2025-2026 Hochfilzen Recap

The Winners – Top Performers of the Week

Nations Medal Table for the Week

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

Athlete Medal Table for the Week

Athlete	Medals
Eric Perrot 🇫🇷	🥇🥈
Tommaso Giacomel 🇮🇹	🥇🥈
Anna Magnusson 🇸🇪	🥈🥉
Maren Kirkeeide 🇳🇴	🥈🥉
Lisa Vittozzi 🇮🇹	🥇
Lou Jeanmonnot 🇫🇷	🥇
Johan-Olav Botn 🇳🇴	🥉
Philipp Horn 🇩🇪	🥉

Women’s Athlete of the Week: 🇸🇪 Anna Magnusson – Anna Magnusson took over the yellow bib from Suvi Minkkinen following Suvi’s less than spectacular Sprint, but more importantly Anna Magnusson’s podium finish, her third of the season. You always wonder how an athlete will respond to racing in yellow. Magnusson had the relay day to think about it too. Apparently it didn’t bother her one bit. She went 0-0-1-0 in the Pursuit showing absolutely no nerves when shooting for the potential win in the final shoot. I think that’s what most impressive to me about her this season. She just “looks” ready for the moment. She took 2nd place in the Pursuit losing only the spectacular rising Phoenix Lisa Vittozzi. In the end she expanded her Overall lead and she will wear it for at least one more day in le Grand Bornand!

Men’s Athlete of the Week: 🇫🇷 Eric Perrot/🇮🇹Tommaso Giacomel – The award has to go to both of these men this week. Not only because they both took a race while finishing 2nd in the other (Giacomel winning the Sprint and Perrot winning the Pursuit), but because they looked just so damn good in doing it. It’s gotten to the point where they have gone from being the up and coming leaders of tomorrow to being the leaders of today. They are currently 2nd and 3rd in the Overall standings and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to see them not only battling for the Overall at the end of this season but for the next five to six years. They have the crucial combination of ski speed, shooting accuracy, and, as Tommaso Giacomel would say “big balls” needed to win in the big moments!

Women’s Young Athlete of the Week: 🇳🇴 Maren Kirkeeide – Speaking of young athletes going from the leading athletes of the future to the leaders of today, how about Maren Kirkeeide who scored two more podiums finishing 2nd in the Sprint and 3rd in the Pursuit. The Sprint was particularly impressive. Even with a miss, compared to Lou Jeanmonnot’s perfect 10/10, Kirkeeide finished just 15 seconds back. That’s well within a penalty loop. She also finished with equal misses to Jeanmonnot as she missed one on each of her first three trips to the range. However, she went from starting 15 seconds ahead finishing 12 seconds ahead. The difference came entirely in the final lap. They left the range side by side 12 seconds together. But while Kirkeeide joined with Justine Braisaz-Bouchet and Elvira Öberg to charge past Camille Bened, Lou Jeanmonnot didn’t have the legs and fell back. Quite impressive for this young Norwegian!

Men’s Young Athlete of the Week: 🇳🇴 Isak Frey – Isak Frey is on this list thanks to the sickness of Sivert Bakken. Otherwise he would have been on the IBU Cup racing in Ridnaun-val Ridanna. Expectations for Frey are sky high so many will see an 18th in the Sprint and 21st in the Pursuit as disappointing. At this point though it’s all a learning experience for Frey. We should all continue to have high hopes for him. He’ll be there eventually!

Women’s Race of the Week: Women’s Pursuit – How can you not love the performance put on by the amazing Lisa Vittozzi. She started in 14th position just over one minute back from Lou Jeanmonnot. Vittozzi skied very well, but made the most of her comeback on the range. Of course it is the 20/20 that catches the eye immediately, but it was the way she did it. Here were her shooting times for each of those trips to the range:
– Prone 1: 20.3 seconds
– Prone 2: 20.7 seconds
– Standing 1: 21.9 seconds
– Standing 2: 21.8 seconds

That’s just absurd. She ultimately left the range for the final lap by six seconds ahead of Anna Magnusson before pulling away for a comfortable win in the final lap. Every one of those seconds she earned on the range were crucial in putting her in that position.

