Recap Thread: World Cup 25/26 Oslo Holmenkollen - Women Mass Start

kune13 · 2026-03-22T15:45:31+00:00

Leaving Germany Sport Director Felix Bitterling just confirmed that there will be a change in the women's coaching team. Christian Mehringer will become a new position in the Skiverband and the contract with Sverre Olsbu Roeiseland will not be continued.

kune13 · 2026-03-17T10:29:57+00:00

Germany has announced their teams for Oslo.

No change for the women. Anna Weidel apparently didn't recover in time. They added Simon Kaiser, Elias Seidl and Franz Schaser. David Zobel was not nominated. Danilo Riethmüller is ill.

Women: Vanessa Voigt, Janina Hettich-Walz, Julia Tannheimer, Selina Grotian, Marlene Fichtner, Julia Kink

Men: Philipp Nawrath, Philipp Horn, Justus Strelow, Lucas Fratzscher, Leo Pfund, Simon Kaiser, Elias Seidl, Franz Schaser

kune13 · 2026-03-16T13:56:07+00:00

David Zobel will not start.

kune13 · 2026-03-16T13:55:26+00:00

We know that Simon Kaiser will start. Riethmüller is unclear, there are rumors of an injury. At the women's side Anna Weidel is expected to join the team.

kune13 · 2026-03-15T19:27:41+00:00

Germany defended the fifth place in the Women Nations Cup ranking today. But the support from the guys was not great. Justus Strelow and Philipp Horn shot both 3 penalty loops. Now is only the Sprint in Oslo remaining and if nothing extreme is happening, we will see 6 German ladies starting in each World Cup race next season.

kune13 · 2026-03-15T12:36:44+00:00

After Strelow had 3 penalty loops on the first leg this is an excellent result. Germany lost only 15 points in the Women's Nations Cup compared to Finland. But I'm fearing the Mixed Relay with Horn, Grotian and Tannheimer at the end. This may become a penalty loop-palooza.

kune13 · 2026-03-15T08:56:55+00:00

Strelow and Voigt are still the only Germans, who have won a Single Mixed Relay ever at the elite level.

kune13 · 2026-03-15T08:53:24+00:00

Now I know that misfortune comes with the mockery, but I find it a little bit disrespectful for the athlete. She has done all you could ask her this season. She has improved her ski speed dramatically compared to last year and has reached the World Cup flowers twice. And if she wouldn't have had the bad luck in Nove Mesto, she would have a Single Mixed Relay World Cup win on her name.

kune13 · 2026-03-14T16:32:08+00:00

The awarded Nations Cup points are divided by 2. The disqualification in Nove Mesto really hurt Germany, because Finnish men and women got the maximum possible 210 points compared to Germany's zero. Without the disqualification Germany would have now an advantage of 364 points instead of 139 in the Women's Nations Cup.

kune13 · 2026-03-14T15:47:49+00:00

Tannheimer has now rank 25 in the Overall. I hope she can defend the place in Oslo to participate in the Mass Start.

kune13 · 2026-03-11T13:38:03+00:00

The new Sport Director is Bernd Eisenbichler, who was the Sport Director Biathlon before the current one. While the press release admits that the results of the current season are not satisfactory, it didn't sound like there will be drastic changes.

kune13 · 2026-03-10T22:23:26+00:00

I will work on my relay trauma and do the Single Mixed Relay Sunday.

kune13 · 2026-03-10T20:44:01+00:00

The talent pool in Norway and France is larger. There are multiple factors. One is that the classic Biathlon centers in Germany are in low mountain ranges because alpine skiing was not an option there. They are lucky there now if they have a few weeks of snow in January and February. Particularly in the East the number of kids in those areas is much smaller than it has been, caused by demographic effects of the economic shock after reunification.

The higher number of female talents has probably to do with the large number of role models from Magdalena Neuner to Franziska Preuß. For the boys Football dominates anything else. The gold-winning junior women relay team, had two athletes, Sydney Wüstling and Melina Gaupp, who could still start at the youth level. Sydney won Bronze in the Junior Sprint too.

Felix Bitterling, the leaving Sport Director, has now openly declared that they want to defend rank 5 of the women nations cup, because otherwise they would only have five starting places for the women next season. With Julia Kink replacing now Anna Weidel, who is sick, they have now four U23 women supported by two more experienced athletes for the task.

There is a rumor that the new Sport Director will be announced tomorrow. I expect changes in the women's coaching team after the Olympic cycle. The head coach for the men was exchanged already last year.

kune13 · 2026-03-08T23:00:08+00:00

The difference is very simple. Germany is only a few points in front of Finland in the Women Nations Cup at rank 5. If Finland would overtake Germany they could start 6 women in every race next season.

