FasterSkier’s Coverage of the Biathlon World Championships is made possible through the generous support of the Craftsbury Outdoor Center: New England’s finest snowmaking, world class race venues and touring trails, healthy food in abundance, comfortable accommodations at Craftsbury: Sports, Sustainability, Stewardship.
On the final day of Biathlon World Championships, the crowd at the Vysocina Arena in Nove Mesto na Morave, Czech Republic was treated to the men’s and women’s Mass Start competitions. Fifteen kilometers for men and 12.5 for women, the Mass Start is a head-to-head race with four shooting stages featuring the top thirty athletes.
In the men’s race, winner Johannes Thingnes Boe of Norway claimed his seventh medal in seven races for the second year in a row. He missed a single target on the first stage but then shot clean through the rest of the race to take a decisive victory. The crowd roared as he crossed the finish line holding up three fingers, for his wins in three of the four individual competitions here. Behind him, Latvia entered the medal table thanks to the 20/20 performance of Andrejs Rastorgujevs, and France’s Quentin Fillon Maillet closed a successful World Championships with his first individual medal of the week, having already reached the podium in all three team relay competitions.
Tarjei Boe (NOR), Fabien Claude (FRA) and Jakov Fak (SLO) completed the Flower Ceremony. The competition highlighted the advantage of experience in biathlon: of the top-six finishers, three are at least 35 years old, and only Claude is under 30, at 29. Twenty-one-year-old Campbell Wright finished 18th with four misses, capping off his first World Championships representing US Biathlon with top-twenty finishes in all four individual competitions. The other American qualifier, Sean Doherty, was 28th with five misses.
On the women’s side, France’s Justine Braisaz-Bouchet put an exclamation point on her first World Championships since giving birth to her daughter last winter. Having finished second and third in the Sprint and Pursuit, she shot 20/20 to claim her first individual gold medal of the Championships. With gold medals also from the Mixed Relay and Women’s Relay, Braisaz leaves Nove Mesto with five medals—three golds, a silver and a bronze—from six races. Her only finish outside the top-three was a seventh place in the 15 k Individual.
Lisa Vittozzi (ITA) took silver with yet another 20/20 performance, bringing her total shooting score for the four individual races at World Championships to 69/70, with her only miss coming in the Pursuit. To put this in perspective, many biathletes finish their World Cup careers without ever hitting 20/20. With four medals at the 2024 World Championships, Vittozzi tied her haul from 2023, but this year she won her first individual title in the 15 k Individual.
France’s Lou Jeanmonnot took bronze with one miss. After a breakout season last winter in which she reached the World Cup podium twice in individual races, Jeanmonnot leaves the 2024 Championships with two individual bronze medals from the Sprint and Mass Start, and two golds from the Women’s Relay and Single-Mixed Relay. Taking fourth with three misses, Julia Simon (FRA) narrowly missed her sixth medal of the Championships. Though Braisaz-Bouchet and Jeanmonnot were remarkably successful, Simon was the golden girl of the Championships, taking home a total of five medals: four gold and one bronze.
In fifth, Vanessa Voigt of Germany shot 20/20 again, bringing her total shooting score for the Championships to 68/70. Austria’s Lisa Hauser, who won the World Championship title in this event in 2021, completed the Flower Ceremony in sixth, tying her best result since November. Having finished third in the World Cup Total Score in 2022 and tenth in 2023, Hauser has had a difficult season, currently sitting in 32nd, so this result was especially meaningful.
The 2024 Biathlon World Championships were memorable for the amazing atmosphere delivered by 30,000 fans in the stadium, the bleachers lining the course, and the military jet flyover between the Mass Starts on the last day. Even so, American biathletes were tuned into the historic cross-country races at home in Minneapolis. Biathlon has long been celebrated in Europe with huge crowds, but it is a different thrill to see Americans come out for Nordic sport like they have this weekend. For cross-country skiers, including those who also practice shooting, this season will be unforgettable not for what happened in Nove Mesto but rather for the magic in Minneapolis. It’s a validation every minute of hard work and every ounce of passion that Americans have poured into the sport we all love.
