The first week of this year’s Biathlon World Championships ended with a sense of success for the Italians in the women’s pursuit. According to Klaus Höllrigl, Technical Director at the Association of Southern Europeans, the pressure to achieve results is now decreasing a little.
The expectations of the Italian biathletes to bring home medals at the World Championships in Nove Mesto were high in advance. In Tommaso Giacomel, the Azzurri are 10th overall in the World Cup. This season, among the women, Lisa Vittozzi and Dorothea Wierer are among the big medal hopes.
But after the first results, disillusionment initially set in. At the start of the mixed relay, the Italian quartet made a serious mistake and only achieved a disappointing tenth place. The Azzurri also had their problems in the women’s sprints (best placement was 7th place for Vittozzi) and men’s sprints (15th place for Giacomel).
Biathlon boss Höllrigl praises Vittozzi: “Take off my hat”
The turnaround followed in the pursuit on Sunday: Lisa Vittozzi was able to tarnish the French festival a little and win World Cup silver. “With this silver medal from Vittozzi, some of the pressure has been lifted off the team,” said Italian official Klaus Höllrigl in an interview with “Fondo Italia”: “It’s good for the entire team and the technicians.”
Höllrigl, who once trained the 29-year-old himself, was “very proud”. Vittozzi very much deserved the World Cup medal. “I knew right from the start that she wanted to win at all costs. She was highly concentrated, I take my hat off to Lisa.”
Getting out of such a “black hole that she landed in was anything but easy,” added the Italian biathlon boss. Especially after her second place in the overall World Cup in the 2018/19 season, Vittozzi fell into a low that she was only able to overcome from 2022/23. At the World Championships in Oberhof last year, the ski hunter was one of the big stars when she won a total of four medals.