It goes without saying that the loss of Sivert Guttorm Bakken is a devastation that goes beyond the small scope of this little blog. I can’t even begin to imagine how it is affecting the men and women who make up the Norwegian team, including athletes, coaches, and all of the support staff. I have to believe that this will be a highly emotional week for them as will the entire remainder of the season. His funeral has not been set yet but when it is several athletes have already stated their intention to attend. I just want to say I don’t judge a single athlete who, if the funeral date lines up with a World Cup week, chooses to go to the funeral or race. Whatever choice they make is the correct one for them. I have no idea what I would do in a similar situation. As I’ve stated on social media I continue to think about all of Bakken’s family and friends and colleagues and I hope that they are able to find some peace in these times.
Dates: January 8, 2026 – January 11, 2026
Schedule:
– Thursday January 8: Men’s 10km Sprint
– Friday January 9: Women’s 7.5km Sprint
– Saturday January 10: Men’s 12.5km Pursuit + Women’s 4x6km Relay
– Sunday January 11: Men’s 4×7.5km Relay + Women’s 10km Pursuit
Course Overview:
Above you’ll see the entire complex with all of the courses overlaid on each other. Below I’m going to put each course and the corresponding race. Of course several of the courses are used multiple times. They are listed in chronological order so the top left corner is the Men’s Sprint followed by Women’s Sprint followed by Men’s Pursuit etc.
– Stadium altitude: 814 meters
– Maximum altitude on course: 844 meters
– Lowest altitude on course: 787 meters
– Stadium capacity: 16,500 spectators
Weather:
– Average Temperature for mid December: High 0C and Low -4C.
– In general cloudier with precipitation on about 1/2 of days in January
– Winds can be variable and quite strong at times
The crew at Oberhof is able to work wonders on this course. It doesn’t matter if it is terrible weather they are still able to get it in working condition. Just look what they did at the 2023 World Championships when they were able to, for two weeks in warm and sometimes rainy conditions, keep the course racing and in decent condition.
Well, this season it won’t be an issue. A huge cold snap has brought the coldest weather of the season by far and it looks to be continuing right through the weekend with only one day, Friday, with the temperature maybe possibly getting above freezing. There is also expected to be snow on several days as well. We’ll need to see how much snow and when it falls to know if it will affect the ski conditions.
With the colder weather it is likely that we will see the German team have some better results. Maybe even their best of the season. In general over the last few seasons, particularly since the flour ban, the Germans have MUCH better skis when the temperature drops down. Add that to the fact that they are racing on home snow, and should have the best knowledge of the snow conditions in Oberhof (and Ruhpolding) and it looks primed for some good racing from the German squad.
Incidentally, I’m also curious how it goes with the French. Most of the last two seasons the French have had very good skis. However, if there ever is a time where that ski advantage hasn’t been as prevalent for them it has been when things got a little cooler. It hasn’t been a big thing, but I’m just curious.
News and Notes:
1) Sivert Guttorm Bakken – I led the post with this but I want to put state it again: It goes without saying that the loss of Sivert Guttorm Bakken is a devastation that goes beyond the small scope of this little blog. I can’t even begin to imagine how it is affecting the men and women who make up the Norwegian team, including athletes, coaches, and all of the support staff. I have to believe that this will be a highly emotional week for them as will the entire remainder of the season. His funeral has not been set yet but when it is several athletes have already stated their intention to attend. I just want to say I don’t judge a single athlete who, if the funeral date lines up with a World Cup week, chooses to go to the funeral or race. Whatever choice they make is the correct one for them. I have no idea what I would do in a similar situation. As I’ve stated on social media I continue to think about all of Bakken’s family and friends and colleagues and I hope that they are able to find some peace in these times.
It is worth noting at this point that Isak Frey has accepted the position that Sivert Bakken would have held with the team for the Oberhof events. Frey consciously noted that he will be accepting it as “the best way to honor him.” Here’s to hoping that Isak Frey is able to internalize the amazing spirit that so inspired us!
Johan-Olav BOTN (NOR), Johannes DALE-SKJEVDAL (NOR) – IBU World Cup Biathlon, pursuit men, Annecy – Le Grand Bornand (FRA). http://www.biathlonworld.com © Mobuchon/IBU.
2)Sick and Injured – Coming off of the holiday break we still have a number of athletes missing out due to illness and injury. (This section will continue to be updated throughout the week)
– 🇳🇴 Johan-Olav Botn is missing this week as he is recovering from illness. This opens up a HUGE opportunity for Eric Perrot, Tommaso Giacomel, and the rest of the men who want to compete for the Overall. Botn is going to take a 0 so, after leading the Overall since the first race of the season he’s either going to go to Ruhpolding with a significantly diminished lead or out of yellow altogether.
