Olympic Champion Laura Dahlmeier Dies in Mountaineering Accident in Pakistan

Olympic and world champion in biathlon Laura Dahlmeier has passed away at the age of 31, according to her management company.

The German athlete was on a trip in the Karakoram mountains in Pakistan when she suffered severe injuries in an accident. An experienced and certified mountaineer, Dahlmeier was caught in a rockfall around noon on 28 July at an altitude of approximately 5,700 metres, according to her management.

Her mountaineering partner immediately alerted rescue services and an international team was dispatched to the area. However, as the accident took place in a remote area, a helicopter did not reach the site until the morning of 29 July. Rescue workers then struggled to reach the former athlete due to the risk of falling rocks.

Her passing was confirmed on Wednesday, 30 July.

Dahlmeier is a two-time Winter Olympic champion and seven-time world champion in biathlon. With her two gold medals at PyeongChang 2018, she became the first female biathlete in history to win sprint and pursuit events at the same Olympic Games.

She also picked up a bronze in the individual at those Games, despite missing the beginning of the season due to illness.

A Garmisch-Partenkirchen native, Dahlmeier made her IBU World Cup debut during the 2012-13 season, aged 19, and was selected for the German team at Sochi 2014. There, her best result was 13th place in the individual.

She won her first World Cup race a year later and became the world No.1 after a superb 2016-17 season where she also won the overall World Cup.

While Dahlmeier was already well on the radar after Sochi 2014, her big breakthrough came at the 2017 Biathlon World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. She won five gold medals across the six events she competed in – in the pursuit, individual, mass start, women’s relay and mixed relay – and also picked up a silver in the sprint.

Dahlmeier announced her retirement from competitive biathlon in May 2019 at the age of 25 and has since dedicated herself to her passion for mountaineering.

She scaled the Great Trango Tower (6,287m) on 8 July and was aiming reach the summit of the Laila Peak next.