Lisa Maria Spark is one of the great hopes in German biathlon. In her sport.de column, the 22-year-old from Traunstein reports on her first World Cup experiences.
My first World Cup is behind me. The key data are quickly told in staccato: I was 53rd with clean shooting, which of course has to do with the fact that I slowly drained my power batteries at the end of the season.
However, the placement in my first World Cup race, a sprint, was not important, if I may say so at this point as a competitive athlete. I came to Oslo to study and it worked.
I was very impressed on the first day. Both from the gigantic winter sports facility at Holmenkollen, the Norwegian audience, but also from the fact that the world’s best biathletes were standing next to me and could not be watched on TV.
Julia Simon and Elvira Oeberg were right next to me shortly before the first race and that creates a nice adrenaline cocktail in the body.
If you like, that was the first experience I was allowed to have: you have to look at yourself and not at others, respect for the performance of others is good, but you mustn’t let yourself be paralyzed. You have to learn to develop a healthy self-confidence out of yourself.
Then came the sprint day, where I had a low start number and we all had a lot of fog: also a situation that I haven’t had that often. The rifle was equipped with a smoke sight to allow more light to reach the aiming circle. Holmenkollen in the fog instead of Holmenkollen in the sunshine. Well, you can’t choose the conditions and I was really excited to start.
Then the nail-biter began, the fog grew denser, the start was postponed by 30 minutes. Also a moment for the overall development, to re-motivate oneself, to reactivate oneself. Then came the cancellation for race day.
Everything was reset to zero again, the next start the following day, this time with sun and heat and with the starting number 99, which was not exactly ideal for such conditions. The soft track and the many races of the season were noticeable on my debut. Admittedly, I wasn’t running at 100 percent. But I shot clean and had my nerves under control for my first World Cup.
A special experience was of course the victory of my teammate Denise Herrmann-Wick. At a team dinner followed by a party, she gave me one or the other first-hand advice, which I really liked.
Oslo was an incentive: I want to run with the best in the world and for that you need your experience. The season is over. I will now need a few days of rest to process everything.
Best regards
Lisa Maria Spark