– 🇳🇴 Sturla Holm Lægreid will miss the week as well. He apparently was struck down at Christmas and reports that he was barely able to get out of bed. He will be working his way back as he aims for a peak for the Olympics. As the week gets started he sits in 6th position at 333 points. That’s 227 points back of Botn and 114 back of Perrot. By taking 0 points this week he’s going to be all but out of the race to defend his Overall Globe assuming the guys ahead of him don’t miss a lot of races. If he walks away from Antholz with a pile of medals, though, he’s not going to mind one bit.
– 🇳🇴 Sverre Dahlen Aspenes and Martin Nevland will replace the two above. Aspenes is back on the World Cup for the first time since the end of the 2021-2022 season. This will be Martin Nevland’s World Cup debut.
– 🇸🇪 Ella Halvarsson is recovering from virus she suffered during the holidays. As a result all three ofLinn Gestblom, Sara Andersson, and Anna-Karin Heijdenberg make the World Cup roster for Oberhof. This is going to be a big weekend for the Olympic selection. Time if running out for one of these women to make a statement for why they belong.
– 🇦🇹 The Austrian team takes a pretty big hit losing Lisa Hauser, Anna Andexer and David Komatz for the week. They are replaced by Lara Wagner, Dunja Zdouc, and Fredrik Muehlbacher all of whom have already raced on the World Cup this season.
– 🇵🇱 Natalia Sidorwicz will be out as she is recovering as well. Now her rough performance in Annecy-le Grand Bornand makes a little bit more sense. She was struggling with an injury and will miss the week as she goes to a personal training camp to get herself back into shape for the big events later in the season. Fingers crossed she has a full recovery and enough of a runway to find a full peak.
-🇸🇮 Jakov Fak has been bothered by a knee problem all season long which has hampered his performance even will fellow old head Simon Eder found the top 10 in Annecy. Fak decided to have a procedure on his knee done in December and doesn’t yet have a return date. However, based on the type of procedure, assuming it went well and good recovery, he can expect to be as close to full strength as possible by February. The only downside is that due to the recovery he will be quite a bit off in his training. Still, it will be amazing to hopefully see him competing in one last Olympics!
-🇳🇴 Ida Lien – In case you missed it Ida Lien announced during the racing in le Grand Bornand that she had undergone surgery and will miss the remainder of the season. Hopefully this helps her feel much better on a day to day basis. She’s got plenty of time to get ready again for next season! If she can find her former peak again, it would be a HUGE boost to the Norwegian cause.
Lisa Vittozzi (ITA) – IBU World Cup Biathlon, pursuit women, Hochfilzen (AUT). http://www.biathlonworld.com © Walter/IBU.
Dorothea WIERER (ITA) – IBU World Cup Biathlon, sprint women, Annecy – Le Grand Bornand (FRA). http://www.biathlonworld.com © Mobuchon/IBU.
3) Olympic Season Takes Effect – And for the first time we are seeing the effects of an Olympic season on the schedule, prep, and strategy of the teams.
– 🇮🇹 Italy will hold Dorothea Wierer and Lisa Vittozzi out of Oberhof. This was a planned absence as they will attend a training camp to help them ramp up for their peak performance at their home Olympic Games.
4)🇫🇷 French Roster Changes – There will once again be a change in the French women’s roster this week. Paula Botet‘s stay on the World Cup was a brief one. After fighting her way to the World Cup with some amazing performances on the IBU Cup, Botet is once again exchanged in favor of Jeanne Richard. Per Nordic Magazine, Stephane Bouthiaux stated that while Richard had more opportunties she simply performed better than Botet’s 48th and 32nd at le Grand Bornand. Beyond Oberhof, at this point, with just one more selection before the Olympic roster is finalized (after Ruhpolding) it is looking exceedingly likely that Richard has advantage.
5) 🇩🇪 Germany Roster Changes – Germany has some roster changes that is not related to illness this week. For the men Lucas Fratzscher and Johannes Kuehn are rising to the World Cup to replace Simon Kaiser and Danilo Riethmueller. It’s basically an issue of Kaiser and Riethmueller not really doing much to distinguish themselves and giving Fratzscher and Kuehn a chance to make something happen. On the women’s side Selina Grotian is back from a long illness! Julia Kink is the odd women out.
