Career Best Seasons

One of my favorite parts of a biathlon season is watching the improvements that occur. There is also something really exciting about an athlete reaching their potential or finding a level that you didn’t know was even possible for them. This pieces is dedicated to those athletes who achieved that this season!

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

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

In order we’ll discuss:
– The Top of the Top
– Pushing for the Overall
– Big Time Breakthroughs
– Moderate Steps Forward
– A Career Best is a Career Best No Matter the Size

The Top of the Top – Pretty clear. These two athletes pushed their way to the absolute pinacle of the sport this season.

1) Lou Jeanmonnot (Prior best: 2)

We don’t need to spend too much time on Lou Jeanmonnot. I actually wrote about her extensively already in my piece: Our Beloved Champion. It’s worth noting that at long last she took the biggest and most difficult step up when she took the Overall Globe this season. In doing so she was clearly the best and most consistent woman throughout the entirety of the 2025-2026 season.

Age	27
Overall Rank	1st
Career Best Rank	2nd
Total Career Races	105
25-26 Season Wins	3
25-26 Season Podiums	11
25-26 Season Top 10’s	15
Key Statistic	Total Points 1135

If you look at each of her statistics you’ll see that she actually wasn’t statistically any better this season vs last year or even the year before. But at the end of the day she accumulated 1135 points and really took the excitement out of the Globe race well before the end of the season even if she didn’t officially wrap it up until Oslo. And that’s to her credit! So congratulations to Lou Jeanmonnot. She’ll never again set a new personal best in the Overall rankings!

1) Eric Perrot (Prior best: 3)

Long compared to Martin Fourcade, Eric Perrot, at age 24, took a significant step in living up to the sky high standards of one of his idols as he secured his first career Overall Globe. Maybe he didn’t have the highest peak this season, but he was the best and most consistent from November through March. Ultimately that’s what matters when it comes to winning Overall Globes as we discussed in How To Win the Overall.

Age	24
Overall Rank	1st
Career Best Rank	3rd
Total Career Races	105
25-26 Season Wins	4
25-26 Season Podiums	12
25-26 Season Top 10’s	22
Key Statistic	Avg Ski Rank 6.6

While practically everything Perrot did this season was sensational, including a level of mature racing that was unreal, maybe the most impressive thing was his ski speed. HIs average ski rank this season was a wild 6.6. It’s worth mentioning that he’s just 24 years old. This was good enough to be the 5th fastest man this season. And, as we literally just mentioned, he’s only 24. There is every reason to expect that this is not the peak of his speed that we’ll see in his career. Add that to the 90% hit rate he has achieved in each of the last two seasons and we’re looking at a young man who has the potential to have a whole lot of these by the time his career is over.

Pushing for the Overall – While these athletes didn’t win the Overall, they each came achingly close to the top award in the sport. They each either showed a new level we didn’t know they had or they rediscovered something we hadn’t seen in a little while.

2) Hanna Öberg (Prior best: 4)

There was a time not that long ago when I thought the days of seeing Hanna Öberg in the mix for the Overall were gone. In fact if you go back and listen to our season preview podcast I bet you’ll hear me say just that. After three consecutive 4th place Overall finishes from the 2019-2020 through the 2021-2022 seasons she finished 7th, 12th, and 12th in each of the last three. During that time her racing was increasing erratic with at different times her shooting and her skiing causing her difficulty.

Age	30
Overall Rank	2nd
Career Best Rank	4th
Total Career Races	205
25-26 Season Wins	4
25-26 Season Podiums	8
25-26 Season Top 10’s	14
Key Statistic	Ski vs. Medial Top 10: +0.2%

This season, though, it all came back together. Her shooting, after slipping down to 78.7% overall last year, leapt back up to 84.7%. Certainly not close to the best shooting of her career, but far closer to her career norms in the mid 80’s.

Crucially, by some measures, she actually skied faster than at any other point in her career. Skiing just 0.2% faster than the median top 10 was the best she’s ever done. Her average course time rank of 8.9 was the 3rd best of her career.

All of this makes me more optimistic about the rest of her career as well. This was not even the peak of where she can be and she still came away with four wins (tying her career high), eight podiums, and 14 top 10’s (both career highs) and she won the highly coveted battle of the Öberg’s! If, and it’s a big if, she can keep this skiing AND shoot like she did 5-6 years ago when she was hitting near and slightly above 90%, she absolutely has a chance to be in the Overall mix all season long.

3) Johan-Olav Botn (Prior best: 29)

Truly one of the surprises of the season. It’s not a surprise that he was good, it’s the way he was good and how consistently good he was! He burst into the season like a man on fire. In the 1st trimester and he had three wins, five podiums, and no finishes worse than 5th. He was a run away leader in the yellow bib by the time of the holiday break.

Age	26
Overall Rank	29th
Career Best Rank	3rd
Total Career Races	28
25-26 Season Wins	5
25-26 Season Podiums	7
25-26 Season Top 10’s	19
Key Statistic	Total Hit Rate 90.9%

Ultimately, though his season was a series of starts and stops, he finished 3rd in the Overall. He tied for the most wins on the season with one of them coming in an emotional gold medal winning performance in the Individual at the Olympics. His average finish of 5.7 was similarly the 3rd best on the World Cup this year behind only Eric Perrot and Sturla Holm Lægreid.

The shocking part wasn’t that Botn did well but the way in which he did well. This is a man who had 12 IBU Cup wins the last few seasons. But he did that mostly on the basis of extremely fast skiing and shooting just well enough. His World Cup success was different. He hit 90.9% which was the 3rd best hit rate of regular World Cup starters this season. That’s not to say he was only doing it with his shooting as he was still quite fast, ranking 3rd best in skiing this season as well.