It would also be a shame if we didn’t mention the spectacular performance of Anna Magnusson racing in yellow and finishing second as Maren Kirkeeide noted above. Justine Braisaz-Bouchet with a spectacular rise from 15th to 4th and Elvira Öberg from 29th to 5th. Special mention to Camille Bened who finished in the flowers once again even with a fall as she went 20/20. Also nice to see Suvi Minkkinen looking more like herself hitting 19/20 to come from 49th all the way to 13th!

Men’s Race of the Week: Men’s Sprint – The Men’s Sprint was the men’s race of the week basically by default. The Pursuit was a fairly well run race by basically all of of the competitors which actually resulted in a fairly boring race with minimal change up in the standings. The men’s relay was fairly well over pretty early on as Laegreid put Norway way out ahead and France was locked into second. Sweden made their big surge at the end to grab a podium and the USA settled for 4th.

The Sprint at least had some late excitement. Jesper Nelin put up the early time from bib 16. Fabien Claude suprassed him in bib 33. That’s when things got quite busy. The top seven finishers on the day started between bib 48 and 68 meaning that the top finishers all came to the finish basically within 10 minutes of each other. Giacomel in bib 50 was one of the earlier finishers in this bunch as he put up a mark that was unable to be matched by Perrot and Horn even as they came within 6 seconds of him! For a Sprint race this was about as good as it gets. The new start order introduced last year certainly paid dividends here!

Super Sprints – A super quick hop through some top stories

Yellow Bib Updates

1) Women’s Top 5

Athlete	Total (Points Back)
Anna Magnusson 🇸🇪	314
Maren Kirkeeide 🇳🇴	260 (-54)
Lou Jeanmonnot 🇫🇷	241 (-73)
Camille Bened 🇫🇷	238 (-76)
Dorothea Wierer 🇮🇹	225 (-89)

2) Men’s Top 5

Athlete	Total (Points Back)
Johan-Olav Botn 🇳🇴	365
Tommaso Giacomel 🇮🇹	298 (-67)
Eric Perrot 🇫🇷	280 (-85)
Sebastian Samuelsson 🇸🇪	253 (-112)
Quentin Fillon Maillet 🇫🇷	242 (-123)

3) 🇺🇸 United States Biathlon Shows Up and Shows Out– What a phenomenal weekend for the United States biathlon team. The big performances this week came from the men, particularly Campbell Wright, who finished 7th in the Sprint and 8th in the Pursuit. And then the relay team which finished 4th just a few seconds off of the podium after Wright lost a late battle with Sebastian Samuelsson (and who can blame him for that one!). It was the 9th top 10 finish for the US men in the last 10 relays, by FAR the best 10 race run in the history of the US Biathlon team. Furthermore they have six finishes in the Flower Ceremony for the last nine relays. That is also a HUGE best for the US men.

It’s also worth pointing out the really good individual performances. Campbell Wright as noted above with two top 10’s. Sean Doherty had finishes of 17th and 18th has two top 20 finishes in a season for the fifth time in his career and first time since the 2022-2023 season. The entire team finished in the points in the Pursuit with Maxime Germain rising from 54th to 35th and Schommer finishing 34th in the Sprint and 40th in the Pursuit.

It’s also worth celebrating the return of Joanne Reid to the World Cup. I’m sure the results are not where she wanted them to be but considering everything she has been through this was huge. Meanwhile her good friend Deedra Irwin finished 17th in both the Sprint and Pursuit. It’s the third time in her career she has multiple top 20’s. It’s also just the second time in her career she had two top 20’s in the same weekend. It is the first time in her career to have back to back top 20’s in consecutive races. And also need to shout out Chloe Levins for qualifying for the Pursuit for the second straight weekend. She now has five career Pursuits and two are this weekend matching the most in a single season in her career (through only 2 weeks!).

4) 🇨🇿 Lucie Charvatova’s Shooting Renascence – Lucie Charvatova is having a very solid season. She has finishes of 73rd, 14th, 6th, 23rd, and 15th. This is actually one of the best runs of her career and she currently sits 15th in the Overall rankings. Her career best 27th so this would be a big time career best. What has driven this? A magnificent improvement in her shooting performance. For right now we’ll ignore her relay shooting. In her non-relay races she has hit 60%, 90%, 90%, 90%, and 90%. She has never hit better than 90% in her career and has done it 16 times now in her career. 25% of those coming this season is a big time improvement. She’s never hit better than 73.5% in a season and she’s shooting 82.5% right now. I don’t know if she’ll keep it up, but this is really fun to see!

