Veronika Vítková

Veronika Vítková
Association	Czech Republic
birthday	8th December 1988 (age 31)
place of birth	Vrchlabí ,  Czechoslovakia
Career
job	PE teacher
society	SKP Kornspitz Jablonec
Trainer	Egil Gjelland
Admission to the national team	2005
Debut in the World Cup	2006
World Cup victories	7 (1 individual victory)
status	resigned
End of career	April 23, 2020
Medal table
Olympic medals 0 × 1 × 1 × World Cup medals 1 × 0 × 1 × JWM medals 0 × 2 × 0 × SWM medals 2 × 1 × 0 ×
winter Olympics silver 2014 Sochi Mixed relay bronze 2018 Pyeongchang sprint  Biathlon world championships bronze 2013 Nové Město Mixed relay gold 2015 Kontiolahti Mixed relay  Biathlon Junior World Championships gold 2006 Presque Isle singles silver 2008 Ruhpolding persecution gold 2009 Canmore Season silver 2009 Canmore persecution  Summer biathlon world championships gold 2014 Tyumen Mixed relay gold 2018 Nové Město persecution silver 2018 Nové Město Mixed relay
World Cup balance
Overall World Cup	4. ( 2014/15 )
Individual World Cup	3. (2014/15)
Sprint World Cup	3. (2014/15)
Pursuit World Cup	8. ( 2015/16 )
Mass start world cup	9. (2015/16)
Podium placements 1. 2. 3. singles 0 0 2 sprint 1 2 3 persecution 0 1 0 Mass start 0 1 2 Season 6th 4th 6th

Veronika Vítková (born December 8, 1988 in Vrchlabí , Czechoslovakia ) is a former Czech biathlete . Her greatest successes are the bronze medal in the sprint at the 2018 Winter Olympics and the 2015 world championship title with the mixed relay. In addition, she reached fourth place in the overall World Cup in 2015.

Career

Beginnings and medals in the junior sector

Veronika Vítková lives in Jilemnice and started working for KB Jilemnice in her youth , and later for SKP Kornspitz Jablonec . She started biathlon in 1999 and has been part of the Czech national team since 2004. In 2005 Vítková took part in the Junior World Championships for the first time in Kontiolahti . The best result was ninth place in the sprint. A year later she won the singles title at Presque Isle and was fifth in the sprint. The best result at the Junior European Championships in Langdorf was a sixth place, also in the individual. In 2006 Veronika Vítková made her debut in the World Cup. In Hochfilzen , she finished 84th in the sprint and tenth in the relay.

The 2007 Junior World Championships in Martell , where Vítková's best result was 12th, was not so successful . But she won bronze in the pursuit at the European Junior Championships in Bansko , after finishing fifth in the sprint. The best result in the World Cup was an eighth place with the 2007 relay in Ruhpolding . The young Czech ran her fourth Junior World Championship in 2008 in Ruhpolding. After a sixth place in the sprint, she won the silver medal in the pursuit behind Magdalena Neuner and in the individual she was sixth.

At the Junior European Championships in Nové Město na Moravě , Veronika Vítková won bronze in the sprint and silver in the pursuit in 2008. In 2009 she took part in the Junior World Championships in Canmore, Canada. As a starting runner, she became world champion with the Czech relay. After a fifth place in the sprint, she won the silver medal behind Miriam Gössner in the subsequent pursuit .

First successes and setbacks in the World Cup

World Cup 2013 in Nové Město na Moravě

In 2008 Veronika Vítková took part in the biathlon world championships in Östersund . After finishing 57th in the sprint, she gave up the subsequent pursuit. With the mixed relay she reached the 12th place as a starting runner. With two shooting errors, she finished 14th in the individual and thus achieved her best ever World Cup result in an individual race.

At the World Championships in Pyeongchang Vítková was able to convince again, especially in the pursuit and in the individual. After finishing 18th in the sprint, she made up eight places in the pursuit and reached the top ten in the World Cup for the first time. In the following individual she was able to improve this result again - with a mistake in the last shooting she reached rank 5. Another tenth place in the final mass start confirmed her good World Cup form. In the overall World Cup she reached 36th place. At the Olympic Winter Games 2010 Vítková could not build on the successes of the World Cup last year. Her best result was your 24th place in the sprint. The following season started with mixed results. After she narrowly qualified for the pursuit of Östersund in 56th place , she was overtaken in the subsequent pursuit race on the fourth lap and taken out of the race. In the following individual races up to the World Championship, the Czech did not come out on a 21st place in the pursuit of Presque-Isle . At the Biathlon World Championships 2011 in Siberia, she achieved her best result of the season with 8th place in the individual and her only place in the top ten this season.

In the 2011/12 season Vítková was on the podium for the first time with the Czech mixed relay. She was the starting runner and thus secured a good starting position for 2nd place. During the season she was able to achieve more consistent results and in the end she placed 25th in the overall World Cup.