Johan-Olav Botn deployed a strategy we’ve seen becoming more popular. He would take it a little easier on his first lap, giving him a better situation on the range for his 1st shoot. His prone shooting increased to nearly 90% this season. He also, and this is the really interesting part, bucked the trend of faster and faster shooting. While nearly everybody is trying to pull the trigger as quickly as possible, Botn, along with a few others like Lou Jeanmonnot, appeared more comfortable with taking time on the range. Botn averaged just 30.6 seconds per shoot ranking 81st (81st!!) in shooting speed this season. However, he clearly made up for it in improved accuracy and by FAR the best season of his career.

If Johan-Olav Botn can replicate this, and there is no reason to believe he can’t, he’s a real threat for the Overall for the next several years. Eric Perrot will have no easy time defending this crown!

5) Suvi Minkkinen (Prior best: 7)

The last two seasons have been simply magical for Suvi Minkkinen. Prior to last season her best ever Overall finish was 27th. Now she has two consecutive top 7 Overall finishes. She had one top 10 in her first seven career seasons. She has 30 in the last two years including 10 podiums, a win, a World Championship medal and an Olympic medal.

Age	31
Overall Rank	5th
Career Best Rank	7th
Total Career Races	157
25-26 Season Wins	1
25-26 Season Podiums	7
25-26 Season Top 10’s	13
Key Statistic	Ski vs. Median: -1.4%

It’s been well documented but over the last two seasons Suvi Minkkinen made this surge thanks to her dramatic improvement in skiing. She did this by completely altering her offseason training and spending significant time in the Alps. As a result she has set new career bests in skiing each of the last two seasons running 1.3% faster than median in 24-25 and 1.4% faster in 2024-2025. All the while she maintained a hit rate >91%.

Who knows how long she can keep this up. As a fan of hers I can hope that she does it for a few more years. But every time we get to see her climb the podium or involved in a flower ceremony is worth celebrating. And if you haven’t yet I would appreciate you taking a look at my piece on her from last week, You Won Suvi.

7) Anna Magnusson (Prior best: 14)

During the 2022-2023 season Anna Magnusson achieved her major breakthrough. She soared from a prior career best of 23rd in 2016-2017 up to 14th in a season that included her first career win and podiums. After that it seemed that she had settled into a bit of new plateau. She finished 15th in 2023-2024 and 20th in 2024-2025. It still felt like there was more to be seen though, that she hadn’t reached her full potential. On our preseason podcast we even discussed as much. We considered that with it being an Olympic year, maybe a few athletes aiming for an Olympic peak rather than the Overall might give her an opening especially if she were to make that breakthrough. And then she did.

Age	31
Overall Rank	7th
Career Best Rank	14th
Total Career Races	186
25-26 Season Wins	0
25-26 Season Podiums	5
25-26 Season Top 10’s	12
Key Statistic	Avg Ski Rank 15

The season started with a bang as she finished in 9th in the Individual in Östersund and then 2nd and 3rd in the Sprint and Pursuit. In one weekend she doubled her career podium total. She followed that up with two more podiums in Hochfilzen which put her into the yellow bib! She maintained her position high in the Overall throughout the season staying in the top 5 until the last weeks of the year. Ultimately she ended up with five podiums and 12 top 10’s both easy career bests.

Magnusson’s surge this season occurred with both career best shooting and skiing. The shooting, which had been steady in the mid 80’s for the vast majority of her career, reached a new high of 88.8%. But the skiing was the major breakthrough. After running between 0.8% and 1.3% faster than median each of the last four seasons, this year she improved that to 2.2% faster than median. In practical terms this meant an average ski rank per race improvement from the low to mid 20’s to 15th. Ultimately she ranked 16th in skiing this season. All in all that’s a recipe for success. And we hope to see it again next season!

Big Time Breakthroughs – We started the discussion by looking at those who had career bests closes to the top of the Overall. However, now we’re going to look at those athletes who had the biggest leaps forward. Some of these don’t look like big improvements in the Overall, but they did show something bit to us this season.

12) Tereza Vobornikova (Prior best: 16)

RJ said it best during our season recap podcast. It wasn’t so much that Tereza Vobornikova did something unexpected this season, it’s that she did what we all dreamed she might be able to do. Primarily this career best season came due to the immense success she had late in the year. While she did have four top 20’s in the first four weekends of the season, she turned it up from Nove Mesto to the close of the year. Over the last 13 races of the season she had 13 top 20’s. In that stretch she had six top 10’s, four top 5’s and two podiums. The two podiums were loud too: The Oslo Mass Start and of course the 2026 Olympic Mass Start bronze medal.

Age	25
Overall Rank	12th
Career Best Rank	16th
Total Career Races	99
25-26 Season Wins	0
25-26 Season Podiums	2
25-26 Season Top 10’s	7
Key Statistic	Olympic Medals: 1

That last 13 races of the season is the kind of thing that creates top 10 athletes. And she quite nearly achieved that anyway as she finished 12th.

Statistically she matched the best skiing and shooting of her career. Skiing she was 0.9% faster than median with an average ski rank of 27.3, both of which matched her career bests from 2023-2024. Her hit rate was 88.8% which was just a hair less than she did in 24-25 at 90.3%.

But, when you look at the last 13 races of the season you see some amazing potential. During that stretch she had an average ski rank of 18 and a hit rate of 90.4%, both of which would be career bests. But clearly it was the skiing that made the major improvement in those two excellent months of racing. This season her overall ski rank was 35th. If she were to replicate what she did in those last 13 races over the entire season it would put her into the top 20 in skiing. That starts to put her in Suvi Minkkinen territory in terms of results. Definitely intriguing as we look forward for the 25 year old.