5) The IBU Cup/World Cup Iron Women – This weekend a really cool thing happened. The IBU Cup races started with an Individual in Ridnaun-val Ridanna on Thursday afternoon. On Friday morning Polish woman Anna Maka 🇵🇱 and Latvian Annija Sabule 🇱🇻 were told that morning to come to Hochfilzen to race the Sprint. They both made it there, warmed up and raced. Anna Maka, coming off of a 9th place finish in the Individual shot 10/10 and finished in 35th. Annija Sabule, who had just had an IBU Cup career best 18th in the Ridnaun Individual, came in and had a World Cup career best of 63rd. Congratulations to those women on an incredible turn around and racing so magnificently on tired legs.

Flower Ceremony – Some Personal Top Finishes (not comprehensive but I tried!)

3) 🇩🇪 Philipp Horn – First career podium for Philipp Horn who also gets the first podium of the season for the German men. Love his persistence. His ski speed is excellent this season but he’s also hitting 88.8%a big time career best! Hopefully more podiums on the way!

4) 🇫🇮 Finland Women’s Relay – The team of Inka Hamalainen, Sonja Leinamo, Venla Lehtonen, and Suvi Minkkinen finished in 4th in the Hochfilzen relay. It was their first finish of 4th or better since Lake Placid in February of 1999!

5) 🇸🇰 Slovakia Women’s Relay – The Slovakian women led by a massive 3rd leg by Anastasiya Kuzmina as well as Ema Kapustova, Paulina Batovska-Fialkova, and quite possibly the race of Maria Remenova’s life secured a top 5 finish for the Slovakian women for the first time since the Peyongchang Winter Olympics in 2018. Kuzmina also participated in that race, but the three time gold medalist had a penalty loop which may have kept them from a medal as the finished just 21 seconds back of 3rd place that day.

8) 🇪🇪 Estonia Men’s Relay – Continuing the run of great relay finishes in Hochfilzen were the Estonian men of Rene Zahkna, Kristo Siimer, Mark-Markos Kehva and Jakob Kulbin who finished in 8th. This was the best finish since the Estonian men finished 8th in the Ruhpolding relay in 2005.

10) 🇸🇮 Polona Klemencic – Not a career best for Polona Klemencic but quite nearly. She has a career best of 8th she achieved at the 2023 Oberhof World Championships. On this day she “merely” matched her 2nd best career finish of 10th putting that returning ski speed to good use!

14) 🇨🇭 Lea Meier – Hochfilzen 2025 was a great week for Lea Meier. She started her week with a 26th in the Sprint which was nearly a career best. She magnificently outperformed it with a 14th place in the Pursuit. She was 18/20 with the 9th best ski time of the day. She flashed good ski potential in the summer and is really doing it now! The best part about her race was that she qualified herself for the Olympics!

20) 🇰🇿 Vladislav Kireyev – The 25 year old Kazakh has been racing very well this season. He finished 35th in the Pursuit in Östersund before 33rd in the Hochfilzen Sprint. At the time those were the 6th and 7th best finishes of his young career. Then in the Pursuit he was 20/20 and moved right on up!

24) 🇵🇱 Grzegorz Galica – The young Grzegorz Galica made all sorts of headlines this weekend. It started with a most magnificent debut as the 18 year old had one of the best debuts ever by a teenager. Then he became maybe even more popular as he went flying off the course around the famously tight Hochfilzen turn.

24) 🇳🇴 Marit Øygard – The Norwegian med student continues to take advantage of her opportunity on the World Cup. After finishes of 26th and 27th in Östersund she finished 33rd in the Sprint and 24th in the Pursuit for yet another career best. Now these aren’t amazing finishes for the likes of Norway who yearns for top 10’s and podiums. But for somebody who wasn’t sure she was going to continue her career not that long ago it’s wonderful. I’m so happy to see her continuing to race so well, and particularly shooting so well!

25) 🇵🇱 Konrad Badacz – Continuing the string of success for the Polish young men, Konrad Badacz joins Jan Gunka and Grzegorz Galica with career bests. Badacz finishes 25th in the Sprint to set a new career best by 5 positions!

34) 🇪🇪 Mark-Markos Kehva – Mark-Markos set his career best of 34th in the Individual in Östersund. He matched it in the Pursuit in Hochfilzen to score points for the second time in his career!