Lukas Hofer

Lukas Hofer
Association	Italy
birthday	30th September 1989 (age 30)
place of birth	Brunico , Italy
size	175 cm
Weight	62 kg
Career
job	Carabiniere
society	Amateursportverein Antholz / Carabinieri sports group
Trainer	Andreas Zingerle Andrea Zattoni
Admission to the national team	2009
Debut in the World Cup	2009
World Cup victories	5 (1 individual victory)
status	active
Medal table
Olympic medals 0 × 0 × 2 × World Cup medals 0 × 2 × 2 × EM medals 0 × 0 × 1 × JWM medals 2 × 0 × 1 ×
winter Olympics bronze 2014 Sochi Mixed relay bronze 2018 Pyeongchang Mixed relay  Biathlon world championships bronze 2011 Khanty-Mansiysk Mass start bronze 2019 Östersund Mixed relay silver 2019 Östersund Single mixed relay silver 2020 Antholz Mixed relay  European biathlon championships bronze 2011 Ridnaun sprint  Summer biathlon world championships gold 2013 Forni Avoltri sprint silver 2013 Forni Avoltri persecution  Biathlon Junior World Championships bronze 2008 Ruhpolding Youth relay gold 2009 Canmore sprint gold 2009 Canmore persecution
World Cup balance
Overall World Cup	5. ( 2017/18 )
Individual World Cup	4. (2017/18)
Sprint World Cup	7th ( 2010/11 )
Pursuit World Cup	4. (2017/18)
Mass start world cup	5th (2010/11)
Podium placements 1. 2. 3. sprint 1 2 0 persecution 0 1 2 Mass start 0 0 1 Season 4th 6th 6th
last change: June 6, 2020

Lukas Hofer (born September 30, 1989 in Bruneck , South Tyrol ) is an Italian biathlete . After two junior world championship titles, he made his debut in the biathlon world cup in 2009 , where he won an individual race for the first time in 2014. In 2011 he won the world championship bronze medal in the mass start. Hofer celebrated further successes with the Italian mixed and single mixed relay, with which he won several additional medals at world championships and the Olympic Winter Games.

Athletic career

Beginnings and successes in the junior sector (until 2009)

Originally from St. Lorenzen in the Pustertal , Hofer trained cross-country skiing in his childhood before switching to biathlon at the age of eleven. At the beginning he started for the amateur sports club Anterselva (ASD Anterselva), at the age of 18 he joined the sports group of the Carabinieri . As a junior, Hofer was looked after by Andreas Zingerle , who later took over the post of head coach of the Italian national biathlon team.

In the youth field, Hofer took part in several international championships from 2007. At the 2008 Youth World Championships in Ruhpolding , he finished fourth both in the individual race and in the pursuit and won the bronze medal in the relay together with Pietro Dutto and Dominik Windisch . In the junior age group, he won the world title in the sprint and the subsequent pursuit in Canmore the following year . He benefited in particular from his mileage: In the pursuit he missed six of twenty targets, but still had a 17-second lead over Simon Schempp , who had only run two penalties. Hofer maintained this running strength in his further career and was later three to four percent faster on the trail than the average of the field of participants in the biathlon world cup . In the 2018/19 season he was the second fastest biathlete in the World Cup behind Johannes Thingnes Bø . Even during Hofer's junior years, the way he left the shooting range caused a stir: instead of shouldering his rifle with both hands, he threw it on his back with his left hand and at the same time reached for his sticks with his right hand. Hofer expressed his conviction that this technique gave him a time advantage of two to three seconds per shooting. Several athletes adapted Hofer's movement sequences, according to Laura Dahlmeier , too, according to her exercise bike.

Promotion in the World Cup (2009 to 2014)

Hofer made his debut in the Biathlon World Cup at the age of 19 in January 2009 in Oberhof with a 53rd place in the sprint. The following summer he was accepted into the Italian A-squad and from the 2009/10 season regularly used in the highest competition series in the adult sector. He was placed in the top 20 several times and was on the podium in Kontiolahti in March 2010 at the side of Katja Haller , Karin Oberhofer and Christian De Lorenzi with the mixed relay. When he participated in the Olympic Games for the first time , his best individual result was a 46th place in the 20-kilometer race.

After Hofer had already achieved seven top ten results in the winter of 2010/11 and was third in the sprint at the (less crowded) European Championships , he won the bronze medal in the mass start at the World Championships in Khanty-Mansiysk in March 2011 . At the beginning of the last shooting he was part of a three-man leadership group around Emil Hegle Svendsen and Tarjei Bø after 15 hits . In the final standing shot, Hofer missed a target and ultimately finished third behind Svendsen and the Russian Evgeni Ustjugow . He finished the season twelfth in the overall World Cup, making him the best athlete on his team.

