Philipp Horn (31) and Philipp Nawrath (32) are currently the strongest German biathletes. Hopes also rest on the two oldies at the World Cup starting Thursday (December 18, 2025) in France.
The former biathletes Mark Kirchner and Sven Fischer were just 21 when they won their first Olympic victory, Erik Lesser won gold at the age of 25, and Arnd Peiffer was at the top of the Olympic throne for the first time at the age of 26. And today?
It looks completely different there. No one in the German team’s current World Cup team is younger than 26, but only one has Olympic experience: Philipp Nawrath. The man from Füssen made his (medalless) Olympic debut four years ago in Beijing at the age of 28 and will celebrate his 33rd birthday at his second Games in February in Italy.
German biathletes are like good wine…
While Kirchner, Luck and Fischer ended or ended their careers at this age, Nawrath is one of the great hopes in the DSV team. At 32, he was among the world’s best runners, but recently had problems at the shooting range.
This worked much better for Philipp Horn – and thus oldie number two. Seven years after his debut in the World Cup, the 31-year-old Thuringian made it onto the podium for the first time ever in the sprint in Hochfilzen with ten direct hits. Horn fulfilled a childhood dream and wants to take the peace and quiet of the shooting range with him to the individual races in France. The last World Cup of this year begins on Thursday with the women’s sprint (from 2:15 p.m. in the live ticker at sportschau.de).
Warm temperatures one Challenge
Horn’s memories of the World Cup in Le Grand Bornand are like his career: with light and shadow. “I’ve had very good races there, especially the sprint last December was really strong, and that’s exactly what I’d like to build on.” Horn finished fourth, narrowly missing the premiere podium.
The Oberhofer also associates France with difficult weather and a lot of rain. According to the forecast, that won’t happen this time. It should be warm for that. Sports director Felix Bitterling spoke in advance of “a challenging week“The high temperatures could make the conditions wet and challenging in places, said Bitterling. But no matter what the conditions are, you want to “take the positive spirit with us from Hochfilzen, continue to build on it and take the next step, especially with regard to the still open Olympic qualifications for some of our athletes“.
Germany’s Philipp Horn and France’s Eric Perrot at the World Cup in Annecy
Sports show expert Lesser: “We lack young talent”
Horn has the Olympics in the bag with his third place. Experiences his Olympic premiere at the age of 31. The Thuringian’s example makes it clear that German biathletes have recently taken far too long to establish themselves among the world’s best. Why is that?
On the one hand, certainly due to the lack of offspring. Expert Erik Lesser recently said in the Sportschau podcast: “I’m now looking at this from my Thuringian perspective: In the end, we’re lacking young talent. There is a boy and maybe two girls in the ‘Student 15’ in Thuringia. And we’re talking about Thuringia and Oberhof – this is a biathlon mecca. Sven Fischer, Frank Luck, Mark Kirchner and Frank Ulrich come from there. And there are junior classes in which only one person does biathlon. A human!“
Just shorten it
Another problem: the path from talent to the World Cup is too long. The Germans regularly win medals among the juniors, but then often have to qualify for the IBU Cup first. “That can’t be true“, says Lesser and continues: “Somehow our development then stops. I don’t know why that is.“