Santtu Silvennoinen
Biathlon is a medal hope at the Olympics, writes Santtu Silvennoinen.
Biathlonist Suvi Minkkinen is a medal hope at the Olympics, but not a medal favorite. EPA / AOP
“Olympic gold candidate”. “Finland’s biggest medal favourite”.
Suvi Minkki has been hyped a lot in recent weeks.
There is a partially solid cover for Kehui: one win, four second places and second place in the overall World Cup competition. The Joutsa kid is, for the time being, the best Finnish athlete of the 2025–26 season in traditional skiing (skiing, biathlon, ski jumping, combined and alpine skiing).
It’s a little easier to get to the absolute top of women’s biathlon than it was during Kaisa Mäkäräinen’s golden years in the 2010s. The sport currently does not have the same stardust as in the era of Tora Berger, Darja Domratsheva, Anastasia Kuzmina, Magdalena Neuner, Laura Dahlmeier and Gabriela Soukalova.
The Olympic medals will be competed for in February at a familiar but exceptional destination in Antholz. In the biathlon classic location, the highest point of the competition course is 1,673 and the lowest point is 1,626 meters above sea level. Nowhere else do you regularly compete at such a high level.
Antholz has been poison to Minkkinen. For example, in the sprint race of last season’s World Cup, the Finn was 69th with two jumps, and in cross-country skiing, he was 72nd, almost two minutes behind the leader.
The Finn has done a lot of high-altitude training and last season was the World Cup bronze medalist in the sprint race (14th in the cross-country and 39 seconds ahead) in the mountains of Switzerland. In Lenzerheide, the World Cup medals were handed out approximately 1,400 meters above sea level. Oxygen travels weakest 200 meters higher in Antholz.
In this season’s World Cup ski races, Minkkinen has been ranked 18th on average.
Whereas Mäkäräinen’s cassette durability and hit accuracy were praised before every competition, Minkkinen’s greatest strength is his cool behavior on the bench. The woman’s hitting percentage of 92 guarantees that she is a medal hope in each of the four individual Olympic starts.
