Dorothea Wierer, surprise second place: ‘I was very weak these days’

Dorothea Wierer, surprise second place: ‘I was very weak these days’

Despite physical difficulties experienced in the past few days, Dorothea Wierer managed to take an excellent second place at the Kontiolahti pursuit: “I didn’t think I would achieve this result because I had a really difficult week from the health point of view,” she explained.

“I was very weak these days: from a sore throat I switched to a cold and taking part in Thursday’s individual proved to be a mistake because it certainly didn’t help me improve my condition. Today I felt a little better even though my legs remained very hard, I tried to focus on the range because I knew I could only make my competition with a zero.”

“This is a season where we will need to be consistent even more than in the past, there are really a lot of races ahead of us and during the year there can be periods of low and other periods of better form. Today I never thought to compete for success because on skis I still don’t feel at the top, however, we made a small step forward,” Wierer concluded.

These are the words of Lisa Vittozzi, fourth at the finish: “Despite the podium failed by a few seconds it was a positive race. Today I didn’t feel at the top like in the past days, so I preferred not to go out of laps and control the pace both on the track and on the range. I think I did a good job, I’m satisfied with the handling of the polygon, a mistake can happen. Fourth place doesn’t hurt me, in fact it allows me to stay ahead in the overall standings. Even though we are only at the beginning of the season it remains uan nice satisfaction, at least until next Thursday I will guard it with great pride.”