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Can hardly believe it herself: Janina Hettich-Walz takes silver over the 15 kilometers

Photo: Alex Grimm / Getty Images

Janina Hettich-Walz surprisingly won the first medal for the German team on the fifth day of competition at the Biathlon World Championships. The 27-year-old secured silver in the Nove Mesto individual event, her first ever World Championships individual medal in the best race of her career. Hettich-Walz hit all 20 targets and after 15 kilometers was only 20.5 seconds behind the Italian Lisa Vittozzi, who also made no mistakes and took gold. Bronze went to the French Julia Simon, who failed to triumph for the first time at the World Cup in the Czech Republic after a penalty minute.

For a short time, Hettich-Walz even seemed within reach of the title with her flawless performance, but she ran out of strength on the final lap. The last German individual world champion to date was Laura Dahlmeier in 2017. Two years ago in Beijing, Denise Herrmann-Wick won Olympic gold in the oldest biathlon race.

World Cup debutant Selina Grotian and Olympic fourth-place finisher Vanessa Voigt also narrowly missed the podium without any shooting errors, taking fourth and fifth place. The duo was only half a minute short of bronze. The joy, especially for Grotian, who was briefly sent back to the second-tier IBU Cup in January, was still great: "I've never had four zeros in the individual," said Grotian on the ARD microphone after the race.

Running times are also at a good level again

Medal candidate Franziska Preuß incurred two penalty minutes and, as the weakest of the German quartet, surprisingly missed out on the top ten. The running times also gave cause for optimism for the coming races: unlike in the first week of the World Cup, the German starters presented themselves competitively.

Recently there was sharp criticism of the material in the German camp. Sports director Felix Bitterling admitted that he was “not very good at skiing.” In Nove Mesto, temperatures are mostly above freezing, and the wet snow conditions posed a challenge for the ski technicians.

cev/dpa