Biathlon professional Vanessa Voigt has had difficult months, the 27-year-old struggled above all with herself. In the end, only a break helped, and now she gave another insight into that time.
DSV biathlete Vanessa Voigt deals openly with the topic of “mental health”. “I am a direct and honest person,” she said in an interview with the “Thüringer Allgemeine”. The topic is also “too important to keep secret.” She recently spoke to “Eurosport” about a very strenuous winter 2023/24 and therefore “not optimal” preparation.
At the end of July, Voigt gave her fans and supporters an insight into her inner life via Instagram when she wrote about a “mental breakdown”. At that time she revealed that she had taken a month and a half break from biathlon – as a kind of “self-protection”.
There had previously been days, says Voigt, now looking back, “when I lay in bed and couldn’t get up. My body felt so exhausted, as if I had had five days of extreme strength training.”
Voigt is looking forward to the relay races in Finland
Only when the running times and the results at the shooting range became worse did she pull the ripcord. This approach was praised by her mental trainer, who “congratulated” her: “I didn’t even know why at first. Until he told me that it was a very big success to have recognized my situation myself.”
In the meantime, her passion for biathlon has been fully rekindled; the only thing that helped was hearing the sound of the roller skis. Now the first World Cup is coming up in Finland this weekend, starting with the relay races.
“It’s nice that the relays are starting and we can distribute the pressure a bit across the whole team,” said the eighth overall World Cup finisher last season.
Source: www.sport.de
