Germany's biathlon team will be without its best-ranked woman from last season for the rest of the autumn camps. Vanessa Voigt will skip the national team's central training camps and prepare on her own until the World Cup opener in Kontiolahti, the German Ski Association (DSV) announced on Monday.
The 28-year-old from Thuringia, who turns 29 this week, will shape her preparation more closely around her personal needs. The move is not a break with the federation: Voigt stays in close contact with the DSV and can continue to use its services and facilities. Once racing starts, she will compete as a regular member of the national team.
"The right path for me at the moment"
Voigt explained her decision in a statement released by the DSV: "For me, at the moment it is the right path to organise the coming weeks more individually and to concentrate on my own needs." The arrangement followed open talks with the federation's sporting leadership.
Biathlon sports director Bernd Eisenbichler backed the plan. "We had open and constructive conversations with Vanessa and together found a good solution for the coming weeks," he said, adding that as an experienced athlete she will structure her build-up to the season herself.
The timing still raised eyebrows in Germany. After last season the DSV brought in Denny Andritzke as a new assistant coach, and Voigt had previously trained successfully under his programmes. Going it alone is nothing new for her, though: according to German broadcaster Sportschau, she has followed her own training plans at earlier stages of her career.
From crisis to Olympic medal
Voigt's recent history helps explain why she is listening so carefully to her body and mind. In 2024 she paused training because of mental health problems, and she cut the 2024/25 season short with physical complaints, missing that winter's World Championships. She later described those first weeks as a time when "everything was grey" and admitted she had considered retiring.
Her comeback was all the more striking. In the Olympic season of 2025/26 she worked her way back towards the top, won bronze with Germany's mixed relay at the Winter Games in Antholz and finished 14th in the overall World Cup standings, the best of the German women. It was her second Olympic medal after relay bronze in Beijing in 2022. Her record also includes four World Championship medals and 15 World Cup podiums, two of them victories.
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In sporting terms, nothing changes for the season opener. Thanks to last winter's results, Voigt is pre-qualified for the first World Cup races in Kontiolahti, where the new season begins on 26 November.
Her late-summer form has been mixed. At the City Biathlon in Dresden she missed six targets and finished ninth. She is listed among the German starters for the LOOP ONE Festival in Munich's Olympic Park on 17 and 18 October, which will offer an early look at how her solo preparation is going.
That leaves a little over seven weeks until the opener in Finland. Whether Voigt returns to regular team training after that remains open, with Eisenbichler saying both sides will stay in touch ahead of the season start.
