A man in a black, red and yellow jersey ran across the red line in the snow, and victory cheers rang out in the stands in Östersund. This man with start number 47, Florent Claude from Team Belgium, was at this moment covering a second athlete with a lot of black – and also some red and gold in his racing suit: Philipp Nawrath, a professional biathlete from the German team, who was in Claude’s slipstream to the first Crossed the finish line of a World Cup race as a winner for the first time in his life. From Claude’s slipstream – and from everyone else’s shadow.
A German athlete was also at the top of the biathlon world elite’s second individual race on Saturday afternoon. After 30-year-old Roman Rees, who won the individual race over the longer distance last weekend, Nawrath from Allgäu, also 30, managed a practically perfect sprint race without any misses or reproaches. “Crazy,” explained Nawrath. “It seems that both of us have to reach 30 first.” In the end – after ten kilometers of cross-country skiing and ten hits on the targets – there was not only Nawrath’s first World Cup podium, but also his first major triumph.
Philipp Nawrath – since 2017, his name has been found continuously in the start and result lists on the top shelf of the ski hunters. The man from Füssen came fourth twice in the World Cup and once won Olympic gold in the relay. But the cameras were almost always aimed at others. One of them in the German men’s team last season was former world champion Benedikt Doll – with a victory in Östersund. Otherwise, the DSV men were rarely completely convincing. 16 victories went to the Norwegian Johannes Thingnes Bö alone, next to him on the podium were his teammates, sometimes a Frenchman or Swede, rarely a German, and never a Nawrath.
Seventh German biathlon podium in the seventh race
Before the start of this new season, quite a few observers whispered that the German biathlon men and women were facing possibly the most difficult season ever – after the end of the career of the only consistent top athlete Denise Herrmann-Wick. Before the last day in Östersund, the balance sheet is now: seven German podium places in seven races, including two victories by two men who very few people would have thought possible before. How could such an explosion in German results come about?
Nawrath has been considered a solid runner so far. But the fact that he recorded the second fastest running time on the cross-country ski trail out of all 101 starters (only the Swede Sebastian Samuelsson was faster) – even ahead of the previous season’s dominator, Bö, is new. Maybe the good running performance of the Germans in general these days in Östersund is not just the result of “our hard work in the summer”, as Nawrath’s teammate Justus Strelow, 15th this time, explained on ZDF (Johannes Kühn came eighth, Benedikt Doll tenth).
The DSV athletes have obviously benefited from the change in the ski wax rule, according to which the environmentally harmful fluorine is no longer allowed to be applied. Philipp Nawrath finally provided the explanation, who immediately thanked the DSV waxers: “Our technicians work here every day, sometimes from six in the morning. That is the basis for us celebrating such successes here,” explained Nawrath, the shadow man, who is no longer one.