Recent History
Men’s Top 5 Finishers Last 6 Competitions (Includes World Championships in 2022-2023 and two weeks in 2020-2021 season)
– Does not include athletes who are either retired or racing on IBU Cup. Sick/injured athletes have been left on the list (this is a change from how I was doing this before)
| Athlete | Finishes |
| Sturla Holm Lægreid 🇳🇴 | 🥇🥇🥈🥈🥈🥈🥈🥉🥉🥉, 4 |
| Johannes Dale-Skjevdal 🇳🇴 | 🥈🥉, 4, 5, 5 |
| Quentin Fillon Maillet 🇫🇷 | 🥇🥇, 4, 4 |
| Sebastian Samuelsson 🇸🇪 | 🥇🥈🥉🥉 |
| Lukas Hofer 🇮🇹 | 4, 5, 4 |
| Endre Stroemsheim 🇳🇴 | 🥇🥉 |
| Emilien Jacquelin 🇫🇷 | 🥈🥉 |
| Fabien Claude 🇫🇷 | 🥈, 4 |
| Dmytro Pidruchnyi 🇺🇦 | 4, 5 |
| Martin Ponsiluoma 🇸🇪 | 🥈 |
| Johannes Kühn 🇩🇪 | 4 |
| Martin Uldal 🇳🇴 | 5 |
| Eric Perrot 🇫🇷 | 5 |
| Jakov Fak 🇸🇮 | 5 |
| Vetle Sjåstad Christiansen 🇳🇴 | 5 |
| Andrejs Rastorgujevs 🇱🇻 | 5 |
| Simon Eder 🇦🇹 | 5 |
Women’s Top 5 Finishers Last 6 Competitions (Includes World Championships in 2022-2023 and two weeks in 2020-2021 season)
– Does not include athletes who are either retired or racing on IBU Cup. Sick/injured athletes have been left on the list (this is a change from how I was doing this before)
| Athlete | Finishes |
| Julia Simon 🇫🇷 | 🥇🥇🥇🥉🥉, 4, 4, 5 |
| Hanna Öberg 🇸🇪 | 🥇🥇🥈🥈🥈🥉 |
| Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold 🇳🇴 | 🥈, 4, 4, 4, 5 |
| Lisa Hauser 🇦🇹 | 🥉🥉🥉 |
| Lou Jeanmonnot 🇫🇷 | 🥇, 5 |
| Maren Kirkeeide 🇳🇴 | 🥈🥈 |
| Franziska Preuss 🇩🇪 | 🥈🥈 |
| Linn Gestblom 🇸🇪 | 🥈🥉 |
| Justine Braisaz-Bouchet 🇫🇷 | 🥉, 4 |
| Elvira Öberg 🇸🇪 | 🥉, 4 |
| Lisa Vittozzi 🇮🇹 | 🥉, 5 |
| Dorothea Wierer 🇮🇹 | 🥈 |
| Milena Todorova 🇧🇬 | 🥉 |
| Oceane Michelon 🇫🇷 | 4 |
| Anna Magnusson 🇸🇪 | 4 |
| Samuela Comola 🇮🇹 | 4 |
| Suvi Minkkinen 🇫🇮 | 5 |
| Selina Grotian 🇩🇪 | 5 |
| Janinan Hettich-Walz 🇩🇪 | 5 |
| Marketa Davidova 🇨🇿 | 5 |
| Sophia Schneider 🇩🇪 | 5 |
Recent Memorable Moments/Performances
Paula Botet (FRA) – IBU World Cup Biathlon, sprint women, Oberhof (GER). http://www.biathlonworld.com© Thibaut/BU.
2025 Women’s Sprint – Paula Botet, much like this season, started out the 2024-2025 campaign absolutely on fire. In the first trimester she stacked up two wins, six podiums, and seven top 4 finishes in eight races. She fought hard and earned herself a spot on the World Cup for at least a week. Well, she made the most of it. Botet cleaned her shooting, one of just five women in the 97 woman field who did so. At that point her skiing was more than enough to take her to a victory that wasn’t so much surprising, but was shocking all the same.
This race was almost as notable for the women who came behind her on the podium: Maren Kirkeeide and Milena Todorova. Two very different women both making their debut on the podium. Maren Kirkeeide was a 21 year old rising talent that has all the makings of a potential future Overall Globe challenger. We all knew her first podium was going to come but it’s still such an event when it happens. Milena Todorova was a 26 year old returning from a season off for maternity leave who was about to run off the best stretch of racing in her entire life. Before that race she had just three career top 12’s. From that race to the end of the season she had six top 10’s including another podium.
Even a little further down you had Suvi Minkkinen making another appearance in the top 10 finishing 5th, to prove that it wasn’t just a first trimester flash. She was joined by her teammate Sonja Leinamo in 8th with her first career top 10.
