Austria 2025-2026 Team Preview

Austria is a nation steeped in winter sports tradition. When you think of winter sports and the Winter Olympics its hard not to see Austrians. Almost every winter Austrian fans are assured of having one of the winningest winter sports rosters. The overwhelming majority of this success, though, comes in alpine skiing. Of course this make sense considering Austria is home to some of the most famous ski slopes in the Alps. Fittingly the Österreichischer skiverband is by far and away the all time leader in alpine skiing medals.

When it comes to Nordic skiing, though, the success is a little more spotty. Recently there have been some bright spots. Simon Eder’s 108 top 10 finishes rank 15th all time. (Not to mention he has 417 starts, the 3rd most for any man or woman ever and will move to 2nd all time with his 5th start of this season). Lisa Theresa Hauser, the winningest Austrian woman in biathlon history, continues on in the middle of her career. Also, the age of the Anna’s appears to be upon us as Anna Gandler, Anna Andexer and Anna Juppe are climbing the ranks.

Women

The Austrian women finished up last season in 7th in the Nations Cup and that…feels just about right. They certainly had a higher potential level of performance that they couldn’t quite reach. However, for the most part they didn’t have any truly awful weeks. Lisa Theresa Hauser had some solid weeks and ended the season ranked 11th Overall. Not shabby at all, but not quite at her top level that we know she has. Anna Gandler fought illness and injury all season and never could get the momentum to return to her form from the end of the 23-24 season. Anna Andexer showed major upside flashes, particularly in a few relays. All in all I think there are a lot of reasons to be optimistic that this season will be even better.

Head Coach: Richard Gösweiner
2024-2025 Nations Cup Rank: 7th
2024-2025 Relay Finishes: 5th, 13th, 6th, 14th, 4th (WC), 5th
Quota: 5 Athletes to Start

World Cup Locks – With five athletes set to line up every race, there are two women who are completely locked in. We’ll cover them first and then it gets interesting.

Lisa Theresa Hauser (31)

You want to know how good Lisa Hauser was during the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 seasons? She was so good that finishing 10th Overall in 22-23 and 11th Overall in 24-25 seems like a relative disappointment. Not for nothing but those are the 3rd and 4th best Overall finishes of her career and better than anything she did prior to her breakout in 2020-2021. That’s a long way of saying that just because she hasn’t been as spectacular as she was during those two peak years doesn’t mean that she hasn’t been quietly very good.

Of course she hasn’t reached the same heights. After 10 podiums and 26 top 10’s in those two seasons she has just two podiums and 18 top 10’s across the last three seasons. However, she has maintained a very high floor with 19 top 30’s in the 22-23 and 24-25 seasons as well as 16 and 15 top 20’s in those two seasons. That’s only a slight step backward from her peak years and as good or better than any prior season. It’s not rurpsie then that her average finishes of 16th (22-23) and 20th (24-25) are also higher than any prior season for her outside of her two peak years.

So what’s been the key to her performance? And likely your more pressing question, what is keeping her from reaching that same peak level? Well it’s pretty clear to see from the chart above. Her skiing form took a tremendous spike in the 20202-21 season as she ran 2.8% faster than median and had an average course time rank of 12th. That slipped a little bit in the 21-22 season and then has stayed roughly steady since then. That appears to have been the floor raiser, so that’s what took her level to such a peak?

Lisa Hauser has always been a solid shooter. In the 2021-2022 season she combined that spike in skiing (even if off her peak in 2020-2021) with some of the best shooting in her career. She hit a phenomenal 88.1% total hit rate, one of the best marks in her career. The combination of the speed and accuracy took her all the way to 3rd Overall.

	Prone %	Standing %	Total %	Shooting Time
2017-2018	88.5	89.2	88.8	25.9
2018-2019	90.3	84.3	87.3	26.6
2019-2020	84.8	88.3	86.6	27.7
2020-2021	88.1	81.9	85	28.8
2021-2022	90	86.2	88.1	26.6
2022-2023	88.9	82.6	85.8	25.8
2023-2024	89.7	83.5	86.6	28.1
2024-2025	90.5	84.5	87.5	26.6

Unfortunately since that season her shooting has just dipped slightly, not a lot but just enough. Meanwhile her skiing, as we noted earlier, is down just a touch from her high point, but again not a lot. The result is that instead of finishing 3rd and 6th Overall she’s down to 10th and 11th. It also shows how narrow the gap is between being very good and excellent.

Can we expect Lisa Hauser to again reach such heights? She probably doesn’t have another top 3 Overall season in her. If it was going to happen it would likely be a season like this when some of the top Overall contenders could be focusing on the Olympics and not the Overall. More likely, though, she’s going to be in the same boat. Instead another season around 10th Overall, maybe a little higher and maybe a little lower, is likely in the cards. She has been training regularly with Swiss coach Sandra Flunger and she likes her form. I’ll take the over on this and predict her being just inside the top 10 this year as she runs top 25 in overall skiing and hits 88% again this season.

Anna Gandler (24)

As the 2023-2024 season drew to a thrilling finish during the North American swing in Soldier Hollow and Canmore, and as Lisa Vittozzi closed out a significant comeback in the Overall race, one of the nearly as exciting stories was the breakthrough of Anna Gandler. The flashy and exciting Austrian with a killer smile and wicked social media game ended the 23-24 campaign on an absolute heater. She finished with five straight top 10’s including four trips to the Flower Ceremony, and her first career top 5 in the season ending Mass Start. If you look back further she was top 20 in each of the final 11 races of the season including the World Championships. Over that run she hit exactly 90% with an average course time rank of 17th. Simply put Anna Gandler was one of the best women in the world to close out the season. It wasn’t a fluke it was for real.

Unfortunately, last season never really got going. She had a tough summer with recurrent sickness. She just couldn’t get her training going in regular fashion. As a result the season started out a little slowly with just one top 20 in the first four weeks of the season. She came back in Ruhpolding to finish 6th in the Individual and 15th in the Mass Start. But then she got hit again with illness and ultimately ended her season following a 33rd in the Sprint at the Lenzerheide World Championships. It was a season where nothing went right.

	Prone %	Standing %	Total %	Shooting Time
2022-2023	91.2	82.4	86.8	30.1
2023-2024	91.7	81.1	86.4	30.1
2024-2025	86.7	78.9	82.8	31.4

Through it all she was able to hold her skiing together pretty well with only a mild step back from 1.5% ahead of median in 23-24 back to 0.5% ahead of median last season. And her shooting slipped a couple of percentage points as well. All in all though, it was a bit of a lost season.

This year there is no reason not to be optimistic. While she still has had some illness, and again missed some time this summer, she has overall projected an optimistic attitude and hopefulness. She might not hit that final trimester of 23-24 level right away but it’s definitely in reach. Let’s practice patience in the early parts of the season, but hopefully we’ll see her really kick it off come January.

Rounding out the Roster and the IBU Cup – Well that’s the top two who are the locks. There are still three more spots to figure out and a handful of possible athletes who could take those positions. Listed here will be all of the women I “think” can find some time on the World Cup this year.