17) Oscar Lombardot (Prior best: 45)

Of all of the career best seasons this year Oscar Lombardot had one of the biggest leaps in Overall finishes as he moved up from 45th all the way to 17th. The biggest sign of his improvement was that he raced 18 times this season. For the first time in his career his performance was so good that he was able to demand starts every week. After starting the season on the IBU Cup he joined the World Cup in Hochfilzen and stayed there the rest of the season. By the end of the year he had 12 top 10’s, three top 10’s and a new career best of 4th in the Nove Mesto Short Individual

Age	25
Overall Rank	17th
Career Best Rank	45th
Total Career Races	44
25-26 Season Wins	0
25-26 Season Podiums	0
25-26 Season Top 10’s	3
Key Statistic	Ski vs Median -1.9%

How did he earn this position week in and week out? Well he’s always been a decent and sometimes excellent shooter. This season that was no different as he hit 85.7% including 90.7% prone. His skiing was the real improvement as he ran 1.9% faster than median good enough for 21st best for the men on the World Cup this season. His average ski rank improved from a prior best of 30.2 up to 18.8.

Oscar Lombardot likely will be on the World Cup next season…likely. The pressure is coming though. This includes Gaetan Paturel, Damien Levet, and Valentin Lejeune. If Lombardot can continue to ski like this, or better, he’s going to be in good position to continue to not only on the World Cup but move towards the top 10-15 in the Overall.

25) Regina Ermits (Prior best: 47)

It seems like every year now we have an Estonian woman having a career year. Tuuli Tomingas. Then Susan Kuelm. Now Regina Ermits. Regina did it by doing having easily the most consistent season of her career. She raised her ceiling and her floor as she collected 14 top 40’s, surpassing her prior career most of nine, eight top 20’s doubling her career best, and two top 10’s. That included tying her previous career best of 8th at the Hochfilzen Pursuit.

Age	30
Overall Rank	25th
Career Best Rank	47th
Total Career Races	136
25-26 Season Wins	0
25-26 Season Podiums	0
25-26 Season Top 10’s	2
Key Statistic	Prone Hit Rate 86.9%

For Ermits, while she had the 2nd best skiing of her career, the big thing that boosted her performance was her prone shooting. She hit 86.9% prone last season. Prior to this year the best she had done in a full season from the prone position was just 73.8% so that was a massive step forward. Her Overall hit rate was 88.8%, just the 2nd itme she’s hit more than 80% in a full season of competition and significantly better than her 82.3% from the 2023-2024 season.

As Regina Ermits enters what will be her age 30-31 season next year, there is every hope that she can replicate this. Her standing shooting has consistently be in the high 80’s to low 90’s over the last three seasons. It looks now like she’s finally gotten her proneto sync up. And being in what should be her peak performance years, she should hopefully be able to replicate this skiing. Maybe a few more top 25 Overall finishes coming for her!

31) Lea Meier (Prior best: 69)

When you watch summer biathlon you have to take a lot of it with a grain of salt. There are some athletes who have a natural adventage on roller skis vs snow skis. But, if you’re watching carefully you can pick out a few athletes every season who are primed for a surge. Last summer one of those athletes was Lea Meier. Every time out she was showing far better skiing than she had ever had before. She came in to the winter season and immediately showed that it was for real.

Age	25
Overall Rank	31st
Career Best Rank	69th
Total Career Races	49
25-26 Season Wins	0
25-26 Season Podiums	0
25-26 Season Top 10’s	2
Key Statistic	Avg Ski Rank 30

The last two seasons Meier has been okay as she was skiing about 2-2.5% slower than median. That resulted in an average ski rank in the 50’s and 60’s in those seasons. This year she surged to 0.9% faster than median giving her an average ski rank of 30th. That was a HUGE improvement for her. She did this while maintaining a very respectable hit rate in the mid 80’s as she hit 84.7%.

As a result of this big time ski improvement she was able to score 12 top 30’s after having a grand total of two in her career before this season. She also put up eight top 20’s and two top 10’s including a career best 7th in the Olympic Individual.

Lea Meier continues to show us a very high potential as she keeps making improvements. She’s already back in training mode, clearly motivated after this big surge. Meier will be aiming even higher for her ski rank next season. However, the easiest location that she might be able to pick up some improvement would be her standing shooting. This year her prone hit rate was up to 92.5% while her standing slipped down to 76.9%. Just two seasons ago that standing was at 82.2%. If she can return to that, or even better, then we’re looking at likely a top 20 Overall season.

37) Mikulas Karlik (Prior best: 74)

A fairly delightful and unexpected career best this season came from Mikulas Karlik. Part of the reason it was so unexpected was that he just had so little exposure on the World Cup. After racing 15 times on the top level in the 2021-2022 season he raced a total of 18 times the next three years. This year he ran 20 races, starting in Östersund and continuing on the World Cup all the way to Oslo, seemingly gaining steam as the season went on.

Age	26
Overall Rank	37
Career Best Rank	74
Total Career Races	58
25-26 Season Wins	0
25-26 Season Podiums	0
25-26 Season Top 10’s	0
Key Statistic	Ski vs Median -2.3%

Karlik’s season got off to a solid start as he finished in 27th in the Sprint in Östersund which was 1 position off from his career best. He then set a career best of 24th in the Pursuit in Annecy-le Grand Bornand. And then he closed out the season by setting his new pesronal best of 20th in the Otepää Sprint, pushing it further to 16 in the Otepää Pursuit, and then matching that in the Oslo Sprint. All totaled he had 12 finishes in the points, matching his total races run from the 23-24 and 24-25 seasons combined, as he finished 37th Overall.

While Karlik’s hit rate was a career best it was still only in the mid 70’s at 75.3%. His skiing on the other hand was very good. He ran 2.3% faster than median, easily a career best. That made his average ski rank 20.3 and he ranked 19th in overall skiing for the season. If he can just keep that hit rate improving towards the 80’s and above he’s going to keep climbing the Overall.