In the following years Hofer established himself in the extended world elite and was the best placed Italian with positions 24, 20 and 15 in the overall ranking of the World Cup. With the men's relay , which included Christian De Lorenzi as well as the brothers Markus and Dominik Windisch , he decided in January 2012 after 18 years again a relay race for Italy. Hofer took over the race as the last runner in second place, more than 40 seconds behind the leading Russian team, whose fourth representative Alexei Volkov he overtook at the last shooting. Hofer celebrated his first World Cup victory in an individual race on January 17, 2014: In the Antholz sprint, he made a mistake and took first place at the same time as Simon Schempp - for whom it was also the first individual victory .

Relay medals at Olympics and World Championships (since 2014)

Hofer at the 2020 Biathlon World Cup in Oberhof

At the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi , the mixed relay was part of the Olympic program for the first time . Hofer competed there together with Dorothea Wierer , Karin Oberhofer and Dominik Windisch and won the only Italian biathlon medal at the Winter Games with the bronze medal. In the following years, the mixed relay team drove in a similar constellation - from 2016 Lisa Vittozzi took Oberhofer's place - several podium results in the World Cup and at major events: At the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang , the quartet took third place again, as well as at the 2019 World Championships . At the 2020 home World Cup in Antholz, the mixed relay won silver. Hofer stayed in third place without a miss and handed over roughly on par with the Norwegians, who ultimately won by 15 seconds. From 2018 on, Hofer, Windisch, Wierer and Vittozzi were looked after separately from the rest of the Italian squad in an elite team of Andreas Zingerle and Andrea Zattoni . In March 2018 and November 2019, the four athletes won two mixed relay races in the World Cup. Hofer was also victorious at the side of Dorothea Wierer in February 2019 in the single mixed relay and won the silver medal in this discipline at the 2019 World Championships. Beyond the competitions held by the IBU World Federation , Wierer and Hofer won the World Team Challenge 2018 in the Veltins-Arena .

In individual races, Hofer remained without another medal at major events. After his sprint victory in Antholz in 2014, he did not achieve another podium result in the World Cup for four years, while his team-mate Dominik Windisch won a race for the first time and also placed ahead of Hofer in the overall World Cup standings in 2016 and 2017. After struggling with breathing difficulties for a long time, Hofer underwent sinus surgery to clear the airways in the summer of 2017. Among other things, he attributed his subsequently increasing performance to this: During the 2017/18 season he reached the top ten in 11 of 22 World Cup races and at the end of the winter was second and third in the pursuits of Oslo and Tyumen - each with victories by Martin Fourcade - on the podium. In the overall World Cup he finished fifth at the end of the season. In 2018/19 Hofer also managed to make it into the top three in two individual competitions (the pursuit in Oberhof and the sprint in Oslo) as well as another top ten result in the overall World Cup with tenth place.

Personal

Lukas Hofer's two sisters were also active in cross-country skiing and biathlon. Since the beginning of the 2010s, at the end of the season in Antholz, he has organized an annual Gaudi biathlon race in which both experienced and inexperienced athletes compete in relays drawn at random. The race was originally designed as a celebration for his fan club, but gained in participants in the years that followed. As a hobby in addition to biathlon, Hofer pursues paragliding and in July 2018 set a world record in hike & fly - an extreme sport in which the aim is to collect as many meters of altitude as possible within one day by constantly climbing and sliding down.

statistics

World Cup victories

Single race	Relay race
No. date place discipline 1. Jan. 17, 2014  Antholz sprint	No. date place discipline 1. 0Jan. 5, 2012  Oberhof Season 1 2. 10 Mar 2018  Kontiolahti Mixed season 2 3. 17th Feb 2019  Midway Single mixed season 3 4th Nov 30, 2019  Ostersund Mixed season 2 1with Christian De Lorenzi , Markus Windisch and Dominik Windisch 2with Dorothea Wierer , Lisa Vittozzi and Dominik Windisch 3 with Dorothea Wierer

World Cup placements

The table shows all placements (depending on the year, including the Olympic Games and World Championships).

