career Races	69
Key Statistic	World Championship Medals: 2

There were bigger improvements and breakthroughs this season, but I’m not sure any of them were as loud as Campbell Wright. And I mean that both because he was splashy with how he did it (2 and nearly 3 Worlds medals) and also his general personality being so vivacious and energetic. Campbell Wright has become a certified biathlon star this season. He was always a fan favorite because he was a talented young biathlete from New Zealand which is completely unheard of. He was easy to take note of because of that and his entertaining and uninhibited racing.

He started showing up on the World Cup when he was still a teenager so it’s somehow hard to believe he’s just 22 years old. At this still very young age he started to deliver on the hopes that we all had for him. The 4th place in the 2nd race of the season was just the start. He was in and out of the top 10 all season long, and remarkably consistent with top 20 finishes with 16 in 24 races. The peak of his season came on came as we noted earlier in Lenzerheide as he won silver in the Sprint, backed it up with silver in the Pursuit, and nearly won bronze in the Mass Start only surpassed by JT Boe on the last lap.

Wright has shown steady and consistent improvement throughout the last three seasons. Every year his skiing gets a little faster and his shooting gets a little better.

	22-23	23-24	24-25
Avg Ski Rank	46.9	29.3	18.3
Ski vs. Median	0.2%	-1.2%	-2.3%
Ski Rank	53	24	19
Shooting Splits	86.7%/75.2%/81%	83.6%/85%/84.3%	87%/85%/86%
Shooting Rank	60	31	27

That’s just a very impressive a solid trajectory. We’ve already seen his peak which is enough to compete and beat the best in the world. You don’t win two, nearly three, Worlds medals without it. The next step is increasing consistency and continuing to raise the ceiling.

Vitezslav Hornig

Age	25
Overall Rank	20th
Career Best Rank	92nd
Total Career Races	43
Key Statistic	Avg Ski Rank: 23

Along with Suvi Minkkinen and Milena Todorova, Vitezslav Hornig’s improvement was one of the biggest and most impressive that we saw this season. Hornig came into this season having scored just a single point in his World Cup career. That means that prior to this season he had exactly one top 40 finish and it was exactly 40th in the 2023-2024 Ruhpolding Pursuit. This season he had 20 top 40’s in 21 races. This included 8 top 20’s, four top 10’s and a career best 5th in the Ruhpolding Individual. (He must LOVE Ruhpolding as he also finished 9th in the Mass start meaning his career best before this season was there and now two of his 3 career best finishes after this season are there). Simply put this was a monumental breakthrough for Hornig.

Hornig, similar to Minkkinen although not quite on the same level, has proven to be a consistently solid shooter. He’s hit 85% or better in four of his five seasons now including 86.5% this season. What has held him back in the early years of his career has been his skiing. Well, no longer. He went from being a slightly below average skier to a faster than average skier. Over the last four seasons she’s skied 3.9%, 4.8%, 4.3% and 3.6% slower than the median biathlete. This season he was 1.7% faster. That’s a HUGE improvement. His average ski rank moved from 65.6 up to 23.0.

The question for Hornig, like Minkkinen, is can they make this more of a regular thing? That’s hard to know. Minkkinen we have a pretty good understanding of how she made her breakthrough, it was a new training regimen she’s going to hopefully replicate again. Hornig benefited for sure from his new coaches. And he wasn’t exactly a slug as a Junior so the potential was in there. It does look like there may be reason to believe he can maintain this level the next few years, and if he can move his shooting up a few more percentage points he can raise his ceiling even a little big higher.

Emilien Claude

Age	25
Overall Rank	21
Career Best Rank	48
Total Career Races	43
Key Statistic	Total Races: 19

Emilien Claude, better known as Anna Gandler’s partner and frequently seen on her Instagram, (Just kidding Emilien!!) went from being the youngest Claude brother occasionally seen on the World Cup to regular World Cup member this season. Prior to this year Claude had run 24 races across four different seasons. This year he raced 19 times. That alone speaks to the level of consistency he brought to his biathlon this year.

It was the first year when he was able to sync up his skiing and shooting potential. After having run well in the past and shot decently in the past, this year he was able to do it well in both aspects. He skied 1.7% faster than the median biathlete, good enough for 26th fastest this season, and he hit 84.5%, his best since the 21-22 season when he only raced twice. His shooting improvement was most noteworthy as a problem was identified in his rifle mid season. After the change to his rifle was made he hit 85.5% which was a modest improvement from the first trimester when he hit 80%.

Natalia Sidorowicz

Age	26
Overall Rank	29
Career Best Rank	50
Total Career Races	57
Key Statistic	Top 30’s: 15

Natalia Sidorowicz continues to surprise us as she has risen to be the undisputed leader of the Polish women’s team. A bit of a surprise last season, she entered this season with high hopes and surely matched them all. She scored a top 10 in her first race of the year finishing 4th in the Kontiolahti Short Individual. She ended the season with her second career top 10 finishing 9th in the Oslo Holmenkollen Mass Start, being the only woman to hit all 20 shots that day. That Mass Start was her fourth of the season along with the Kontiolahti, Annecy-le Grand Bornand, and Lenzerheide. She only missed out on Ruhpolding and Pokljuka.