49) Lora Hristova (Prior best: 73)

Let’s be real, the major breakthrough for Lora Hristova this year was finding the podium. But not only did she find the podium she did it at the Olympic Games taking home the bronze medal in the Individual. However, she backed up that amazing finish with three more top 14’s in the next three races along with 21st in the Otepää Sprint. That 21st would have been the 3rd best finish of her career before this season. Also worth nothing that Hristova is apparently a big game hunter as her two prior career bests were 13th and 19th in the 2025 World Championships.

Age	22
Overall Rank	49th
Career Best Rank	73rd
Total Career Races	61
25-26 Season Wins	0
25-26 Season Podiums	1
25-26 Season Top 10’s	3
Key Statistic	Olympic Medals 1

For Lora Hristova it was clearly about her skiing form. She had four of her top five and six of her top eight ski ranks from the Winter Olympics through Otepää. That included a career best 14th best ski time in the Winter Olympic Sprint. Clearly she aimed her season up peak at the Olympic Games and she achieved that with magnificent results.

Now Hristova has shown us what she can do at her peak she can work on doing it over the course of a full season. She’s still only 22 years old so that may still be a few seasons away. But when she can sync up to 20 skiing along with a hit rate in the 90% range we will see her follow through on that incredible potential she showed us a Junior. I cannot wait!

54) Margie Freed (Prior best: 83)

Prior to this season I’m going to hazard a guess that only the most hardcore of fans knew about Margie Freed. She may be 28 but she’s late to biathlon, like many in North America, only coming over after being recruited from cross country skiing. She’s raced just 22 IBU level races over the last three seasons with eight on the IBU Cup in 22-23 followed by six and eight on the World Cup in 23-24 and 24-25. This year she raced 18 times on the World Cup which tells you all you need to know.

Age	28
Overall Rank	54th
Career Best Rank	83rd
Total Career Races	32
25-26 Season Wins	0
25-26 Season Podiums	0
25-26 Season Top 10’s	0
Key Statistic	Total Hit Rate 81.4%

The big thing that you can see from her season is she qualified for the Pursuit in Östersund , Annecy-le Grand Bornand, Oberhof, Ruhpolding, Otepää and Oslo. And then for good measure she took part in her first career Mass Start in Oslo as well!

The big thing for so many of these converts to biathlon is finding the range. She did that this season for the first time as she hit 81.4% including a remarkable 89% prone. She had nearly 19% improvement in prone percentage and standing each last season. And she still skis faster than median. I can’t wait to see what she can do next season!

Moderate Steps Forward – In this section we see those who maybe didn’t taking gigantic leaps, but they still took very nice improvements this season! This isn’t just in terms of the total number of places they improved but also the way they made their improvements.

9) Philipp Nawrath (Prior best: 14)

Philipp Nawrath at 33 years old showing us that it’s never too late to have that career best season. Over 23 races this season he was top 30 in every single one including 13 top 10’s, five top 5’s, and three podiums. Prior to this season his career best in top 10’s was just six. That’s clearly a level of high level consistency he had never accomplished before. It all led to his fist career top 10 Overall season as he finished 9th.

Age	33
Overall Rank	9th
Career Best Rank	14th
Total Career Races	142
25-26 Season Wins	0
25-26 Season Podiums	3
25-26 Season Top 10’s	13
Key Statistic	Avg Ski Rank 9.5

Nawrath’s shooting this seaosn was solid. He hit 85.8% which was close to a career best. And was a solid improvement over the low 80’s where he has been the last several seasons. In addition to that, and most importantly, he had the best ski season his his career. He ran 3.6% faster than median. His prior career best was 3.1%. This improved his avg ski rank up to 9.5 and he ranked 9th in overall skiing. 9 was clearly the number of the year for him!

Now the question is how many more years will he compete? We’ve seen several athletes remain competitive well into their 30’s including this season Lukas Hofer’s remarkable season. Hopefully this season has encouraged him to continue this surge for the next several years!

13) Campbell Wright (Prior best: 17)

Still at just 23 years old Campbell Wright continues to, already, cement his position in the history of US biathlon. His 13th Overall ranked behind only Lowell Bailey’s 8th Overall in the 2016-2017 season and Tim Burke’s 9th Overall in the 2012-2013 season. That’s it, that’s the entire list of American men’s Overall finishes higher than Campbell Wright this season. Not just men who have finished higher than him, but the totality of the list.

Age	23
Overall Rank	13th
Career Best Rank	17th
Total Career Races	94
25-26 Season Wins	0
25-26 Season Podiums	1
25-26 Season Top 10’s	8
Key Statistic	Prone Hit Rate 91.7%

Campbell put together a solid top to bottom season with career bests in top 30’s and top 20’s. Although with only two top 5’s vs four last season he didn’t quite have the same ceiling. He did have his first World Cup podium, though, when he finished in 2nd in the Nove Mesto Mass Start. He nearly had another podium in the Otepää Pursuit but ultimately Martin Uldal passed him late on the final lap.

The key for the success this season was a slight improvement in the skiing, moving from 2.3% faster than median to 2.4% faster. At the same time he improved his prone hit rate to a very good 91.4%. Unforgunately that was offset by his standing shooting dropping to 78.6% after two consecutive years at 85%. Hopefully he can get that standing shooting back on track as he continues to aim for the top levels of the sport!

20) Marthe Krakstad Johansen (Prior best: 34)

The Norwegian women’s team is certainly not at the same high flying level it was even just a a couple of seasons ago. However, one of the keys to their year was the steady hand of Marthe Krakstad Johansen. She joined the Women’s Relay team after a disastrous relay in Östersund. She immediately slotted into the lead off position. From that time on they finished on the podium every single race including winning the Ruhpolding relay and taking bronze in the Olympic Games.

