Dorothea Wierer takes everyone by surprise: a new, surprising adventure

After officially bidding farewell to competitive sports at the conclusion of the Milan-Cortina 2026 Olympic Games, Dorothea Wierer couldn’t resist the call of competition and is ready to embark on a new adventure. The former biathlon queen is, in fact, preparing to compete in Hyrox Rome, an indoor fitness racing event—a discipline that has been gaining popularity in recent times.

Wierer fully intends to test herself against a format that combines running and high-intensity exercises on a course that demands endurance and adaptability. “I haven’t trained that much so far, but I still have a few days left,” she explained to the competition’s official channels. Let me clarify: I’ve trained my whole life for biathlon, not for this sport. It’ll be something totally different and quite unusual. The exercises are completely different, but my experience will help me.”

The Hyrox circuit is structured as a relay combining running with strength and endurance challenges. You run a total of 8 km, but each kilometer is interspersed with a different station: you go from machines that simulate cross-country skiing or rowing to exercises involving heavy sleds to push and pull, all the way to explosive movements like forward burpees. Then come the “carrying” challenges, where you have to lift or carry weights (kettlebells, sandbags), and it concludes with an exercise combining precision and power: throwing a medicine ball at a target.

Born in 1990, originally from Rasun-Anterselva, Dorothea Wierer was one of Italy’s most successful biathletes, with four Olympic medals (though she always regretted never winning gold), twelve World Championship medals (four of which were gold), and two overall World Cup titles. Between earning her first World Cup points and the end of her career, fifteen years passed during which biathlon gained considerable popularity thanks to her successes and her media presence—a phenomenon with few precedents in Italian biathlon.