“Nati” as she apparently goes by, raised her floor this season. She came into the prior season without ever having a top 40 and managed to finish in the points in half of the races with 10 top 40’s and seven top 30’s. This season she improved on that by finishing with 17 top 40’s and 15 top 30’s to go along with her two top 10’s mentioned above. This happened even as she had a slight regression in her shooting hitting 84.2% after being slightly above 86% the prior to years. Sidorowicz was able to do this with her improved ski speed as she improved from being 1.3% faster than median last year to being right around the median skier this season.

It seems more likely than not she’s going to continue her gradual ski improvement. If she can get her shooting back up over 86%, maybe 87% that opens a new door for her. Last year was the year of the top 40’s. This season was the year of the top 30’s. Next season could be the year of the top 20’s!

Khrystyna Dmytrenko

Age	25
Overall Rank	32nd
Career Best Rank	57th
Total Career Races	36
Key Statistic	Total Hit Rate: 91.6%

Last season the 25 year old Ukrainian went from being a very good shooter to being a great shooter. At 91.6% she ranked 7th overall in shooting on the World Cup ranking right behind Lou Jeanmonnot, one of the most well respected shooters in biathlon. No doubt about it, Khrystyna Dmytrenko is one of the best shooters around now. When you can shoot that well, including a remarkable 93.1% standing shooting, it gives you a very solid floor. You just don’t spend a whole lot of time on the penalty loop and you don’t take a lot of Individual penalties either.

When you hit 91.6% it means you’re not going to have many really terrible races and that was plainly visible in Dmytrenko’s results as she finished in the points in 18 of 20 races this season. Even with “only” five top 20’s that meant that she was accumulating points basically every race. A very cool thing for Dmytrenko was she did her best racing on the biggest stages. For the 2nd straight season she had a great race in the World Championship Individual race. In Nove Mesto she finished 8th, her only career top 10, and in Lenzerheide she finished 11th, her 2nd best career finish. If Dmytrenko can just eek out a bit more ski speed she’ll have a couple more top 10’s to go along with it. If she can have a Suvi Minkkinen like offseason, well look out!

Thierry Langer

Age	33
Overall Rank	38th
Career Best Rank	56th
Total Career Races	113
Key Statistic	Total Hit Rate: 86%

The 2024-2025 season was the 13th season in which Thierry Langer had raced any races on the World Cup and sixth in which he raced what we would consider to be a full season. It was clearly a career best season for him that was driven entirely by his shooting. He has been very consistently a slightly below average skier for the last four seasons peaking in 2022-2023 where he was 0.1% slower than median. He has basically been in the same range for the last four seasons though.

Langer’s shooting has also been remarkably consistent. Since the 2015-2016 season, with the brief exception of 18-19, he has hit between 78.1% and 81.2% of his shots. Over the last five seasons his standing shooting was slowly improving by about 1% per season from the low 80’s to the mid 80’s while his prone shooting was stuck in the 70’s. This year his prone shooting took a jump up to 86%, a mark he only hit once, in 2016-2017 when he raced in two races.

This season he didn’t improve at all in his skiing, running at 0.4% slower than median. That improvement almost entirely in his prone shooting led him to achieve nine top 40’s and 8 top 30’s each easily the most in his career. More importantly he also finished in the top 20 six times after having just one top 20 in his career before this season, and he finished in the top 10 for the first time ever when he finished 9th in the first race of the season.

Langer isn’t reliant on his speed really at all. So if he can find a way to keep up this level of shooting, particularly prone since he has shown a relative consistency in standing shooting the last five seasons, he has a chance to continue to collect top 20’s over the next few seasons.

Sara Andersson

Age	22
Overall Rank	37th
Career Best Rank	49th
Total Career Races	23
Key Statistic	Skiing vs. Median: -1.2%

If not for a midseason illness, Sara Andersson would surely have been higher on this list. She came right out of the gate this season looking so good. In the Kontiolahti she finished 12th in the Short Individual, 7th in the Sprint, and 13th in the Mass Start. After a down weekend in Hochfilzen she bounced back for 11th in the Annecy-le Grand Bornand Mass Start. Then due to illness we didn’t see her on the World Cup until Nove Mesto. She had a couple of top 30’s, raced in Pokljuka once and then was done for the season. Just 11 races this season.

In the brief time that we saw her she looked like she was ready to take a big step forward. She was better across the board but most significantly in her skiing. She moved from 1.5% slower than the median and improved to 1.2% faster than the median woman this season. She also improved her shooting from 79.4% to 85% primarily due to her prone shooting rising by 10 percent up to 93.3%.