What Johansen provided them was consistent shooting as she hit 90.6% this season helping them avoid the penalty loop. This brought them to their ultimate plan which was basically avoid disaster and get to Maren Kirkeeide with a chance at the podium/win.

Age	27
Overall Rank	20th
Career Best Rank	34th
Total Career Races	39
25-26 Season Wins	0
25-26 Season Podiums	0
25-26 Season Top 10’s	4
Key Statistic	Top 20 Rate 12/22

That’s not to discredit her individual success as well. She finished in the top 20 12 times this season in 22 races. She only had 17 total World Cup races before this season so this shows how consistent she was able to be this season. She also achieved four top 10’s after having just two prior to this season. It included tying her career best of 7th twice, first in the Oberhof Sprint and then again in the Kontiolahti Mass Start.

It also helped that she was able to ski faster than average for just the second time in her career. She’s still only 27 years old so we can still have hope that she’s able to fine the next level to her skiing that can take her average skii rank from 38th to 34th this season and then even better. Regardless, if she’s going to shoot like this, and ski hopefully in this range, then she can be an asset to the relay team.

24) Joscha Burkhalter (Prior best: 37)

Quietly, over the last few seasons, Joscha Burkhalter has been building himself into a steady and reliable athlete for the Swiss men’s team. He improved from 68th in the 2022-2023 season to 46th the following year to 37th in the 24-25 campaign and now 24th this season. Along the way he had dramatically raised his floor even if his ceiling hasn’t gone up significantly. After three consecutive seasons of five top 40’s the had 14 last season and 19 this year (in 24 races). He also has had 11 of his 12 career top 20 finishes in the last two seasons including seven this year.

Age	29
Overall Rank	24th
Career Best Rank	27th
Total Career Races	99
25-26 Season Wins	0
25-26 Season Podiums	0
25-26 Season Top 10’s	1
Key Statistic	Total Hit Rate 87.5%

How has Burkhalter done it? Slow and steady shooting improvement. His skiing has stayed between the exact median and about 1% slower than median each of the last four seasons. However his shooting has improved each year from 80% up to 87.5% this season. That included a prone hit rate of 89.5% and 85.5% standing.

While Burkhalter did not set a new career best he did tie his career best of 10th in the Annecy-le Grand Bornand Mass Start and finished 11th in the Olympic Mass Start as well. This was one of five Mass Start he ran this season meaning for the first time in his career he did not miss a Mass Start race in a season. That itself is a marker of where he established himself in the men’s World Cup field. Ultimately, if he wants to take the next steps forward, he’ll hope to find some new ski speed as well.

26) Anna-Karin Heijdenberg (Prior best: 39)

After illness caused her to start the season off on the back foot, and on the IBU Cup no less, Anna-Karin Heijdenberg said that she just wanted to be able to prove to herself what she was capable of doing. She certainly started to do that the rest of the season. She regiained her position on the World Cup at the end of the first trimester. She solidified her position in the second trimester as she finished 10th in the Oberhoff Sprint and had just one finish outside the top 22. Then she made her argument for the future when she had two top 10’s in the third trimester.

Age	25
Overall Rank	26th
Career Best Rank	39th
Total Career Races	33
25-26 Season Wins	0
25-26 Season Podiums	0
25-26 Season Top 10’s	3
Key Statistic	Avg Ski Rank 15

All totaled she brought home three top 10’s and eight top 20’s in 14 races taking her to 26th Overall. She did this by relying primarily on her top notch skiing. This year she ran 2.2% faster than median with an average ski rank of 15th. In fact she only finished lower than 15th in ski rank in five of the 14 races with course time ranks of 22 and 24 in the last two races of the season really driving down her average. Overall she finished 15th in skiing, and was ranked as high as 12th before the last two races.

That skiing gives her a chance to find the top 10 every race. The problem is that she hit only 78.7% this season. That’s not really an aberration either as she has struggled to break 80% in her World Cup career. However, if she can find a way to hit in the mid 80’s like she has in her IBU Cup racing that would help her vault even higher in the Overall and more importantly solidify her position on the competitive Swedish World Cup team.

29) Deedra Irwin (Prior best: 38)

Deedra Irwin, the standard bearer of US biathlon since the retirements of Clare Egan and Susan Dunklee two years ago, just raised the bar a little bit further. This season she became just the 5th woman in US history to finish top 30 in the Overall rankings. Along the way she collected two more top 10’s (matching her entire career best before this season, six top 20’s, nine top 30’s and 14 top 40’s. No surprise each of those were career bests.

Age	33
Overall Rank	29th
Career Best Rank	38th
Total Career Races	107
25-26 Season Wins	0
25-26 Season Podiums	0
25-26 Season Top 10’s	2
Key Statistic	Prone Hit Rate 89.7%

Irwin’s season was consistently good from start to finish. She had her best stretch in the first trimester when she had four top 20’s in a five race stretch including a 10th place finish in the Annecy-le Grand Bornand Sprint. However she also had two top 20’s in the 2nd trimester including her second top 10 of the season in the Nove Mesto Mass Start. She finished with a solid run as well including finishes of 22nd and 27th in the Sprints in Otepää and Oslo.

As Deedra Irwin told us at the end of the season she is still young in biathlon years and there are still areas she’s improving. This season you could see it in her prone shooting which nearly crossed the 90% threshold. But she also brought her standing hit rate up to 84.5% giving her an overall hit rate of 87.1%, her best of her career! She did this while also averaging less than 30 seconds per shoot for the first time in her career.

Irwin has every intention of coming back next season and still sees ways in which she could improve. If she finishes in the top 30 again that is going to further cement her place as one of the best women in US Biathlon history!