Season opening World Cup roster:
– Lisa Theresa Hauser
– Anna Gandler
– Anna Andexer
– Anna Juppe
–Dunja Zdouc

Season Opening IBU Cup Roster:
– Kristina Oberthaler
– Lara Wagner
– Lisa Osl
– Lea Rothschopf
–Tamara Steiner
– Julia Leitinger

Anna Andexer (22)

It takes only a brief glance at Austrian Junior Cup superstar Anna Andexer’s career achievements to understand the excitement that surrounds her. Over her last four season’s worth of Juniors racing (including just Junior Worlds last season) she had 9 wins, 12 podiums, 15 top 5’s and 23 top 10’s in 34 races. That included her sterling 2023-2024 season when she had seven wins and eight podiums in 12 races. Last season, when she returned from the World Cup to race Junior Worlds, she got one last shot of glory with the Junior Worlds Sprint gold medal.

Andexer earned her first promotion to the IBU Cup during the middle of that amazing 23-24 season when she had 10 races including the European championsips. She had six top 10’s in those races including her first career podium. She started last season on the IBU Cup again, racing the first two weeks there. Her performance wasn’t extraordinary but it was solid as she earned a top 10 along with five to 21 finishes. She then went straight to the World Cup in Hochfilzen where she immediately finished 25th in the Sprint. Outside of that she had two 28th place finishes in the Sprint and Pursuit in Oslo to close the season.

Her peak performance of the year likely came as the anchor leg of the relay team at the World Championships. She was matched up, and racing alongside, some very big names including Franziska Preuss and Elvira Oeberg. She stood toe to toe with them and pulled Austria up from 8th ultimately all the way up to 4th, missing the podium by just 5.6 seconds.

Anna Andexer was a world class speedster on the Junior Cup level. In the 2023-2024 season she ran 13.1% faster than median, which is biggest best gap ahead of the median in the history of Junior Cup racing. That’s not to say he shooting has been weak, it’s just traditionally not as good. She traditionally hits in the mid to upper 70% but in her spectacular 23-24 season she showed a very high level with the rifle hitting 87.6% of her shots.

At this point we can expect that she’ll spend the majority of her time on the World Cup so we’ll look primarily at her World Cup stats from last season. She was already 0.8% ahead of median with an average course time rank of 35th. Not bad for being 21 and we can expect that to get better. She hit 79% of her shots which is about in line with her career norms.

Looking ahead to this season I think we can expect to see her continue to advance her skiing. She was exceptionally fast against her age peers. As she gets older we can expect that she’ll continue to get faster vs the World Cup field as well. Of course it’s not sure thing at all. Nothing is sure until it happens. However, she was so freaking fast on the Junior Cup we have to at least think she’ll be in the top 10-20 in skiing at some point in her career. Now it’s all about her shooting. She did have that one tremendous season in 23-24. Every other year she’s hitting in the mid to upper 70’s. We know she can do it, now we need to see her do it again. If she does move that hit rate up to the mid 80’s and continues to advance her skiing, maybe to about 1.5-1.75% faster than median that would about replicate the season statistics of Ella Halvarsson last season. Halvarsson for the record ran 1.64% faster than median and hit 85.7% of her shots. I would imagine we would all be thrilled with a season like that!

Anna Juppe (26)

The third of the Austrian Anna’s on this list, Anna Juppe also has the most experience so far in her career. At 26 years old to start the season (still young by the way!) she has already raced 47 solo World Cup races (with either last season), 36 IBU Cup races (including 14 last year), along with a season of Juniors racing.

After two seasons of mostly World Cup races, last season Juppe split time fairly evenly between the two circuits. On the IBU Cup she had 11 top 30’s in her 14 races along with five top 20’s and a top 10. It was a solid season of IBU Cup racing where she once again showed solid skiing for that level as she averaged top 10 in course rank on the IBU Cup for the third consecutive time in her career. On the World Cup she had an average finish of 53.9 in her eight races which was right about in line with 48.3 an 48.4 each of the two prior seasons.

On the World Cup level Juppe has been good but not great at any one particular aspect of the sport. She’s skied a little ahead of median in each of the last two seasons on the World Cup which has put her average course time rank of 27th and 37th. That’s definitely improved from the younger seasons of her career when she was a little slower than median and averaged a ski rank in the mid 40’s. Her shooting as been similar as she’s consistently hitting in the mid 70’s which is similar to her IBU Cup shooting.

	Prone %	Standing %	Total %	Shooting Time
2021-2022	77.5	71.3	74.4	39.4
2022-2023	84.4	75.6	80	35.4
2023-2024	77.5	71.7	74.6	33.8
2024-2025	80	70.8	75.4	33.8

As Anna Juppe enters her age 26 season it feels like she’s ready to take another step. There is another level for her skiing to reach. It’s definitely possible to see her moving to consistently skiing about 1.5-2% faster than median putting her average course time rank in the low to mid 20’s. That’s absolutely feasible based on her history. The next step is a little more difficult but certainly a possibility, and that would be hitting closer to 80% of her shots. She’s been close but not all the way there in recent seasons. That level of skiing along with hitting in the low 80’s would roughly replicate Anna-Karin Heijdenberg’s statistics from last season that led to her finishing 39th in the Overall. That would be a new career best and I think that’s completely possible this season!

Dunja Zdouc (31)

After spending most of her Seniors career as a lock on the World Cup, the last two seasons have been more about the IBU Cup for Dunja Zdouc. Zdouc ran full World Cup seasons in each of 20-21, 21-22, and 22-23 but ran just seven total World Cup races in the last two seasons combined. With the amount of young talent coming up on the Austrian team the internal competition is getting to such a degree that it takes more than the exceptional sharp shooting of Zdouc to be able to guarantee a regular spot.

Throughout her career Dunja Zdouc has a good shooter. No matter the level, every season but one since 2015-2016 she’s hit 85% or higher. That includes hitting 94% on the IBU Cup last season and 92.3% on the World Cup in 2022-2023. If she’s that good of a shooter, and not regularly on the World Cup, we can guess where the difficulty comes in.

Her best ski season thus far came in 2020-2021 when she ranked 58th overall in skiing on the World Cup. That year she had an average course time rank on the World Cup of 41st. The last two years in limited World Cup racing her average course time rank has been in the 70’s. On the IBU Cup her average ski rank was 28th each of the last two seasons. This was her wosrt since 2018-2019.

We know that Dunja Zdouc has the shooting ability to get it done. If she can get the skis going again, and the younger Austrians have some struggles, we could see her on the World Cup all season long. Otherwise, I anticipate that she will occupy what may become a rotating spot with some of the women below her on this list.

IBU Cup

Lea Rothschopf (23)

Lea Rothschopf is just 23 years old, but she already has 99 career IBU races to her credit. For somebody so young that’s already a huge amount of racing. Rothschopf’s career has been very fun to follow. She didn’t come roaring out of the gates and she didn’t come with a high profile but she’s been steadily improving every year and has earned hear opportunities. On the Junior Cup she improved year by year. She got her first top 30 in 2019-2020, her first top 20’s in 20-21, her firs tpodium in 21-22, and then her first Junior Cup win in 2022-2023, her last Juniors season. That 2022-2023 Junior Cup season was quite successful as she was top 21 in every race including a win in the Junior European Championships Individual as well as a 9th and 5th in the Junior Worlds Sprint and Pursuit. Every year better and better!