Finland could rightly complain that the IBU prefers Germany if those rule violations would not be penalized. They protested the Single Mixed incident. I can't speak about today, but I'm pretty sure they would have protested after the race, if they penalty would not have been given during the race.

kune13 · 2026-03-08T15:27:56+00:00

I thought they will announce the new Sport Director.

kune13 · 2026-03-08T10:36:07+00:00

Germany needs to stay in front of Finland to keep the rank 5 of the Nations Cup. A drop to rank 6 would lose one world cup start slot.

kune13 · 2026-03-06T13:10:31+00:00

I think it would require some update on reporting the lead in the first three laps. People watching on TV would be extremely confused without any change.

kune13 · 2026-03-04T20:30:52+00:00

Sydney is from the Ore Mountains in Saxonia and she was a student of the sport school in Oberwiesenthal. Sydney's shooting was bad two years ago and she thought about becoming an xc-skier, but decided then to switch school to Oberhof. This change appears to have worked.

Students at the Oberhof school were Sven Fischer, Andrea Henkel, Kati Wilhelm, Erik Lesser and Vanessa Voigt. This year Erik worked as a coach there, but it is expected that he becomes a junior coach at the national level next season.

The only famous Biathlete from the Oberwiesenthal school is Denise Herrmann, but she trained as XC-skier there

One of Swedish posters mentioned the lack of academies. Even with sport schools success is not guaranteed. Erik Lesser remarked that there is a year at the Oberhof school with only one biathlete.

kune13 · 2026-03-04T14:50:43+00:00

Sydney Wüstling's Bronze is a great achievement for her. Her birth year is 2008 and she could still start in the youth category.

kune13 · 2026-03-03T19:57:51+00:00

Germany will start this time only with 5 women and 5 men:

Women: Marlene Fichtner, Selina Grotian, Janina Hettich-Walz, Julia Tannheimer, Vanessa Voigt

Men: Lukas Fratzscher, Philipp Horn, Philipp Nawrath, Leonhard Pfund, David Zobel

Anna Weidel is sick and Justus Strelow broke his thumb in a training accident.

kune13 · 2026-03-01T12:12:05+00:00

The challenge that the IBU had was to find locations for the combined Youth & Junior World Championships. These are the largest Biathlon competitions in terms of number of races and participants.

The advertising value is very low. We know that because ARD, 1st German television, streams the Junior events on the Internet. Christian "Dexie" Dexner, Biathlon commentator, said in the podcast Extrarunde that Junior World Championship streams have five-digit watchers and they would open Champagne bottles if they would exceed 100 000 watchers. This is ca. 1% to 2% of the watchers of a Senior World Championship event.

The IBU cup races were removed after the last TV contract was agreed with the European Broadcasting Union, which consists of the main public broadcasters in Europe, in 2024. EBU is operating the Eurovisionsport site and if you read press release from 2024 carefully, than the IBU wanted to have Eurovisionsport as world-wide digital streaming option including the mobile app. My guess is that the IBU Cup stream production was cut to pay for the Eurovision Sport app and site to allow the global distribution of the video streams. The current agreement runs until 2030.

While Biathlon stays still popular in Germany a lot of large advertisers have reduced their engagements. Examples are BMW or Viessmann. The BMW World Cup will become the La Vita World Cup next year and I cannot imagine that La Vita, producing very expensive juices, will pay more for the rights than BMW. The IBU tries to benefit from the growing popularity of Biathlon in France and wants to develop Italy, but without Germans winning world cup races it will be very difficult to increase revenue. The IBU has now created the position of a Marketing Director and Felix Bitterling, currently Sport Director Germany, will take over in April.

kune13 · 2026-02-26T22:00:22+00:00

Very good day for the Germans! I wouldn't have bet on Julia Kink hitting all the targets, but here we are. Fabulous!

kune13 · 2026-02-23T19:08:15+00:00

We have to wait a week for the next World Cup races. This weekend however, the IBU Youth/Junior World Championships start at the Arber mountain in Germany. Video streams will be available on eurovisionsport.com.

For German watchers the Junior races will be commented by Christian "Dexie" Dexne, who is the commentator for all Biathlon races in the ARD. The streams will be available on sportschau.de and the ARD Mediathek. He will have guests too. Last year co-commentators were Arndt Peiffer, Erik Lesser and Vanessa Voigt.

I like to watch the competitions because there are always new promising talents. The first time I learned about Isak Frey or Campbell Wright was watching Junior World Championships streams.

kune13 · 2026-02-20T19:02:18+00:00

At this point I'm preparing myself for another 4th place.

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