41) Jan Gunka (Prior best: 57)

One of two Polish men on this list this season as Uros Velepec immediately made an impact on his new squad. Jan Gunka almost immediately showed his improvement as he finished 23rd int he Sprint and 17th in the Pursuit in Östersund, both of which were solid personal bests. He followed that up with 13th in the Annecy-le Grand Bornand Pursuit and 15th in the Oberhof Pursuit giving him the top four finishes of his career this season. In total nine of the top 11 finishes of his career came this year as he pushed to 41st in the Overall standings.

Age	23
Overall Rank	41st
Career Best Rank	57th
Total Career Races	61
25-26 Season Wins	0
25-26 Season Podiums	0
25-26 Season Top 10’s	0
Key Statistic	Avg Shooting Time 24.4 sec

If you look at the statistics there is one clear area where Gunka made a massive leap: shooting time. His average shooting time moved from 28.4 sec to 24.4 sec. At the end of the season he was the 5th fastest shooter in the men’s field. This helped him to make this big leap in his performance even while his skiing was basically unchanged year over year and his hit rate dropped from 82.7% to 77.7%.

To be fair to Gunka that ski rank really undersells what he did early in the season. In the first trimester his average ski rank was 41 compared to 50 for the entire season. Even that is doing Gunka a disservice as he had four of the top five ski ranks of his career in the first trimester and the average was pushed down by just two bad races. Otherwise he was top 35 in ski rank every race that trimester. Long story short here, Gunka did flash a new level of ski speed early in the season that makes me intrigued by what we might see this season. If, as he gets older and matures, he’s able to continue that for a full season, that looks to be the next big step he can take, as there is only so much more shooting speed improvement he can make. Then if he can get back to shooting in the 80’s…

41) Lena Repinc (Prior best: 64)

The 23 year old Lena Repinc just continues to improve year after year. She scored her first points two seasons ago in a nine race World Cup season. She ran 11 times in 24-25 and moved up to 64th Overall. This year, she ran 18 of 21 World Cup races and finished 41st Overall. This included 10 finishes in the points, up from five the year before, as well as seven top 30’s and four top 20’s. She finished 13th in Oslo’s Pursuit and Mass Start to set her new personal bests. In total she had the four best finishes of her career and seven of the nine bets finishes of her career.

Age	22
Overall Rank	41st
Career Best Rank	64th
Total Career Races	52
25-26 Season Wins	0
25-26 Season Podiums	0
25-26 Season Top 10’s	0
Key Statistic	Total Hit Rate 84.7%

As is usually the case in a season like she the improved pretty much everywhere. The biggest jump was in her shooting as her hit rate improved to 84.7% after running in the high 70’s the last two seasons. This was buoyed primarily by her prone hit rate surging from 74.3% to 86.5%. However she also saw a solid ski improvement moving from 0.3% slower than median to 0.7% slower and her average ski rank improved from 51.6 to 42.

Lena Repinc has been improving every season. At this point I won’t predict that to stop now. Improvement isn’t always linear but we can hope that we see a little more growth out of Repinc next season!

45) Konrad Badacz (Prior best: 70)

The second young Pole on this list also scored a new career best Ovearll (in a big way) primarily on the improvement in his shooting time. While not as significant of an improvement as Gunka, his shooting time improved from 29.7 seconds to 25.6 seconds. That ranked him 13th in shooting speed. This was in addition to regaining his shooting form from two years ago as he rebounded his hit rate to 86.1%. And he consolidated the ski improvement he made from 23-24 to 24-25 when he improved from 2.2% slower than median to 1.5% slower than median as he ran 1.3% slower than median this season.

Age	23
Overall Rank	45th
Career Best Rank	70th
Total Career Races	46
25-26 Season Wins	0
25-26 Season Podiums	0
25-26 Season Top 10’s	0
Key Statistic	Avg Shooting Time 25.6 sec

Badacz’s improvement led him to double his top 40’s year over year to eight last season which included five top 30’s and his new career best, and first top 20, when he finished 20th in the Sprint in Ruhpolding.

Also, like Gunka, his skiing was actually better in the early parts of the season than late. He fell off pretty sharply starting with the Olympics on to the end of the season. His ski ranks were almost entirely top 50 from Hochfilzen through the start of the Olympics. This makes me hopeful that we’ll see him running even better next season!

47) Inka Hämäläinen (Prior best: 76)

While the entire Finnish team had a very good 2025-2026 season, including the above mentioned Suvi Minkkinen, young Inka Hämäläinen had the biggest jump in Overall finish. The 20 year old finished in 47th Overall this season after accumulating six top 40’s, five top 30’s, and the first top 20’s of her career including career best 12th in the Östersund Sprint as well as 16th in the Oberhof Sprint.

Age	20
Overall Rank	47th
Career Best Rank	76th
Total Career Races	27
25-26 Season Wins	0
25-26 Season Podiums	0
25-26 Season Top 10’s	0
Key Statistic	Top 40’s 6

Hämäläinen showed statistical improvement in skiing as she moved from 2% slower than median up to 1.3% slower than median with an average ski rank improving from 58th to 51st. Her shooting was basically even year over year as she hit 79.5%. And she improved her shooting speed by about 1 second. Honestly, the biggest thing she did this season was simply qualify for more Pursuit and more racing. She lost position in each of those Pursuits, but she got herself that experience.

This young woman is still just 20 years old so there is A LOT of time and room for growth. Who knows what we will see in the next few seasons. She’ an excellent skier on the Juniors level so we’ll likely see that skiing come along shortly as the strength of her performance. She used that to take silver and bronze in the Sprint and Individual at the Junior Worlds in Arber this season. Her future is bright!

76) Maria Remenova (Prior best: No Points)

I mention Maria Remenova here for multiple reasons. One because she did set a very good career best. After having 0 career points in 42 total World Cup races she scored 32 points in 10 races this season including four top 40’s, two top 30’s, and a career best 20th in the Short Individual in Nove Mesto.