Meanwhile her senior level career has followed a similar path. She made her IBU Cup debut all the way back in 2021 as a 20 year old and had her first IBU Cup top 20 the following year. She scored a top 10 in the 22-23 season. She ran full time on the IBU Cup in the 2023-24 campaign and scored 10 top 20’s, four top 10’s, and a podium. It took her all the way to the top 20 in the IBU Cup Overall. And now over the last two seasons she’s run 15 total World Cup races including the entire 1st and 3rd trimesters last season. Thus far in her career she has two top 30’s and six top 40’s with three each in the last two seasons.

Rothschopf’s improvement has been in every aspect of her performance. If you look at either her Juniors or her IBU Cup performance you see her getting a little bit faster every year. While she was never all star speedster, she did end her Juniors career averaging top 10 course time ranks her last three seasons. And the last two seasons on the IBU Cup she’s moved up to regularly running ahead of median on the skis with an average course time rank around 15th. Meanwhile it doesn’t matter what level you look at her shooting improved significantly from hitting in the mid 60’s early in her career up to the mid 80’s last season on the World Cup with even splits.

Next up for Lea Rothschopf? More improvement. She’s gotten her hit rate up to the mid 80’s which is more than good enough to compete. Now she needs to bring that speed she flashed as a Junior up to the World Cup level. As a top 10 skier on the Junior Cup we can hoper for her to eventually end up top 20-30 on the World Cup. As for this season, if she’s regularly on the World Cup lets aim for an improvement on her three top 40’s from last season, a few more top 30’s, and maybe her first career top 20? Do that for a full season and it easily slides her into the top 50 Overall. I think that’s a great goal for this season

Kristina Oberthaler (27)

Over the last several seasons Kristina Oberthaler has been consistently bumping her head against a ceiling that finds her performing fairly well on the IBU Cup, but not quite able to break through to the World Cup. And with the up and coming young Austrian women like Andexer, Rothschopf, Wagner, etc it’s becoming more and more difficult to establish herself on the World Cup.

Last season she did get to start the season on the World Cup, but after two finishes in the 90’s in Kontiolahti she went back to the IBU Cup. She proceeded to have her third consecutive season ranking between 22nd and 24th on the IBU Cup Overall. It’s amazing how similar each of these seasons has been. Just check these numbers out:
– Average finish: 25th, 19th, 25th
– Average ski ranks: 32nd, 33rd, 32nd
– Hit rate: 84%, 90%, 86%
– Average shooting time: 31.1 sec, 31 sec, 29.9 sec

Really the only thing that changed was her hit rate spiked in the 23-24 season, and her average finish moved up from 25th to 19th. Not a ton of difference there. For Oberthaler to make the move to get more run on the World Cup she either needs to make the shooting at 90% a more consistent thing, or improve the skiing. In her limited World Cup skiing she’s been skiing in the back half of the field. Regardless of the shooting that needs to improve for her to see the World Cup on a regular basis. Fingers crossed for her making that happen! If not we know pretty much what she’s able to do on the IBU Cup!

Lara Wagner (23)

Coming off of a solid Juniors career that included winning the 2023 AND 2024 Junior European Championship Sprints, along with a couple of other top 5 finishes, Wagner moved full time to the IBU Cup the last two seasons. In the last two years she has shown very nice continued growth moving up from 38th on the IBU Cup in 23-24 to 27th on the IBU Cup in 24-25. From one season to the next she increased from four to eight top 20’s and at the end of the season collected the first three top 10’s of her career. This included an IBU Cup career best 6th in the Otepaa Mass 60. That earned her a spot in the World Cup in Oslo where she made her WC debut and finished 96th in the Sprint.

Wagner has flashed intriguing speed in the early stages of her career. As a Junior her average ski rank improved all the way up to 7th in her final season as she ran a very solid 9.9% faster than median and was the 6th best overall skier on the season. That’s been replicated on the IBU Cup as she moved up to about 3.5% faster than median on that level the last two seasons with an average course time rank of about 18th each year.

She’s also been seeing improved shooting from the earlier parts of her career. In the early seasons on the Junior Cup she was hitting in the mid 60’s. The last three seasons though she’s been hitting right around 75% no matter what the level.

Wagner shows some promise and is absolutely worth watching this year and the next few years. I don’t want to expect immediate results from her as it will likely be a slightly longer progression for her, but the hope is there. She has already shown that she is able to make the improvements in her skiing and shooting. Her Junior Cup level success particularly with skiing indicates that we can hope for continued improvements there if she is healthy and able to put in the work. It’s also going to be about taking the next steps in her shooting. She took a big leap from the mid 60’s to the mid 70’s. Now it’s time to find the 80’s.

We’ve already seen the first indication of her improvements this summer at the Austrian Summer Championships. She t hit 17/20 and took the gold in the Short Individual before 7/10 and the bronze in the Sprint. That’s 80% hit rate and two medals. I would say that’s a pretty good week. Now let’s see that for a full season and see where that takes her!

Tamara Steiner (28)

In the 2024-2025 campaign Tamara Steiner showed no signs of giving up her title as one of the sharpest shooters in the sport. She once again hit above 90% and ranked 5th in total shooting accuracy as she had another steady and solid season. After starting the season on the IBU Cup, her first racing there since the early 2022-2023 season, she fought her way back to the World Cup to start the 2nd trimester. Over the first eight races of her season her average finish was 57.8 which was right line with the last two seasons as she had average finishes of 53.8 and 51.8. She slipped a little in the third trimester, but only a little.

So we know Steiner was once again a terrific shooter. Well from the results we can extrapolate that the skiing was probably about the same as it has been. And that is exactly what the plot above indicates. She ran 2.5% slower than median which is just about in line with the prior two seasons. Her average course time rank was 38.9 which was just about the same as 22-23 (40.1) and 23-24 (36.1).

	Prone %	Standing %	Total %	Shooting Time
2022-2023	98.9	88.4	93.7	29.5
2023-2024	89.6	89.6	89.6	27.9
2024-2025	94.7	89.5	92.1	28.3

The story for Tamara Steiner remains the same. She’s one of the best shooters in the game. She’s a middle of the pack skier. For her to solidify her hold on her on the World Cup she needs to improve her skiing at fair bit. She’s never been an amazing skier at any prior level, but there is always hope right? If she can improve her skiing she would both lock down her World Cup spot and give herself a chance to regularly find the top 20 after having four so far in her career (with all four coming in 2023-2024). If she isn’t able to find more ski speed then she’s locked into the Dunja Zdouc career pathway, and honestly that’s not terrible!

Lisa Osl (25)

Quietly and steadily, over the last three seasons Lisa Osl has been a patiently fighting hard on the IBU Cup. Little by little she’s been improving as well. While the overall point total is not a ton different, Osl’s Overall IBU Cup score hs improved from 93rd, to 75th, to 45th last season. Last season’s improvement was buoyed by all three of her four career top 20’s and eight of her 11 best IBU Cup finishes.

Osl has had nice broad across the board improvement the last three seasons. It’s pretty easy to see without too many words. She’s jumped from 2.8% slower than median two seasons ago to 1.1% faster than median last season. Her average course time rank improved from 48th to 31st. Her hit rate is up from 73.5% to 76% with improvement in both prone and standing shooting. Average shooting time is down from 32.3 seconds to 30.3 seconds. End result is that her average finish is up from 48th to 38th.

