“I love it when a plan works” – whether biathlete Denise Herrmann this famous saying from the 80s cult TV series “The A Team“has said something herself at some point in the past few weeks has not been handed down, although she would have had every reason to grin at all her critics.
At the end of a changeable season that was exceptionally taxing for the psyche and physique, the 33-year-old had a happy ending. “At the beginning, as an outsider, you might not have understood exactly why I did one thing or another. But now in retrospect you have to say: Everything was done right.”
Olympic champion – the pressure drops
Herrmann’s eyes literally sparkle in the TV cameras on these last days of the 2021/2022 World Cup season. The Saxon seems relaxed, almost liberated. An indicator of the great pressure that the former cross-country skier must have felt in the past few months. Before the start of this season, the Ruhpodingerin by choice had made no secret of subordinating everything to the Olympic Games in Beijing.
In concrete terms, this means: additional high-altitude training camps, stress and relaxation phases specially designed with the Olympics in mind and the associated consideration of which competitions you will skip over the course of the winter in favor of preparing for the Olympics. Herrmann’s clock was ticking towards China, the World Cup became a minor matter for her this season.
“These were my last Olympic Games and I wanted to prepare as best I could”, says the Olympic champion on the fringes of the World Cup in Otepää, Estonia. “For me, in preparation for the Olympics, it was a big priority that I had a lot of stays at high altitude.” So Herrmann followed her own plan to be in top form at the right time.
Just don’t lose your nerve
In return, she put up with a bumpy start to the season. Except for a third place in Östersund’s opening singles last November, she didn’t make it onto the podium. Above all, she lagged far behind the expectations of the public in terms of running. While the criticism from outside was getting louder and accordingly the doubts about Denise Herrmann’s plan were growing, the 33-year-old was confronted with the first big task of the season: stay calm and don’t lose your nerve.
“Even though she said she was putting everything into the Olympics, it certainly wasn’t easy to stay cool during this phase.”explains sports show expert Kati Wilhelm the challenge of the first third of the season. “I think Denise wished for a better result or two at the beginning of the season. As an athlete, I would have thought about that. That didn’t happen to her. It shows her mental strength and her confidence in her own performance.”adds Olympic champion Kati Wilhelm.
Sports show expert Kati Wilhelm about Herrmann: “formulates clear goals”
Denise Herrmann got this confidence in her own achievements from her environment, among other things. Her fiancé, former cross-country skier Thomas Wick, played a crucial role in this, as did her trainer in Davos, Switzerland, Andreas Waldmeier. Since 2016, Herrmann has always gone up to Waldmeier. In close consultation with the German Ski Association, they worked meticulously on their form.
Only in the World Cup before the Olympics was there simply no sense of achievement. The dress rehearsal in Antholz at the end of January went really wrong – in the mass start she landed two minutes behind the winner. In biathlon these are worlds. “Denise is incredibly ambitious. She sets her goals very clearly and formulates them”describes Kati Wilhelm Herrmann’s character. “But she subordinates a lot. With the Olympic victory, she gave all the critics a little lie.”
Olympic victory in Beijing and headwind into the last trimester
The big moment had come in the singles match in Beijing. Denise Herrmann made all hardships, all discussions and all doubts forgotten in just one race. The plan worked out long ago, it worked – Olympic gold. A bronze medal followed with the relay.
Instead of letting his body and soul dangle, Herrmann really gets going in the World Cup. “I’m really enjoying this last trimester. With Kontiolahti and also the new World Cup location Otepää. I’m feeling good and that gives me extreme confidence especially in terms of shooting.”she says, beaming. “The big event is over, for me the overall World Cup is not that important this season, I’m still trying to do good individual races.”
Herrmann dodges questions about her future
And she does it brilliantly. In three out of four World Cup races after the Olympics, she jumped onto the podium. With the tailwind from the Olympic Games in Beijing, she is now eleventh in the overall World Cup. With the World Cup final in Oslo, one last highlight of the season is on the agenda. “We all have to scrape together the last grains now. But I still feel good, so I’m looking forward to it. Oslo is a place with a lot of tradition”Herrmann looks ahead to the short-term future.
But how does it actually look in the long term? Next year the Biathlon World Championships will take place in Oberhof. When asked about her future, Herrmann is still evasive. “A home World Cup is always appealing. But it depends: we’ll see how everything is put together and what the body is doing. I feel good, I feel healthy. But we’ll let the season come to an end first .”
What’s the next plan?
As far as her performances are concerned, the Olympic champion has proven: She is still right in the middle of the world class and: “Denise is just a real guy. She always has something to say. It would be nice if she did one more year until the World Championships in Oberhof 2023”, enthuses Kati Wilhelm. But the ex-athlete also sees the difficulty after such a successful season as this one. “The next year will certainly not be easy after an Olympic victory. Especially then with the home World Cup, the expectations from the outside will be high. But Denise’s expectations of herself too.”
Denise Herrmann impressively demonstrated how to deal with difficult pressure situations this season. And the way Herrmann has presented himself in recent weeks, she definitely has a plan. And it would be nice, also at the end of the coming season, loosely based on “the A team” being able to say, “I love it when a plan works.”