The biathlon quake for the surprising resignation of UROS Velepec continues to beat waves. Now DSV star Philipp Horn spoke up.
It was a message that met the biathlon world completely unprepared: Uros Velepec resigned immediately after the World Cup in Lenzerheide with immediate effect as a coach of the German men’s team.
A successor has now been found for the Slovenen. Already at the World Cup in Nove Mesto, Tobias Reiter looks after the team.
Philipp Horn sees “tensions between the coach and the sporting management” as the cause of the resignation of Velepec.
In conversation with the “Münchner Merkur” and the “tz” Horn continued: “There were simply differences that both sides could not clarify. We also thought that it could be that he would say after the season: That was his last.”
However, the 30-year-old did not expect that the personnel bang occurred during the season.
Horn also noted that the disagreements between Velepec and sports director Felix Bitterling were simply too big.
Horn explained to someone, “who definitely thinks of the next few years, which is also absolutely correct, and I did not have the feeling that we are on the right track in terms of training technology. He is looking for approaches how to improve the whole. And I would say that his ideas were not compatible with the training philosophy, of which Uros is convinced.
Horn paints dark scenario for biathlon men
In the interview, Horn commented on the youngsters in the biathlon men’s area. “Unfortunately, you have to say that the big teams – France, Norway – are simply better, and everything has to run absolutely perfectly for us, that we can keep against it and that they can hit them on a good day,” admitted the Arnstadt native.
Horn has identified a “big problem” in the offspring. “The next generation still has a very good distance in terms of performance. And I don’t have the feeling that it has come much closer compared to last season,” he said. He hoped that “a leap in performance will happen, otherwise it will be dark after the Olympics”.