Lisa Osl is on a slow and steady path of improvement. There is no reason to believe that will suddenly stop this season. How much she will continue to improve this season is tough to say. Hopefully she’s a little bit faster and a little more accurate. If she can get closer to 2% faster than median on the IBU Cup and around 80% hit rate that will take her up another solid step. It might even be enough to get her a look at the World Cup.

Battling for IBU Cup: Austria certainly doesn’t have a set in stone top 5 for the World Cup. It is quite likely that we’ll see several if not all of the women on the list reaching for at least a few World Cup starts this season. There are also a number of women still fighting for IBU Cup starts as well. While these women don’t start off the season on that roster they will still be fighting hard to find there way there this season!

Wilma Anhaus (22)

Over the last three seasons Wilma Anhaus has been a Junior Cup warrior. I won’t take the time to count up the total starts and compare them to everybody else, but Anhaus’ 35 Junior Cup has to be up there for most Juniors starts over that stretch. That includes her very good 2023-2024 season with five top 10’s and two podiums in 13 races on her way to #2 Overall in the Juniors competition. Last season was a step back though as she had just two top 10’s and no top 5’s in 14 races.

The easily identified cause of the decline was a slip in her skiing. While her hit rate stayed steady going from 81.6% in 23-24 to 80% last year, her skiing dropped from 6.9% faster than median down to just 4.2% ahead of the median biathlete. Her average shooting speed remained only average at 34.4 seconds per shoot.

This year, whether she’s ready or not, she’s going to be pushed to the Seniors level. At the very least she’ll be running on the IBU Cup. With just three prior races at that level, all of which came in 23-24, there is no real direct analysis of her on the IBU Cup at this point. If, big if, she is able to ski about how she did two seasons ago, she’ll be running a little ahead of median on the IBU Cup. That plus hitting in the low 80’s would be good enough on the IBU Cup to consistently score points. Likely wouldn’t be in the top 10 but could consistently put up top 20’s and 30’s. Anything better than this is a bonus. And who knows it might be enough to get her a nibble at the World Cup at some point too!

Leonie Pitzer (23)

After a Junior Cup career that included nine career top 20’s, three top 10’s and a podium, Leonie Pitzer transitioned to full time IBU Cup racing last season. It wasn’t a completely smooth transition but she did pull in five top 40’s and an IBU Cup career best of 23rd in 13 races.

While the results have not been eye popping as of yet, Leonie Pitzer has been improving every single season. She went from being slower than average on the Junior Cup up to top 20 course time ranks by the 2023-2024 season, her last on the Junior circuit. Last season she was about 1% slower than median on the IBU Cup, which lines up fairly well with where she was in her last Junior Cup season. Meanwhile her shooting has been a little more steady each of the last three seasons. She’s come up from 75% two years ago to 78.3% last year. She was actually better in 23-24 when she hit 80% for the full season. And she’s also speed up her shooting significantly moving from an average shooting time of 37.2 seconds up to 34.6 seconds last season.

The good new is that there has been slow and steady progress. The also good news, is that there is still definitely room to go. She’s absolutely not reached the peak of her potential. Let’s hope for more growth this season. Let’s aim for a little faster than median on the IBU Cup and shooting just into the 80’s. That would be another step forward and that would be a successful 2025-2026 season.

Junior Up and Comers: The Austrian women already have a number of young athletes listed above but there are still more! Below are listed a number of young athletes, either currently Juniors or have mostly raced on Juniors so far in their career. Just wanted to give you a little information for when you see them later this season!

Anna Millinger (20)

– 2024-2025 season was third season of competition and first full year of racing. Also made IBU Cup debut
– Finished with one top 10 coming with 6th place finish in the Junior Worlds Mass 60
– Junior Worlds: 59th, 22nd, 6th
– Best moments: 6th in the Junior Worlds Mass 60. But had a solid full weekend of racing in Jakuszyce finishign 18th, 21st, and 14th
– Average finish 28th
– Avg course time rank: 22nd
– Shooting percentage: 74.8% with even splits

Lena Pinter (20)

– 2024-2025 season was fourth season of competition and first full year of racing
– Finished with two top 20’s
– Junior Worlds: 61st and 51th
– Best moments: 11th in the Mass 60 in Goms
– Average finish 37th
– Avg course time rank: 41st
– Shooting percentage: 81.2% with even splits

Selina Heigl (21)

– 2024-2025 season was fourth season of competition
– Finished with two top 30’s
– Junior European Championships: 52nd, 50th, 45th
– Best moments: 24th in the Sprint in Goms
– Average finish 40th (down from 39th year prior)
– Avg course time rank: 50th (down from 39th last season and 24th the year prior)
– Shooting percentage: 79.4% with slightly better prone than standing (up from 78.6% last season)

Anna-Maria Schempf (20)

– 2024-2025 season was third season of competition. Ran five total races. Previously ran 21-22 and 23-24 Youth Worlds
– Finished with a top 40
– Best moments: 34th in the 2nd sprint in Ridnaun-Val Ridanna
– Average finish 52nd (down from 40th in 23-24)
– Avg course time rank: 57th (down from 35th in 23-24 season)
– Shooting percentage: 74.3% while hitting 82.9% prone and 65.7% standing (down from 76% the year prior)

Selina Ganner (17)

– 2024-2025 season was debut and she ran at Youth Worlds
– Youth Worlds: 39th, 30th, and 26th
– Avg course time rank: 37th
– Shooting percentage: 78% with fairly even splits

Anna-Lena Wolf (19)

– 2024-2025 season was debut and she ran five races along with Youth Worlds
– Finished with two top 30’s
– Youth Worlds: 54th, 44th, and 28th
– Best Moment: 22nd in the Ridnaun-Val Ridanna Individual to open the season
– Avg finish: 43rd
– Avg course time rank: 42nd
– Shooting percentage: 74.2% while hitting 81.7% prone and 66.7% standing

Men

The Austrian men appear to be in a bit of no man’s land, but it is possible that new hope is on the horizon. International fan favorite Simon Eder continues racing, but at 42 even the ageless wonder Simon Eder finally slowing. The generations behind him haven’t shown super high potential yet. And now, in a bit of a surprise, Felix Leitner announced his retirement just a few weeks before the start of the season. However, a number of young Junior men have shown that the tide may be about to turn.

Quota: 5 Athletes to Start
2024-2025 Nations Cup Rank: 11th
2024-2025 Relay Finishes: 9th, 14th, 8th, 11th, 12th (WC), 5th
Head Coach: Vegard Bitnes

The Old Man and the Biathlon

Simon Eder (42)

There are few instances in recent biathlon history of athletes being competitive into their 40’s. Simon Eder is certainly one of them as his father who also competed into his early 40’s. Eder’s career is just ridiculous to try to full evaluate. He ran his first race on the World up on March 11, 2004 at just 21 years old. The podium from that race was Lars Berger, Frode Andresen, and Tomas Sikora. Ole Einar Bjoerndalen still had only won two of what would be six World Cup Overall Globes. It was not just a generation of athletes ago it was 2-3 generations ago. Coming off of a Junior career including two medals across three different Junior World championships the only hint that he would still be competing today is that his father did the same thing!

As we can see, time is starting to finally take it’s toll on Eder. After a nearly unmatched run of consistency, finishing between 5th and 18th in the Overall 14 times in 16 seasons, the 23-24 and 24-25 were the first consecutive seasons for Simon Eder outside 15 in his entire career. So yeah, it’s okay to think that at age 41 and 42 he might be starting to slow down a little bit.

