World Championships Biathlon Normal Distance Women 18-02-2025

Biathlon is a strong winter sports branch here in Norway, and when the Biathlon World Championships are held, we have to look at the opportunities that are at stake here too. The Biathlon World Championships will be held in Lenzerheide, Switzerland, from February 12 to 23, and so far Norway has two gold medals from Johannes T. Bø.
This time it is the ladies who will be competing in the "shooting event" Normal Distance, the event that does not have penalty rounds, but with time added for each miss. So here it is all about hitting the target! And I have found a duel that I think is worth it, and it is between German Franziska Preuss and Swedish Elvira Öberg.

The exercise

The standard distance is 15 km for women and is run with an interval start. The first women's 15 km world championship was in 1989, and the event is performed with four shots in the order; prone, standing, prone, standing, a total of 20 flashes. For each miss, one minute is added to the cross-country time, with the best total cross-country time winning.

A little about the athletes

• Franziska Preuss is a German talent who won several major victories and medals as a junior, and after her success she got a place on the German World Cup team. Preuss ended up on the podium in the World Cup for the first time in 2015, and four years later she took her first World Cup victory. Since then, there have been more victories and 10 World Cup medals in various denominations. So far in this year's World Cup, she has a bronze in the mixed relay, a silver medal in the sprint and gold in the pursuit start. Franziska Preuss has her great strength on the shooting range, with a hit percentage of 96 in prone shooting and 87% in standing shooting she is one of the very best. But she is not the fastest skier, because to the fastest she loses on average up to 3.7 seconds per km.
• Elvira Öberg is five years younger than Preuss, but the sister of the more accomplished Hanna Öberg, is also a talent in the sport she practices, and has been on the Swedish World Cup team since 2019. When she took her first podium in the World Cup, she shared it with, among others, her sister Hanna, who has meant a lot to her career. Elvira Öberg has already won medals in the World Cup, but no gold medal, but she hopes to do something about this this year. In this year's World Cup, she has a 10th place in the sprint, but she moved up to a nice 2nd place and a silver medal in the pursuit start with only one penalty round. Öberg is faster on the track than Preuss, but on the shooting range she has a hit percentage of 81 in prone and 86% in standing. On the track, she loses 0.9 seconds per km on average.

Conclusion

Here at the Normaldistansen we have first and second place in the pursuit start that are set against each other H2H, and in the pursuit start Preuss came out as the winner. We think she will do the same here. Now it will be shooting for another World Cup gold, because that is what the Normaldistansen is all about, shooting! Of course you have to ski fast in addition, but when you get one minute of extra time per miss, it goes without saying that you should not miss much before you are out of the fight for victory. And as the statistics show, Franziska Preuss is a better shooter than Elvira Öberg. And even though Öberg on average goes faster in the track than Preuss, she does not go that much faster. In addition, Öberg has been ill, even though she showed an increase in her form in the pursuit start, she was above the mixed relay at the start of the championship. In the sprint, the German missed once on the standing position, while the Swede missed twice. And at the chase start, Preuss shot flawlessly, while Öberg missed once on the last standing. So, taking form and statistics into account, I believe in the following bets:

Biathlon at 15:05: Franziska Preuss - Elvira Öberg: Franziska Preuss wins (1.60)