• 1st - 3rd Place: Number of podium placements
• Top 10: Number of placements in the top ten (including podium)
• Points ranks: Number of placements within the point ranks (including podium and top 10)
• Starts: Number of races run in the respective discipline
• Relay: including mixed relays

placement	singles	sprint	persecution	Mass start	Season	total
1st place		1			4th	5
2nd place		2	1		6th	9
3rd place			2	1	6th	9
Top 10	6th	22nd	22nd	7th	56	113
Scoring	19th	73	62	35	74	263
Starts	31	102	70	35	75	313
Status: end of season 2019/20

winter Olympics

	Individual competitions				Relay competitions
	sprint	persecution	singles	Mass start	Men's relay	Mixed relay
2010 Winter Olympics | Vancouver	56.	54.	46.	-	12.
Olympic Winter Games 2014 | Sochi	12.	17th	14th	DNF	5.	3.
Olympic Winter Games 2018 | Pyeongchang	10.	10.	63.	18th	12.	3.

Biathlon world championships

Results at the World Championships:

World championships		Individual competitions				Relay competitions
year	place	singles	sprint	persecution	Mass start	Men's relay	Mixed relay	Single mixed relay
2010	Khanty-Mansiysk	Not carried out					8th.
2011	Khanty-Mansiysk	27.	16.	9.	3.	5.	5.
2012	Ruhpolding	20th	31.	13.	16.	4th	9.
2013	Nové Město	7th	14th	11.	21st	7th	4th
2015	Kontiolahti	50.	24.	30th	-	12.	7th
2016	Oslo	31.	75.	-	-	11.	8th.
2017	Hochfilzen	34.	56.	DNS	-	5.	4th
2019	Ostersund	5.	52.	42.	17th	15th	3.	3.
2020	Antholz	13.	21st	20th	18th	7th	2.	9.

Web links

Commons : Lukas Hofer  - Collection of Images

• Lukas Hofer in the IBU database (English)
• Lukas Hofer's website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Lukas Hofer. Eurosport , accessed February 23, 2020 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b} Andreas Raffeiner: South Tyrolean biathletes in conversation: Today Lukas Hofer! on biathlon-news.de. 15 October 2013.
3. ↑ Lukas Hofer. In: ff , No. 44, November 2, 2017.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Viktoria Franke: Biathlon-JWM Canmore: Lukas Hofer in an interview on biathlon-online.de. February 2, 2009.
5. ↑ IBU Biathlon Guide 2019/2020, p. 376. Available as PDF .
6. ↑ IBU TV: Lukas Hofer's Revolutionary Technique - Video on the YouTube channel of the International Biathlon Union
7. ↑ Saskia Aleythe: "She reads a race during the competition". In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. February 17, 2018, p. 41. Retrieved from Munzinger Online . “She [Dahlmeier] already did the [analysis of the competition] in the junior division, at the time Lukas Hofer was the fastest on the mat, that impressed her. She then tried for hours to shoulder the gun. "
8. ↑ Olympic Winter 2009/2010: Italy names coaches and athletes on xc-ski.de. June 5, 2009, archived version July 19, 2012.
9. ↑ Viktoria Franke: Emil Hegle Svendsen fights for gold in the mass start on biathlon-online.de. March 12, 2011.
10. ↑ Biathlon, Italia vince STAFFETTA maschile Oberhof. Prima volta da 1994. on lapresse.it. 5th January 2012.
11. ↑ Lukas Hofer and the Windisch brothers win the relay in Oberhof on sportnews.bz. 5th January 2012.
12. ↑ dpa /faz.net: Schempp shares the victory with Hofer. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 17th January 2014.
13. ^ Giulio Gasparin: The Italian Experiment. In: Biathlonworld. No. 52/2019, pp. 54-56. Available online as a PDF . The Italian association dissolved the elite team in summer 2020 in order to save money in view of the corona crisis , cf. Karl-Heinz Merl: Dorothea Wierer and Lukas Hofer lead the much younger biathlon team in Italy. on biathlon-news.de. May 13, 2020.
14. ↑ Italy: Everything revolves around Dorothea, Lukas, Lisa and Dominik on biathlonworld.com. 17th November 2018.
15. ↑ Lukas Hofer and the trick with the nose on sportnews.bz. 5th January 2018.
16. ↑ Giulio Gasparin: Goes to the biathlon fun. In: Biathlonworld. No. 48/2018. Pp. 88-91. Available online as a PDF .
17. ↑ Hike & Fly: Lukas Hofer is the new world record holder! on sportnews.bz. July 2, 2018. Hofer ran ten times from Reischach to Kronplatz within 24 hours, collecting a total of 13,040 meters in altitude.