	Prone %	Standing %	Total %	Shooting Time
2018-2019	94.9	89.2	92	26.6
2019-2020	92.5	82.5	87.5	26.7
2020-2021	96.7	90	93.3	25.9
2021-2022	93.5	85.5	89.5	25.8
2022-2023	97.6	87.9	92.7	25
2023-2024	90.3	86.5	88.4	24.1
2024-2025	97.3	80.7	89	24.2

Interestingly enough it hasn’t so much been the skiing as we might expect, it’s more been a gradual decline in skiing along with his shooting not quite being as strong. Don’t get me wrong his shooting has still been quite good, just not quite good enough to continue to cover for the slip in his skiing ability.

As he enters what will hopefully be the 20th full season of his career we know who Simon Eder. A great shooter who even at this stage of his career continues to rank inside or near the top 10 in shooting. A previously solid skier whom time has started to wear down. He was still able to grab a top 20 last year along with 12 total top 30’s on his way to finishing 36th Overall. At this point there is no reason to expect he can’t at least do something similar.

Rounding out the World Cup – After Simon Eder there are still four more spots to fill up the World Cup roster. While it feels like Komatz can pretty much expect to be there all season long, after him the last few spots could be a rotation to the “hot hand.” We’ll list all of the men who are likely to see the World Cup here. For now we’ll see the following athletes starting on the World Cup:
– Simon Eder
– David Komatz
– Patrick Jakob
– Fredrik Mühlbacher
– Fabian Müllauer

David Komatz (33)

On most teams a 33 year old would be the most veteran member of the team. For the Austrians Komatz remains nearly a decade younger than Simon Eder. For better or worse, though, Eder continues to be the highest placed finish year and and year out for the Austrian men. Last year was no exception as Eder finished 36th and Komatz 39th. Finishing 39th was the third best Ovearll finish of his career and was actually not too far off of his best Overall finish of 31st which he accomplished in 2020-2021.

While not the top Overall finish of his career, 2024-2025 was record setting in another sense. David Komatz set a new career best when he finished 9th in the Ruhpolding Individual, his first career top 10. He had four total top 20’s last season, the 2nd most of his career, along with 10 top 30’s.

Throughout his career David Komatz has relied on his shooting acumen to bring him success. For four of the last six seasons he’s hit 89% or better. Last year, though, was not one of them. He hit 88.2% prone which was around in line with where he has been for the recent years of his career. Unfortunately his standing percentage dropped significantly from the mid to upper 80’s down to just 80.7% last season. This meant that even with faster shooting, getting off his shots on average in 27.7 seconds, and some of the better skiing of his career, he wasn’t able to break into the top 30 of the Overall.

	Prone %	Standing %	Total %	Shooting Time
2019-2020	91.4	91.4	91.4	32.1
2020-2021	92.4	88.8	90.6	32.7
2021-2022	86.2	84.6	85.4	33.2
2022-2023	89.4	89.4	89.4	30.1
2023-2024	92.4	87.1	89.7	28.7
2024-2025	88.2	80.7	84.4	27.2

It’s probably too late in his career to see a major breakthrough for David Komatz. This far into his career what we can reasonably hope for is that his shooting will hit back towards his career norms. To be fair that’s not easy as his career norm is the upper 80’s. However upper 80’s with skiing just a little bit back of median, puts him in range for a first career top 30 Overall finish.

Patrick Jakob (29)

Behind Eder and Komatz, the Austrian men with the next most experience, with a total of 62 total races and 45 solo races across six seasons, is Patrick Jakob. In his career he has a total of 14 World Cup points. To be fair that’s 14 more World Cup points than I could ever dream of having. However when we’re talking about the 3rd most experienced man on a mid sized federation, that’s not exactly a huge number. Last season, though, was the best of his career as Jakob scored eight of those points as he finished 81st in the Overall. Adnd that didn’t even include the best finish of his career, a 33rd in the Pursuit in the Lenzerheide World Championships. Overall he had four of the top six and eight of the top 12 finishes of his career.

The improved for Jakob came primarily with his skiing. He had the best ski season of his career as he had a new career best average course time rank of 58th, improved form his previous career best of 73rd in the 23-24 season. He did this while running 1.6% back from median, easily the best of his career.

Meanwhile his hit rate remained around his career average. Although he did it in a bit of an unusual fashion for him. Usually he hits much better prone than standing, usually by 7-10 percentage points. Last year he 80.5%, right around his career average, while hitting 79% prone and 81.9% standing. Both well off their normal marks. Perhaps this was due to his focus on shooting time. Over the last two years he’s improved his average shooting time from 31.6 seconds to 27.5 seconds.

It’s fair to expect that Jakob could have a significant career year in the 25-26 season. This won’t be anything to knock our socks off, but definitely better. There is no reason to expect his skiing to dramatically fall off. However, there is hope that he could see improved shooting. Prior to this year he has always hit 83% or better prone. If we’re going to be optimistic we can hope that his hit rate will increase moderately while his skiing is at least stable. This won’t lead him to the top 30 like we can hope for David Komatz, but it could see him more consistently in the top 40 for points. Even just a couple more top 60’s in the Sprints to give himself more opportunities in the Pursuit would be a big step forward. After all , last season he improved on his Sprint finish in each of the three Pursuits that he ran. If he’s running Pursuits we can hope that he’s getting more points!

Fredrik Mühlbacher (27)

The former cross country skier in his third season of regular biathlon competition really seemed to start taking a step forward last year. The highlight of his season was winning the silver medal in the European Championships Individual and following that up with bronze in the Sprint. He capped off the Championships with a 9th in the Pursuit for the third top 10 of the season, all with the best competition you’ll see on the IBU Cup. That was his fourth IBU Cup top 10 of his career. In just nine IBU Cup races in 24-25 he scored three top 20’s, nearly matching his career most of four which he had in 22-23 and 23-24 when he ran 19 and 23 races each.

After early in the season he was demoted from the World Cup to the IBU Cup due to poor finishes, he earned his position back on the top level. In doing so he earned his first trip to the World Championships. Once there he scored the best finishes of his World Cup career with a 40th in the Pursuit and a 34th in the Individual. He added two more top 60’s in the Nove Mesto World Cup for good measure.

It’s no surprise that the strength of Mühlbacher’s biathlon racing has been his skiing. In the three seasons he’s competed regularly on the IBU Cup he has run anywhere from 2.3% to 3% faster than median while his average course time rank has been between 20th and 25th. The very encouraging part is that he’s made significant gains in his shooting every single season. I don’t usually document IBU Cup shooting statistics (mostly due to the time it takes) but I did for Mühlbacher because it’s so important to see. That’s impressive improvement across the board. And he’s done it while improving his average shooting time from 36.2 seconds to 31.4 seconds. There is still work to go on that part but it’s definitely improvement. And this wasn’t only on the IBU Cup. When you look at his World Cup competitions he is still hitting 80% over 10 races but with an even faster average shooting of 29 seconds per shoot.