Really the only problem was we just didn’t seen enough of her! Hopefully, being just 22 she has another great summer/fall of growth. She still has incredibly high potential. I fully expect to see her moving into the top 20 Overall next season. If all goes right I could see a solid top 15 Overall finish. Big if though!

Venla Lehtonen

Age	30
Overall Rank	42nd
Career Best Rank	87th
Total Career Races	56
Key Statistic	Avg Ski Rank: 33

Just like Sara Andersson, Venla Lehtonen was on her way to a big time breakthrough until she was taken down by illness. Just like her teammates she showed a huge ski improvement. Her average ski rank improved from 56th last season, her previous career best, to 33rd. For the first time in her career she skied faster than average running 0.7% faster than average compared to her prior career best of 1.7% slower than average in the 2023-2024 season. She had the six best ski ranks of her career.

She also had a very good shooting season as she hit 86.2%. This was just the third time she has hit 80% or better. She hit 93.8% of her prone shots, by far the best of her career over the 86.2% last season. She also his 78.5% standing her 3rd best in her career.

All things considered Venla Lehtonen was on pace for a huge year. She had the six best finishes of her career over the last three weekends that she raced including all six of her career top 30’s and her career best of 7th in the Annecy-le Grand Bornand Pursuit. Can she repeat this again next season? I guess we’ll see. If she can, and if she can stay healthy, the Finnish women are going to have a nice 1-2 combo at the front of the pack!

Jan Gunka

Age	22
Overall Rank	57th
Career Best Rank	87th
Total Career Races	42
Key Statistic	Pursuits: 5

Jan Gunka is one of a handful of young Polish men, along with Konrad Badacz, Grzegorz Galica and others, who are promising a new era of Polish men’s biathlon. This season Gunka took another solid step forward. He raised his average finishing position from 59th to 50th. He had the three best finishes of his career, including his two top 30’s, and six of the top 7 finishes of his career.

This was primarily through his shooting as he improved from 78.8% to 82.7%. It’s even more impressive when you consider just two years ago he hit just 69.2%. That’s a 13.5% improvement in two seasons. He moved from well back in the pack to 53rd which is around the middle of the pack. His skiing remains around 1-1.5% slower than median over the last several years but he’s still quite young.

Maybe the best indicator of his improvement is simply the number of races Gunka raced this past season. This year he raced 17 times, the most yet in his career. That’s primarily because he was able to qualify for more Pursuits. He only missed out on the Annecy-le Grand Bornand Pursuit (by 5 spots) and the Antholz Pursuit. Otherwise he qualified for every Pursuit this season. Next season hopefully he gets in all of them!

Maxime Germain

Age	23
Overall Rank	53rd
Career Best Rank	No prior ranking
Total Career Races	34
Key Statistic	Avg Finish: 44

While not quite as spectacular as his roommate Campbell Wright, Maxime Germain also had a great improvement this season. Prior to this year he had raced 17 times and never had a top 40 finish. This season he raced 17 times and had seven top 40 finishes and finished 53rd in the Overall. This included the six times in the top 30 and his first two top 20’s. The biggest races of his season was finishing 12th in the World Championship Sprint which he followed up with a respectable 21st in the Pursuit. Over the entire season his average finish of 44th was just a hair outside the points.

Germain had a significant jump in performance across the board this season. He jumped from 2.0% slower than median to being right around the median skier at 0.1% slower. THis resulted in his average ski rank moving from 61 to 40. His hit rate jumped from 66.4% to 82.2% with both his prone and his standing shooting over 80%. His average shooting time dropped from 29.3 seconds down to 26.1 seconds moving him up to the 26th fastest shooter on the World Cup last season.

All in all this was a tremendous overall improvement and just goes to show that the work the young American men are putting in is really paying off. This wasn’t just about Campbell Wright being highly talented, it’s that he’s talented and the strategy is working. There is no reason to believe that we won’t see at least another modest improvement from Germain next season as well.

Sonja Leinamo

Age	23
Overall Rank	61st
Career Best Rank	No prior points earned
Total Career Races	23
Key Statistic	Ski Rank: 20th

Sonja Leinamo was likely a bit under the radar as she didn’t have the amazing season like Suvi Minkkinen, but at just 23 years old she showed significant signs this season that she could join Suvi Minkkinen and Venla Lehtonen leading the Finnish team as early as next season. She only had four top 40’s but she showed her potential with the 8th place Sprint in Oberhof.

In fact all season long she showed her potential as her ski speed took another step forward. This season she ended up ranked 20th on the World Cup in skiing as she was running 2.1% faster than median and just 3.6% slower than the median top 10. The result was her best season yet in her career. The key for Leinamo is going to be getting her shooting to improve. We’ve seen this play out a number of times recently where fast skiers have gotten to be good enough shooters to compete. The last three seasons she’s been stuck in the low to mid 70’s with her standing shooting even lower at 67.1% in each of the last two seasons.

If she can get that shooting closer to 80% next season (and higher after that!) then we’ll really see what she can do!