At the end of a strong world championship, the German biathletes go away empty-handed in the final mass start. Hanna Kebinger is the best German in twelfth place. Nothing seems to work for Denise Herrmann-Wick anymore - it costs time, especially at the shooting range.
Denise Herrmann-Wick finished the Biathlon World Championships in Oberhof without her fourth medal in the mass start. The exhausted-looking Saxon finished 24th after five shooting errors and was 2:54.2 minutes behind the new world champion Hanna Öberg from Sweden (2 errors). After a gripping final lap, Norway's Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold (1/4.8 seconds) secured silver ahead of French Julia Simon (3/20.8). The best German was World Championship debutant Hanna Kebinger (2/1:03.2 minutes) in twelfth place, she just missed her second top ten result on the Rennsteig in the final sprint.
The 34-year-old Olympic champion Herrmann-Wick had previously won gold in the sprint, silver in the pursuit and silver in the relay at home. With a total of three medals, the German Ski Association also ended the season's highlight in Thuringia, where the men had gone without a medal for the first time since 1969 at a regular world championship.
So far, the last German world champion in the mass start was Laura Dahlmeier in 2017. A medal was now unattainable for the ski hunters at the end of the World Cup after poor shooting performance. The Bavarian Kebinger missed the podium by more than 40 seconds. Vanessa Voigt (3/ 2:46.8) finished the competition in her place of residence as 23rd, Sophia Schneider (5/ 3:26.1), who had been so strong up to now, had to settle for 27th of 30 starters this time.
One day after relay silver, Herrmann-Wick had to go into the penalty loop in front of 23,500 spectators in the sold-out Rennsteig Arena immediately after the first shooting and dropped back to 24th place. The former cross-country skier looked exhausted and could not keep up on the track as usual and lost time. Miss number two in the second standing stage threw her further back, three mistakes in the first standing stage made a reasonable placement impossible. Even a perfect last shooting didn't change anything.