This is really encouraging to see. Mühlbacher came over from cross country skiing and didn’t solely rely on his speed like he might have done. He’s put in serious work to get better at his shooting and it absolutely shows. Now he has a legitimate shot at establishing himself on the World Cup. We can hope that he recovers a little bit of his speed this season. Hitting anything over 80% is a bonus. I’m optimistic. I don’t think we’re going to see him in the top 20 next year, but I do think we’ll see him earn his first points of his career. Let’s see if he can find his way to the top 70 or higher this year.

Fabian Müllauer (22)

Now we come to one of the young athletes that intrigues me the most. Over the last two seasons Fabian Müllauer has taken big strides in establishing himself as the next big hope for the Austrian men’s team. In the 2023-2024 season Müllauer finished 2nd in the Junior Cup Overall Globe race while earning eight top 10’s, 5 top 5’s and two podiums. Last year he focused primarily on the IBU Cup (and higher) and for good reason. In eight 2024-2025 IBU Cup races he had six top 40’s and four top 10’s including 2nd in the Sprint in Brezno-Osrblie behind only Isak Frey.

Müllauer also competed in his first World Cup races and managed three top 50’s with a season’s best of 31st in the Olso-Holmenkollen Sprint across six total races. Over the last two editions of the Junior World Championships he has three top 10’s including a sixth in the Sprint in Oestersund last year to follow up in a 5th and 9th in the Sprint and Mass 60 in the Otepaa in 2024. That’s a long way of saying, at 22 years old he has the most impressive Austrian men’s Junior profile of anybody since the recently retired Felix Leitner.

Müllauer has had a lot of racing on three different levels. he’s also young so it’s hard to get a very consistent view at this early stage of his career. However, a picture of who he is as an athlete is certainly starting to form.

Looking primarily at his Juniors first, he has been a solid skier with one outrageously good stand out season. In the 22-23 and 24-25 seasons he’s been roughly the same as he ran 5.7% and 5.5% ahead of the median and 1.2 back from the median top 10 in those races. However in his tremendous 23-24 season was 11.3% faster than median while being 2.9% faster than the median top 10. Just check out his average course time ranks on the Junior level the last three seasons and it’s not hard to pick out the one with the best finishes: 12.3 (22-23), 1.6 (23-24), 11.7 (24-25). That 23-24 season could have been even more spectacular if it hadn’t also included the worst shooting of his career on any level. For the most part as a shooter he is usually hitting in the mid 70’s. That 23-24 season, when he was skiing so amazingly well, unfortunately he hit just 65.6% of his shots including just 55.6% of his standing shots. Just a few more hits and that’s a truly spectacular season.

But what about his IBU Cup and World Cup performances? Well at least his skiing has been consistent. The last two seasons he has run at 4.5% and 4.9% ahead of the median biathlete on the IBU Cup resulting in average course time ranks of 13th and 15th. Not bad particularly for his age. On the World Cup last season he ran about 1% back of median and in those six races had an average ski rank of 51. His shooting, though, has been mixed. On the IBU Cup last season he hit 83.3% while on the World Cup he hit 71.3%. In both cases he was MUCH better prone than standing.

Okay that’s a LOT of words. What does it all mean? It means that Fabian Müllauer is a developing biathlete who holds loads of potential. His skiing on the Junior and IBU Cup levels shows a lot to be hopeful for. Maybe not an all time burner but certainly he won’t be held back due to his skiing. The biggest obstacle in his way right now is his shooting inconsistency, particularly his standing shooting. If he can improve that he’s going to have a chance to either have a very good IBU Cup season, or more likely, get consistent run on the World Cup.

On the World Cup he definitely has potential to earn his first top 20’s of the season this year. Could be find the top 40 of the Overall this year? The last two years with the new scoring system, 40th Overall has been 108 and 151 points. Last season 41st was at 119 points (so much closer to the 23-24 top 40 level). To get 120 points over a full season of racing is roughly 6 points per race. Definitely within Müllauer’s potential if he’s able ot harness all of talents in the same direction this season. And at age 22 this is just a start!

IBU Cup – After those men, there is a group who is going to at least start out on the IBU Cup. Some of these men appear to be IBU Cup denizens who are regulars competing on this level. However, there is always the chance that they could find another level or have a few hot weeks where they make it to the top level. The initial IBU Cup roster will include the following (some of whom are discussed above):
– Lukas Haslinger
– Thomas Marchl
– Magnus Oberhauser
– Stefan Dankl
– Dominick Unterweger
– Raphael Steiner

Lukas Haslinger (22)

Another young man who will now be fully focused on the IBU Cup (and higher) is Lukas Haslinger. Now 22 years old he is leaving behind a very successful Junior Cup career. Over 40 Juniors races he had nine top 10’s (a nearly 25% top 10 rate) and 24 top 20’s including four podiums and a victory which occurred in the 23-24 week of racing in Jakuszyce when Austria went 1-2. Unfortunately last season he wasn’t quite up to top form and had a season’s best finish of 26th in the Junior World Mass 60.

Last season Haslinger ran five IBU Cup races over five different weekends including the European Championships and had finishes of 34, 36, 39, 48, and 84. Combine that with a 35th in his single IBU Cup race of 23-24 and he had four top 40’s in six races.

Unpacking Hasingler’s ski performance and you see a man who flashed some speed early in his his Juniors racing. he had several top 10 course time ranks but he has only done that one time since the 22-23 season. Over the last several years his average course time rank has been in the 20’s (except for last season’s disappointing average ski rank of 36th). In general he’s run about 4-5% ahead of the median Junior Cup biathlete. That actually lines up pretty nicely with his brief IBU Cup experience last year when he had an average ski rank of 56th and ran 2% back of the median biathlete. About what we would expect.

Meanwhile he’s been a solid and for the most part improving shooter. On the Juniors level from 2020-2021 through 2023-2024 he improved his accurate by at least 2.5% every season as he went from a 74% hit rate to 86.8% hit rate. Last season in limited racing that fell to 72.9% which mostly explains the poor performance by his standards. In just five races last season on the IBU Cup he hit 81.4% which is not quit up to his peak but not bad. Aross all levels we have seen a focus by Haslinger in shooting speed. Last year was his fastest shooting year yet averaging 26.8 seconds per shoot in the Juniors level and 27.9 seconds on the IBU Cup. That put him easily as one of the faster shooters in either category.

Lukas Haslinger has me intrigued at least a little bit. The steady progression, at least in his shooting, over the last four seasons before last year’s slight backward step, is really cool to see. It’s possible that last season he put so much pressure on shooting fast that he lost accuracy. Hopefully that was just a temporary thing and he’ll return to hitting in the mid 80’s if not higher. The key for Haslinger to take the next step would be to start to rediscover some of the ski speed he flashed in his youth. I anticipate that this season Haslinger will spend most of his time on the IBU Cup. If he has the performance we hope for that should see him score a handful of IBU Cup top 20’s and a pile of top 40’s. If he’s able to consistently finish in the top 40, and possibly higher, that sets him for a top 30 Overall finish if he runs a full IBU Cup season. I do think that his steady progression is exciting though, and I already find myself looking ahead to where he could be in 3-4 seasons. Maybe not a star, but a very good shooter with moderate skiing can still find a successful World Cup career.

Magnus Oberhauser (27)

Since graduating from the Junior level to the Seniors, Magnus Oberhauser has been entrenched on the IBU Cup. Over the last four seasons he has just 16 total starts on the World Cup, with the majority of those coming during the 23-24 season when he was there nearly every week of the season, compared to 65 IBU Cup starts. Felix Leitner’s surprise retirement opens up a door, that an improving Oberhauser may be able to take advantage of.