2025 Women’s Pursuit – At the top of the race Lou Jeanmonnot took the win. This came after finishing 7th in the Sprint. It helped her take a HUGE bite out of Franziska Preuss’ Overall lead. Kirkeeide finished 2nd again for her second career podium coming just two days after her first. The real story was Stormin Elvira who made a HUGE charge through the field.
Elvira Öberg started the day in 37th position. She was 2:20 back of Botet to start the day and 1:55 back of Todorova who was in the podium position. Elvira was absolutely relentless. From the moment she first crossed on to the course she was on a march towards the front of the field. After the first shoot she was +2:14. After the second +1:06. For the first time it seemed possible that she could contend for the podium. Still a ways to go but she had done well more than half the work already. After the third shooting she was in 6th position just +36 and 20 seconds back of the podium. You started to wonder if she really had anything left to give. After the 4th shooting, and a miss she was +58 but only 8 seconds back of the podium. Elvira did what she does and unleashed a final charge. 1.1km into the last lap she already had a lead and was pulling away. She finished the job by pushing it all the way to the line.
2023 JT Bø Worlds: I think it’s fair to lump these all together as one. In a season that was the greatest season we have ever seen from any male biathlete ever the Oberhof Worlds stood out as the peak of his year. He was absolutely dominant winning gold in the Sprint, Pursuit, and the Indiviual with a bronze in the Mass Start. The Individual was particularly awe inspiring as he was just a machine on the course. In sunny and warm conditions he absolutely chewed up the track. He ended up going 18/20 while Sturla Holm Lægreid went 19/20. However JT Bø won the race by 1:10. Yes, Bø could have had two more misses than Lægreid and still won. Remember Lægreid was an incredible 2nd Overall last season. When you consider an Individual is a 1 minute penalty per miss that’s just mind blowing stuff. He was 1:46 faster than Jeremy Finello who was 2nd fastest on the day. There were 12 men within 1:46 of Jeremy Finello including Lægreid. Oh yeah, and we also saw the celebration of the season pictured above.
22-23 Hanna Öberg Worlds: I don’t want to forget to mention that Hanna Öberg had a pretty special World Championships last season too. She scored silver in the Sprint and gold in the Individual and the Mass Start. The Mass Start gold in particular was special Having been known as a an athlete who can struggle with the last shooting she came into the last shooting 16 seconds back of Julia Simon who was on the way to winning the Overall Globe. Öberg went 5/5 in 21.5 seconds and skied off the range with a 4.5 second lead on Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold. After some tense moments on the course Öberg was able to hold off Tandrevold and skate home for another gold. After having a little bit of a slow start to the season it was an absolutely top notch moment for her.
2023 Worlds Women’s Mass Start: See how I said the 2023 Worlds are plastered in my memory? Okay this will be the last thing I promise. Just take a look at the top 15 at the Mass Start for Worlds. I love it.
Knotten in 6th
Lunder in 7th
Comola 10th
Haecki-Gross 11th
Kebinger 12th
Jeanmonnot 15th
It was a great moment for both some top career races for Comola and Lunder and a sign of things to come from Knotten, Haecki-Gross, and Jeanmonnot. A nice encapsulation of this era of women’s biathlon.
2022 Single Mixed Relay: Kind of an odd one to put in here but Lotte Lie and Florent laude managed a 6th place finish to put Belgium in the flowers! I will never forget Lotte Lie absolutely pulling as hard as she could down the stretch to keep Belgium in the top 6 and the pure joy and exahustion when she crossed the finish line. Really a fun race!
2021 Oberhof Week 1 Pursuit: JT Bø, as will surprise nobody, won the Sprint on this weekend with a solid 10 seconds over his older brother Tarjei. Lægreid finished 3rd 21 seconds further back with Hofer 4th and Dale-Skjvedal 5th all within 35 seconds. That’s some top talent but the money was definitely on JT Bø completing the sweep. At the very least you would expect that he would be able to finish on the podium. I mean this is JT Bø we are talking about, and he was wearing Yellow on the way to a (very narrow) Overall Globe over Sturla Holm Lægreid. But he didn’t win or finish on the podium. He wasn’t even top 5. He finished 8th with seven, yes seven, penalty loops. He missed 1 each on the prone shootings. Then on the first standing shooting he went 1/5. Really bizarro world. And we may never see anything quite like that again.
2020 Martin Fourcade: Over the last stretch of dominance by Martin Fourcade, he pulled off the double win in the Sprint and Mass Start for the first two victories of four straight wins on German snow. He was taking advantage of JT Bø’s paternity leave but he still went out and won the races. After leaving Ruhpolding he had just two more wins in his career: The World Championships Individual in Antholz and the season ending Pursuit.
Switzerland 🇨🇭