Who is Laura Dahlmeier, the biathlon champion swept away by a landslide on the Karakoram

Laura Dahlmeier, 31-year-old German multiple Olympic and world champion and biathlon World Cup winner, was hit by a landslide on the Karakorum mountain range in Pakistan. The accident reportedly occurred Monday at noon local time at about 5700 meters altitude on Laila Peak, a 6096-meter-high peak.

His climbing partner Eva Marina Kraus immediately called for help, but the first helicopter to fly over the area, which is decidedly inaccessible, arrived only yesterday, and found no signs of life from the former biathlete.

Rescue operations resumed this morning but the more hours pass, the more the hopes of rescuing Dahlmeier fade, especially as the temperature dropped to 8 degrees below zero in the night.

Laura Dahlmeier, born Aug. 22, 1993 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, has won two golds (sprint and pursuit) and one bronze (individual) in her career at the 2018 PyeongChang Games, 7 golds, 3 silvers and 5 bronzes at the World Championships (4 golds, 3 silvers and 4 bronzes excluding relays).

In 2017, her best year, she won the overall, pursuit and individual World Cup. In the Cup, he won a total of 16 races at the individual level, plus the 4 world golds that also counted for the Cup.

Her total podiums between the Olympics, Worlds and World Cup (the so-called “top-level races,” as some call them) are 50, her victories 22. She retired from biathlon in 2019 at age 25 to devote herself to her studies and her other passions, including mountaineering.

Unfortunately, this is not the first case of a mountaineering accident involving a snow star: on May 29, 2009, Frenchwoman Karine Ruby, the greatest snowboarder ever, died falling off a wall in the Mont Blanc Massif.