Thus far in his career he’s had a slow progression. It’s not leaps and bounds but the trendline has been up. Just look at his average finishes improving from 50.4 in 20-21 and 57.6 in 21-22 up to 37.2 last year. That’s been related to a moderate improvement primarily in shooting. His skiing has not changed much if at all. His average course time rank was 43.3 when he started on the IBU Cup and it was 39.1 last season. However his shooting has improved a few percentage points the last few years up to 81.4% in 23-24 and 78.9% last season.

When he’s had the occasion to race on the World Cup he running around 3.3% back of the median biathlete. His average course time rank the last two seasons on the World Cup has been 73.2 and 79. Really not great. His shooting is roughly in line with his IBU Cup shooting as he hit 78% in 23-24 and 83.3% in two starts last season.

Oberhauser is going to have a chance this season to get some run on the World Cup. He’s going to have to earn the right to stay there. It remains to be seen if he can do it. If he’s going to run in the back half of the field in skiing he really needs to get his shooting to at least the mid 80’s. Otherwise he’s going to struggle to hold on to a World Cup spot and he could definitely be surpassed. However, at 27 he still has a chance to find a little more speed.

Dominick Unterweger (26)

I can’t believe that Unterweger is 26 years old. My brain says that he should still be a Junior. But here he is solidly in his mid 20’s. Unfortunately we didn’t see him run in any IBU races for the Austrian team last season. This was coming off of the 23-24 season in which he was on the World Cup every weekend from Lenzerheide in mid December through the end of the season and had raced at the World Championships in the 22-23 season. Now to be fair he wasn’t putting up consistently high level results, but he was good enough to be there and be middle of the pack.

Over the last two seasons of competition Unterweger had developed into a very solid shooter. On the World Cup he hit 84.6% in the 22-23 season and 86.2% in 24-25. Interestingly in the first year his prone was the definite strong point and the standing shooting the weak point and that switched completely in 23-24. And he did that while being a very quick shooter averaging 24.4 seconds per shoot in the 23-24 campaign. He was just held by back his skiing. His average ski rank in 22-23 was 62nd and in 23-24 it was down to 72nd. In both years he was running 2-4% back of the median World Cup athlete.

The good news for Unterweger is that he had a really good summer. At the Austrian Summer Championships he finished 4th in the Short Individual, hitting 16/20, and took the gold medal in the Sprint going 9/10 winning by 16 seconds over Fredrik Muehlbacher and 20 seconds over Fabian Muellauer. Those are two men we should be seeing regularly on the World Cup this season. Unterweger has the talent. And it looks like he has been putting out the performance. If he races like that we’re going to see him regularly on the IBU Cup if not the World Cup this season. I’m not going to make any predictions or set expectations beyond that. I just want to see him racing regularly again!

Thomas Marchl (20)

Thus far in his career, Thomas Marchl has been a full time member of the Junior Cup circuit. The first two seasons of his career he only raced at Youth Worlds, so really he has just one season of racing in his career. Below is a brief overview of his career to date:

-2024-2025 season was third season of competition and first full season of racing. Previously only ran Youth Worlds in 22-23 and 23-24
– Finished with four top 10’s including Junior European Championship Individual (8th) and Junior Worlds Mass 60 (9th)
– Junior Worlds: 24th, 27th, and 9th
– Best moments: 9th in the Junior Worlds Mass 60 was probably best overall race. But in the opening weekend in Ridnaun-Val Ridanna he finished 5th in the Individual and 7th in the Sprint
– Average finish 18th
– Avg course time rank: 25th
– Shooting percentage: 83% hitting 86.7% prone and 80% standing

Stefan Dankl (22)

Thus far in his career, Stefan Dankl has been a full time member of the Junior Cup circuit. He has two full seasons of racing to his credit. Below is a brief overview of his career to date:

-2024-2025 season was third season of Juniors racing and 2nd full season of racing
– Finished with one top 10 and three top 20’s
– Junior European Championship: 102nd and 91st
– Best moments: In the Jakuszyce weekend of competition had best full week of Juniors career finishing 7th and 23rd in the two Springs and 18th in the Mass 60
– Average finish 39th (heavily skewed by two sick races). Take out Junior European Championships and it’s 25th
– Avg course time rank: 19th
– Shooting percentage: 60.7% with even splits

Maximilian Prosser (23)

After a three season Juniors career that included a single podium and two career Juniors top 10’s, Maximillian Prosser has settled into battling it out on the IBU Cup. Thus far it has been a battle. After a moderate amount of success in the 23-24 season, his first full IBU Cup campaign, he faced a bit more headwind during the 24-25 season. With solid if unspectacular racing in 23-24 he lined up for each weekend of the IBU Cup season and compiled 9 top 40’s including three top 30’s and a career best 14th in the late season Short Individual in Obertilliach. Last year, though, he attained just a single top 40, and due to his slip in form, he only raced eight times on the IBU Cup level.

Last year Prosser’s performance slipped in every single manner. His skiing dipped from an average course time rank of 44th to 84th. To be fair to Prosser he did have two very bad races with course time ranks of 90th and 87th. Outside of those his average course time rank was 39th which would have represented a small improvement. His shooting dropped from a 71.6% hit rate to 69.2% including just 66.7% prone. His average shooting time slipped from 33.8 seconds to 37.8 seconds. Overall it just wasn’t great.

Now here is the good news with Prosser…he’s already been better than this. We’re not hoping to see something new and spectacular from Prosser. Really just a return to his 23-24 form, meaning regularly in the points on the IBU Cup, would be a good step. His skiing is just fine to accomplish that goal. It’s getting the shooting not just back to 23-24 but significantly better and moving towards the 80% range. That’s not a small ask but that’s what we have to hope for this season. After he gets steady and consistent on the IBU Cup then we dream of the World Cup. He’s still quite young so good reason to have optimism!

David Neumayr (23)

David Neumayr is just 23 years old so he’s certainly far from a grizzled veteran. Yet even relative to his contemporaries he’s still relatively inexperienced. With just two seasons of IBU biathlon racing under his belt he’s run just 14 total races across the Junior and IBU Cups. Fortunately he has had some success. In his 2023-2024 Juniors racing he did score two top 10’s including a podium. While he did get a chance to race at Junior Worlds he wasn’t able to pull the same level there and he had finishes of 37th, 66th, and 52nd. Last year he didn’t get his first races in until the last two weeks of the season in Otepaa. In those races, though, he was solid with three top 40’s in five races.

Even without a ton of races to look at, it’s pretty clear to get a picture of what type of biathlete he is. He’s primarily a skier who succeeds when his shooting catches up with this ski talent. In 23-24 as a Junior he had an average ski rank of 19th. That included six top 13 course time ranks in those nine races he ran. Same story last year on the IBU Cup when he was top 35 in course time rank three times and on average was 0.7% faster than median. Meanwhile his shooting is starting to progress. In his 22-23 Juniors campaign he hit 70% of his shots with a significant preference for prone shooting. Last year in his five IBU Cup races he hit 80%.