However, what she did this season was even more than her individual achievements, it was her relay as well. The Slovakian women has their 5th in the Hochfilzen relay which was their best relay finish since the 2018 Olympics. Maria Remenova played a crucial role in that relay by running a very solid anchor leg. She took over in 4th and did lose 1 position but overall that was an excellent performance. She ended up running in the anchor leg in the final two relays of the season including the Olympics as well!

Age	25
Overall Rank	76th
Career Best Rank	No Prior Points
Total Career Races	55
25-26 Season Wins	0
25-26 Season Podiums	0
25-26 Season Top 10’s	0
Key Statistic	Total Points 32

Her biggest statistical improvements came in her skiing and shooting speed. She improved from 3.7% slower than median to 2.9% back of median which gave her an average ski rank of 59th. Meanwhile her shooting speed improved by 3.4 seconds from 32.2 to 28.8. So she’s still not fast, but she’s certainly much faster on the trigger! Her hit rate remained at 79.5%. This is about her career average.

Let’s hope that this is just the start of a career surge for Maria Remenova. She’ll likely never be setting the world on fire but Slovakia could really use just a steady point earner and reliable relay team member for the next several seasons and she’s showsn that she could evolve into that.

A Career Best is a Career Best No Matter the Size – You know what? A career best is a career best!

23) Julia Tannheimer (Prior best: 31)

Let’s start with the most important thing here. Julia Tannheimer is ridiculously young. At age 20 she just finished up what is really her 2nd season on the World Cup. She already has 38 non-relay races and she doesn’t turn 21 until August. She has two seasons at age 19 and age 20 with an average finish of 27.9 and 26.2. It’s crazy! This season, with that improved average finish, as well as nine top 20’s and 15 top 30’s, vs eight and 10 in the 24-25 season, lifted her from 31st in the Overall to 23rd.

Age	20
Overall Rank	23rd
Career Best Rank	31st
Total Career Races	38
25-26 Season Wins	0
25-26 Season Podiums	0
25-26 Season Top 10’s	2
Key Statistic	Overall Ski Rank 7th

The incredible strength to Julia Tannheimer’s performance is her skiing. Again, it’s worth reiterating that she is 20 years old. Last season she was the 7thfastest regular starter on the World Cup alongside names like Hanna Öberg and Oceane Michelon. She’s not just fast she’s one of the fastest. So whenever that shooting comes along, and I remain optimistic that it will, she will be competing for podiums and wins.

For this highly talented youngster to take the next step, though that shooting has to improve. Last year she hit just 78.3% with a mediocre 74.7% prone hit rate. As we’ve seen with athletes like Justine Braisaz-Bouchet, with excellent skiing you don’t have to be Vanessa Voigt or Camille Bened on the range. Let’s see what 2026-2027 brings her because if it’s anywhere in the low to mid 80’s then the World Cup feed better look out!

24) Polona Klemencic (Prior best: 28)

At age 25 Polona Klemencic had her initial breakthrough season as she surged from a then career best 84th up to 28th in the 2022-2023 season. The last two years, though, she’s slipped back a bit to 63rd and 55th. The big reason for her drop in performance level was her skiing. In her 22-23 season she ran -2% vs median. The last two seasons she was exactly median. This year she was back to 1% faster than median including an average course time rank of 27th, improving from 39th the last two seasons, but not quite as good as 20th in the 22-23 campaign.

Age	28
Overall Rank	24th
Career Best Rank	28th
Total Career Races	136
25-26 Season Wins	0
25-26 Season Podiums	0
25-26 Season Top 10’s	1
Key Statistic	Ski vs Median -1.0%

In doing this, added to her steady if unspectacular shooting, which continues to hover around 80%, she was able to score 21 top 40’s across 23 races, a career best. That inluded 17 top 30’s which was better than her 12 in the 22-23 season. However, while she raised her floor she didn’t necessarily raise her ceiling. Just six top 20’s vs eight in 22-23, while adding one top 10 to her two prior.

All totaled she snuck just ahead of her 28th Overall from the 2022-2023 season to 24th Overall this season. A very good season and at just 28 years old something she could definitely build off of.

32) Maya Cloetens (Prior best: 35)

Maya Cloetens overcame significant obstacles to get to a new career best this season. There were multiple illness, and most tragically, a stress fracture that occurred in January. Even still she secured a new career best of 6th in the opening race of the season, three top 20’s and 10 top 30’s in 19 races.

Age	24
Overall Rank	32nd
Career Best Rank	35th
Total Career Races	52
25-26 Season Wins	0
25-26 Season Podiums	0
25-26 Season Top 10’s	1
Key Statistic	Prone Hit Rate 96.4%

Maya Cloetens continued her incredible shooting. She hit 89.6% this season including 96.4% prone, the 2nd best prone hit rate on the World Cup last season amongst women. Her standing hit rate did drop down to 82.9% but you can forgive her that after her illnesses and the stress fracture likely significantly affected her positioning.

She also kept her skiing roughly the same as 2024-2025 running 0.3% slower than median compared to 0.2% slower than median the year prior. Not bad, again, considering the circumstances under which she achieved them.

We can hope, and almost expect, that a 24/25 year old Maya Cloetens will show further improvement with hopefully a full healthy season. A top 30 in the Overall is easily within reach…and further down the road top 20.

42) Maxime Germain (Prior best: 53)

Maxime Germain is coming along as a very solid #2 behind Campbell Wright for the US men’s biathlon squad. This season he scored a new career best of 11th in the Sprint on Östersund. He backed that up with a 14th in the following Pursuit. He also put together a 22nd in the Konthiolahti Individual and 25th in the Otepää Pursuit, the 7th and 8th best finishes of his career. That gives him four of the eight best finishes of his career.