In the 2012/2013 World Cup season , Vítková was able to improve on the results from the previous year. After several top ten positions in the first races of the season, she was able to run from 16th to 2nd in the pursuit of Oberhof and was thus on the podium for the first time in an individual race. With the relay and with the mixed relay she reached a third place each time during the season. Above all, she owes it to the strong start to the season that she was among the top 20 of the overall World Cup for the first time at the end of the season (16th place).

Establishment among the world's best

Award ceremony in January 2018 in Oberhof , Mäkäräinen , Kuzmina and Vítková

In the first race of the following season, Vítková was at the top of the podium with Soukalová , Vítek and Moravec after they won the mixed relay in front of the Norwegians. With second place in the sprint from Hochfilzen and third place in the individual from Oberhof, the Czech achieved two more podium places. At the 2014 Winter Olympics , she won the silver medal with the Czech mixed relay. She was also able to achieve good results in the mass start and in the individual with two top ten results. At the end of the season she reached 9th place in the overall World Cup.

The following season also started with very good placements, including a second place in the Östersund sprint. After the winter break, she achieved her first World Cup victory in a single race. After she had won the race with the Czech women's relay two days earlier, Vítková was at the top of the Oberhof sprint with 2 penalties. The women's relay with the line-up Puskarčíková , Soukalová , Landová and Vítková won three relay races and two other podium places this season and secured the World Cup in the relay standings. In addition, Vítková won the gold medal in the mixed relay at the World Championships in Kontiolahti . The Czech finished her best season in fourth place in the overall World Cup standings.

In the 2015/16 season Vítková achieved a result under the top ten 15 times, but remained without a podium in an individual race. Vitkova was also unable to take a podium place at the 2016 World Cup and remained without a medal. She finished the season eighth in the overall World Cup.

Last years and resignation

After an already weaker first half of the season in the following season 2016/17 , Veronika Vítková did not achieve a result in the points in an individual race and 25th place in the overall World Cup at the 2017 Biathlon World Championships .

The season 2017/18 started similar to last year with just one top ten result before the Christmas break. In the second trimester, however, Vítková was able to get three podiums in two sprints and a mass start and thus qualify for the 2018 Olympic Games . There she confirmed the preliminary results with the bronze medal in the sprint race. Like two years before, she finished the season eighth overall in the World Cup.

At the 2018 Summer Biathlon World Championships in Nové Město , she won gold in the pursuit and silver in the mixed relay.

In the 2018/19 season , Vítková achieved significantly worse results again. Especially in cross-country skiing, she could hardly keep up with the world's best. However, she was on the podium with the relay in Oberhof. Overall, she finished 30th in the overall World Cup with just one top 10 result.

At the beginning of the 2019/20 season in Östersund , Veronika Vítková was 45th in the sprint and gave up in the individual. After that, she did not contest any more races for health reasons and announced her retirement in April 2020.

statistics

Biathlon 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			6th	7th
2nd place	1	2	1	1	4th	9
3rd place	2	3		2	7th	14th
Top 10	7th	16	18th	7th	38	86
Scoring	18th	60	55	32	69	234
Starts	31	95	67	33	69	295

World Cup victories

Single race

Relay race

No. date place discipline 1. 0Jan. 9, 2015  Oberhof sprint

No. date place discipline 1. Nov 24, 2013  Ostersund Mixed season 1 2. 0Jan. 7, 2015  Oberhof Season 2 3. Jan. 14, 2015  Ruhpolding Season 2 4th Feb 15, 2015  Oslo Season 2 5. 05th Mar 2015  Kontiolahti ( WM ) Mixed season 3 6th Feb 13, 2016  Presque Isle Season 4 1With Gabriela Koukalová , Zdeněk Vítek and Ondřej Moravec . 2With Eva Puskarčíková , Gabriela Koukalová and Jitka Landová . 3With Gabriela Koukalová, Michal Šlesingr and Ondřej Moravec. 4thWith Eva Puskarčíková, Lucie Charvátová and Gabriela Koukalová.

winter Olympics

	Individual competitions				Relay competitions
	sprint	persecution	singles	Mass start	Women's relay	Mixed relay
2010 Winter Olympics | Vancouver	24.	37.	68.	-	16.	-
Olympic Winter Games 2014 | Sochi	16.	21st	6th	8th.	4th	2.
Olympic Winter Games 2018 | Pyeongchang	3.	7th	18th	14th	12.	8th.

Web links

Commons : Veronika Vítková  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Veronika Vítková's website
• Veronika Vítková in the IBU database (English)
• Tom Klein: Portrait of Veronika Vitkova - Petite, shy but with a strong will to assert yourself, Part 1. Part 2 . In: Biathlonworld.com. February 20, 2009, archived from the original ; accessed on March 12, 2019 .