We’re still in the very early stages of David Neumayr’s career. I am hopeful that we’ll see him get more extended IBU Cup races this winter. While his ceiling this season is probably not as high as Lukas Haslinger, I do think that we’ll see him put up a good season. It would not be a surprise at all to see him regularly finishing in the 20-30’s. Over a full season that would be good enough to be in the top 30-40 IBU Cup Overall. If he has a better than expected improvement, particularly in standing shooting, we could definite see that a little higher. But his is absolutely a season of hopeful growth for Neumayr.

Oliver Lienbacher (23)

Oliver Lienbacher is now 23 years old and is entering his fourth season of IBU level racing, at yet it still feels like we haven’t really seen much of him at all. He’s run 41 races including 16 and 17 races each of the last two seasons. And yet still I don’t feel like I know much about him at all. He’s been very consistent showing, both in his time on the Junior circuit, and thus far in his young IBU Cup career, a relatively solid floor to his performance, but also a bit of a limited ceiling. The good news is that it’s still so early in his career!

Over his two years of Junior Cup racing he ran 21 total races and was able to achieve 1 podium (the very first race of his Juniors career), two top 10’ss, and nine top 20’s. That’s not too bad and reflects what I mentioned above. Solid floor to his performance but also a limited ceiling. At Junior Worlds the best finish of his career was 20th in the 2023 Junior Worlds Sprint and 24th in the 2024 Junior Worlds Mass 60.

On the IBU Cup he’s been consistently finishing in the 40-50’s range. Not so much above it with just five top 40’s in 18 races. But rarely lower. His average finish is exactly 50th.

As we look at his IBU Cup performance from last season we a young man who was almost exactly the median skier. He shot 74.4% with 78.5% prone and 70.4% standing. His average shooting time was 30.7. Everything was just pretty good. Nothing outstanding but also nothing horrible. When we look back to his Juniors performance it’s pretty much the same. Pretty good skiing. Decent shooting just below 80%.

Lienbacher is still quite early in his career. Some 23 year olds we’ve been watching since they were 18. That’s not the case here. Let’s give him a little patience and see where he ends up in the next few seasons. So far we haven’t seen reason to believe there is a high ceiling, but there are no obvious gaping holes in his performance either. Maybe he can just gradually lift the floor to higher levels.

Andreas Hechenberger (25)

In Hechenberger’s first IBU Cup racing in the 2021-2022 season, there was reason for some optimism. As a 21 year old he made three starts and finished 34, 36, and 43 with an average course time rank of 28th. The last three seasons though he hasn’t been able to replicate that performance on a consistent basis. He’s had just seven top 30’s in 29 IBU Cup races.

All in all his performance has been just enough to keep him on the radar of the Austrian team, but not enough to keep him consistently racing as he’s run just 10, 10, and 9 races in the last three seasons. For example last year he ran every race for the first four weeks of the season but then didn’t make it back to the IBU Cup the rest of the way.

Throughout those three seasons he’s been limited by below average speed for the IBU Cup. He’s run 2.8% (22-23) 3.5% (23-24), and 1.5% (24-25) back of the median in those three seasons. That results in an average course time rank running in the 50’s. To make up for that you would have to be one of the best shooters on the circuit. After consistently shooting in the low to mid 80’s for most of his career, last season Hechenberger’s hit rate slipped down to 75%.

If Andreas Hechenberger is going to reassert himself in the lists of the Austrian federation he’s going to need to at the very least rediscover his former shooting proficiency if not improve upon it, and her certainly needs to find some more speed in his legs.

Christian Langegger (24)

Last season one of the primary beneficiaries of Hechenberger’s slip in performance, and his subsequent removal from the IBU Cup roster, was Christian Langegger. After starting the season off of the IBU Cup he came up to the squad in Arber, the 4th week of the season, and stuck through to the end. In those 12 races he accumulated a single top 30, finishing 29th which was 2 spots from his career best, and three top 40’s. This was a slight step back from the 23-24 season when, in the same number of races, he had six top 40’s.

Year over year his skiing took a it of step backward. After running 1.4% faster than the median biathlete in the 23-24 season, last year he was right around the median. Long the stronger part of his performance, this setback was primarily responsible for the slight decrease in his performance. He continued to struggle with his shooting with a 65% hit rate including 73.3% prone and 56.7% standing.

Langegger finds himself in an unenviable position. He really needs to get his performance moving in a positive direction now or he risks himself being swamped out by many of the younger athletes. Indeed this season, for the first time, he finds himself outside of the national training rosters and faces an uphill battle back to the IBU Cup.

Junior Up and Comers – The Austrian men already have a number of young athletes listed above but there are still more! Below are listed a number of young athletes, either currently Juniors or have mostly raced on Juniors so far in their career. Just wanted to give you a little information for when you see them later this season!

Daniel Glasser (21)

-2024-2025 season was fourth season of Juniors racing and 2nd full season of racing
– Finished with one top 10 and three top 20’s
– Junior Worlds: 69th and 77th (sick)
– Best moments: At the Junior European Championships he finished 16th in the Sprint and 20th in the Mass 60. Other top finish on the season was 10th in the season opening Individual in Ridnaun-Val Ridanna
– Average finish 37th
– Avg course time rank: 46th
– Shooting percentage: 79.5% hitting 86.3% prone and 72.6% standing. This was significant drop after hitting 90% (96% prone/84% standing) in 23-24

Simon Hechenberger (18)

-2024-2025 season was first of competition in biathlon. Raced only at Youth Worlds
– Youth World Championships: 30th, 30th, 46th
– Avg course time rank: 45th
– Shooting percentage: 70% with even splits

Matthaeus Schoenaigner (19)

– 2024-2025 season was first of competition in biathlon. Raced only at Youth Worlds
– Youth World Championships: 18th, 37th, 50th
– Avg course time rank: 14th (2nd fastest in Individual)
– Shooting percentage: 64% hitting 68% prone and 60% standing

Magnus Steiner (19)

– 2024-2025 season was first of competition in biathlon
– Finished with one top 20
– Youth World Championships: 12th, 43rd, and 23rd
– Best moment: 12th in the Youth Worlds Individual
– Avg course time rank: 44th
– Shooting percentage: 78% hitting 75% prone and 81% standing

Simon Grasberger (18)

– 2024-2025 season was first of competition in biathlon. Raced only at Youth Worlds
– Youth World Championships: 49th, 47th, 44th
– Avg course time rank: 72nd
– Shooting percentage: 92% with even splits

Sami Mesotitsch (21)

– 2024-2025 season was first of competition in biathlon. Raced a full season of races but was not selected to Junior Worlds
– Finished with one top 20
– Junior European Championships: 58th, 32nd, 35th
– Best moment: 13th in Jakuszyce Sprint
– Avg course time rank: 29th
– Shooting percentage: 69.3% with even splits

Alexander Weigl (20)

– 2024-2025 season was first of competition in biathlon. Raced a full season of races but was not selected to Junior Worlds or Junior European Championships
– Finished with one top 30
– Best moment: 30th in Jakuszyce Sprint
– Avg course time rank: 39th
– Shooting percentage: 70% with even splits

Thomas Dankl (20)

– Raced in the Jakuszyce weekend of competition after only running previously at 23-24 Youth Worlds
– Finished 52nd, 58th, and 68th
– Avg course time rank: 65th
– Shooting percentage: 75% while hitting 80% prone and 70% standing