Age	24
Overall Rank	42nd
Career Best Rank	53rd
Total Career Races	51
25-26 Season Wins	0
25-26 Season Podiums	0
25-26 Season Top 10’s	0
Key Statistic	Career Best 11th

His season was pretty much exactly the same as 2024-2025 in terms of the big picture results. Two top 20’s, five top 30’s and seven top 40’s matched exactly his 24-25 results except he had six top 30’s in 24-25 and five in 25-26. The improvement in the Overall was almost primarily due to those two top 14 finishes.

The good news is that he consolidated the improvement in his shooting from last season and showed further ski improvement. His hit rate, after leaping from 66.4% to 82.2% from 23-24 to 24-25 stayed in the 80’s at 80.8% last season. This actually inluded further improvement to 84.6% in his prone (vs 80% in 24-25) which his standing slid down from 84.4% to 76.9%.

At age 24 there are boundless reasons for optimism for his growth over the next few seasons!

48) Kristo Siimer (Prior best: 63)

For Kristo Siimer, 2025-2026 was much more about raising the floor than raising the ceiling. He didn’t set a new career best or a bunch or very high finishes scattered with low finishes. Instead what he did was simply raise the middle level of his performance and consolidate the variance.

Age	26
Overall Rank	48th
Career Best Rank	63rd
Total Career Races	73
25-26 Season Wins	0
25-26 Season Podiums	0
25-26 Season Top 10’s	0
Key Statistic	Standing Hit Rate 80.7%

The result for Siimer was eight top 40’s after having just six in his career prior to this season, and six top 30’s, with just two prior top 30’s ever. His average finish dropped to just 44.1 after a prior career best of 50.5 in 2023-2024.

This was accomplished by getting his skiing back to that 2023-2024 level, running just 0.6% slower than median, while hitting at his best hit rate of his career, 84.3%. The skiing compares to running 1.3% and 1.7% slower than median the last two seasons. While his hit rate has been slowly improving every season from 22-23 when he hit 75.7% up to last season’s career best. That included his standing hit rate improving to 80.7%. Prio to that his best career standing hit rate of 74.8% two seasons ago. Along with a consistently high prone shooting near 90% he made serious strides.

Kristo Siimer is still just 26 and is consistently making strides every season. Would love to see this continue into the next few seasons. If so there is a definite chance he could close in on the top 30 in the Overall in the next few seasons.

55) Dimitrii Shamaev (Prior best: 56)

Dimitrii Shamaev improved on his career best by a grand total of 1 position. But a career best is a career best! Truth be told this relied significantly on the two best finishes in his career. He finished 18th in the Short Individual in Nove Mesto and then 14th in the Individual in Kontiolahti. This came after having no finishes in the points all season to that point.

Age	30
Overall Rank	55th
Career Best Rank	56th
Total Career Races	113
25-26 Season Wins	0
25-26 Season Podiums	0
25-26 Season Top 10’s	0
Key Statistic	Career Best x2 this season

To be fair to Shamaev he also had finishes of 28th in the Kontiolahti Mass Start and 33rd in the Oslo-Holmenkollen Sprint to give him four finishes in the points and four of the top nine finishes of his career.

Funny enough when you look at his statistics they are basically unchanged over the last four seasons:
– Avg Ski Rank: 68th, 67th, 67th, 70th
– Hit Rate: 89.2%, 91.5%, 93.3%, 91.7%
– Avg Shoot Time: 27.0, 27.3, 27.1, 27.6

It just so happened that this season he was able to put it all together a couple times and give him those high finishes. Sometimes that’s all it takes!

57) Emma Kapustova (Prior best: 70)

The 2024 Junior Worlds 2x silver medalist and 2024 European Championship Individual gold medalist had her World Cup career best season last year. This should be no surprises as she remains just 23 years old. She continues to improve and as she does so she keeps moving her way up the Overall ranks.

Age	23
Overall Rank	57th
Career Best Rank	70th
Total Career Races	29
25-26 Season Wins	0
25-26 Season Podiums	0
25-26 Season Top 10’s	0
Key Statistic	Top 30’s 4

In the 2025-2026 season Kapustova improved pretty much everywhere. She improved her average ski rank to 67th from 83rd the year before. Her hit rate, always impressive, remained excellent as she ticked up to 91.7%. As a result she grabbed 4 top 30 finishes including career best finishes of 16th in the Kontiolahti Individual and Otepää Pursuit. Her other two top 30’s were 25th in the Otepää Sprint and 27th in the Konthiolahti Mass Start.

As the Slovakian team looks to move into the post-Batovska Fialkova era, and soon post-Kuzmina era, Kapustova’s continued improvement will be a vital part of their successes. She already has the shooting locked down. But improving from around 4% slower than median closer to median will be crucial.

71) Tereza Vinklarkova (Prior best: 94)

And we end on a bittersweet note. Tereza Vinklarkova certainly ended her career on a high. That actually is likely playing a major role in why we won’t be seeing her anymore. She made note that she was happy to have a full healthy season and that she could start to show what she could do. Having done that she was happy to have done her best.

Age	27
Overall Rank	71st
Career Best Rank	94th
Total Career Races	35
25-26 Season Wins	0
25-26 Season Podiums	0
25-26 Season Top 10’s	0
Key Statistic	Races Run 13

Doing her best included setting a career best 11th in the Olympic Individual along with four of her five best and and eight of her ten best career finishes. On top of that she was thrust in to the anchor leg role for the Czechia women’s relay team to 5th in the Olympics and 4th in Konthiolahti.

For her the key to her season was her good health allowing her to continue racing on a regular basis at her best level. Four finishes in the points good enough to finish 71st Overall. Congratulations Tereza and enjoy whatever comes next!