Dealing with failure is one of the most difficult tasks in an athlete’s life. Talking about it a lot and thinking about it is a variant of processing. Sophia Schneider decided on something else: “I have to tick off the relay now,” said the biathlete after she took fifth place with the German team at the World Cup in Oberhof. The 26-year-old couldn’t do anything at the shooting range.
“I didn’t know exactly where the shots were going, how to judge the wind,” she said after the race on Sunday afternoon and described how she felt: “You’re lying on the mat and you’re helpless.” Because too Schneider’s teammate Franziska Preuß had to go into the penalty loop after shooting errors, so the German quartet had no chance of a podium finish that day. Of all places, at the home World Cup in the Thuringian Forest, where they won World Cup silver a year ago.
The biathletes don’t have much time left. There are only 72 hours between the experience in Oberhof and the start of the women’s relay at the next World Cup in Ruhpolding. The next competition is this Wednesday at 2:30 p.m. (on ZDF and Eurosport) in the Chiemgau Alps. It is the penultimate World Cup weekend before the World Championships take place in Nove Mesto in the Czech Republic at the beginning of February. Before that we go to the last stop in South Tyrol. But for the German team, the focus is on the home races, where there are sometimes more than 20,000 fans in the stadium and along the track.
The team left Oberhof on Sunday evening with mixed feelings. Benedikt Doll got off to a strong start with his sprint victory on Friday. A short time later, Franziska Preuß rounded off the successful day from a German perspective with second place in the sprint. But the disillusionment followed the next day: no athlete from the German Ski Association (DSV) made it into the top five in the pursuit races. Things had been similar in Lenzerheide before the Christmas break. There, too, Doll, who had announced in the fall that this could probably be his last biathlon season, triumphed in the sprint and then finished 17th in the pursuit.
The second place in the men’s relay was at least a conciliatory conclusion in Oberhof, and on the running course the Germans were able to keep up well with the Norwegians, who once again dominated. But at the shooting range, the Scandinavians showed off their nerves as usual. “It’s very, very annoying,” said Doll, “when the Norwegians jump around in front. “That really hurts.”
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DSV sports director Felix Bitterling said he was taking a lot of positive things from the Thuringian Forest. However, it is “also a question of self-concept” to consistently deliver the performance from the sprint over an entire weekend. “That’s something we have to work on.” A lot has already been said about it in the team. Now it’s time to mentally sort out “where we left out so that this doesn’t happen in Ruhpolding.” Tick it off or talk about it – whether one of the two processing variants will lead to the hoped-for success will become clear in the coming days.
