Jakov Fak

Jakov Fak (born 1 August 1987) is a Croatian-born Slovenian biathlete. As a member of the Croatian biathlon team, Fak won a bronze medal at the World Championships in 2009 and another bronze at the 2010 Winter Olympics where he had the honor of carrying his nation's' Croatian flag in the opening ceremony. In 2010, Fak announced he would move to the Slovenian biathlon team and has represented Slovenia since the beginning of the 2010/2011 season. At the 2012 World Championships, Fak won a gold medal at 20 km event and a silver medal at the mixed relay, together with Andreja Mali, Teja Gregorin and Klemen Bauer.

Fak began to compete in biathlon in 2001 under the trainer Robert Petrović. His first international biathlon tournament was the Junior World Championships in Ridnaun in 2002 where his best result was 64th place in the Sprint event. Fak improved his performance in 2008, eventually finishing in the top 10 at that year's Junior World Championships.

Since 2006, Fak has participated in the Biathlon World Cup. In his first race in the World Cup in Hochfilzen Fak finished 107th. For a long time his best performance was 47th place which he reached in an Individual race in 2007 in Pokljuka. In 2007 he participated in his first Biathlon World Championships, finishing 78th in the Sprint race and 93rd in the Individual.

The big breakthrough in Fak's career came in the 2008/09 season. In the opening race of the season Fak came in 47th but in the Individual he earned his first World cup points with a 38th position finish. In the third stage of the World cup in Hochfilzen Fak achieved a 16th-place finish.

2009 Biathlon World Championships

Despite several respectable performances in the World Cup, Fak's performance at the Biathlon World Championships 2009 came as a huge surprise. In the opening sprint race Fak improved his career best performance by two more places by finishing 14th. He couldn't improve on that performance in the pursuit falling back to 25th place. The big surprise came in the 20 kilometres individual race where Fak won the bronze medal. A perfect score in the final range would have brought Fak a gold medal, however after one miss Fak had to battle very hard for at least some medal and in the end beat Simon Fourcade by less than a second to win the bronze. Thus Jakov Fak won Croatia their first-ever World Championship medal in biathlon.

2010 Winter Olympics

Jakov Fak was the flag-bearer for Croatia at the opening ceremony of the 2010 Winter Olympics.

After his success in the World Championships, the expectations were high, but Fak's World Cup race performances in the 2009–10 season were substandard. He managed to win his first points in the World Cup only on 23 January 2010, with a 24th place in Antholz, and was by that time largely forgotten by the public. At the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Fak once again created a sensation by winning the bronze medal in the 10 km sprint.

Switch of Citizenship

In July 2010 it was announced in the Slovenian Press that Fak would represent Slovenia in international competition. On 19 November the switch to the Slovenian Biatlethe team was officially announced and Fak received his Slovenian passport on 24 November, enabling him to compete for Slovenia.

Career threatening injury

At the world cup races in the US in 2011 which were held in freezing temperatures Jakov Fak suffered 3rd degree frostbite to his trigger finger. It was feared his finger may have to be amputated which would certainly have ended his career as a biathlete. Jakov and his coaches decided to pull out of the Biathlon World Championships 2011 in Russia to focus on recovering from his injury and saving his finger.

2012 Biathlon World Championships

After missing the 2011 World Championship due to the injury, Fak entered the 2012 World Championship as a member of Slovenian team. He won two medals, a silver in the mixed relay (together with Andreja Mali, Teja Gregorin and Klemen Bauer).

Although Slovenia crossed the finish line as first, 8.2 seconds in front of Norway, the jury awarded bonus seconds for the Scandinavians because one target did not go down despite their last runner Ole Einar Bjørndalen hit it and therefore had to take an additional penalty loop, which put them ahead of Slovenia into the first place. A couple of days later, Fak won the gold medal at the 20 km individual, thus winning the first gold medal for Slovenia at World Championships.

All results are sourced from the International Biathlon Union.

Olympic Games

1 medal (1 bronze)

Event	Individual	Sprint	Pursuit	Mass start	Relay	Mixed relay
2010 Vancouver	51st	Bronze	25th	9th	—	N/A
2014 Sochi	32nd	10th	31st	4th	6th	—

World Championships

5 medals (2 gold, 1 silver, 2 bronze)

Event	Individual	Sprint	Pursuit	Mass start	Relay	Mixed relay
2007 Antholz-Anterselva	93rd	78th	—	—	—	—
2008 Östersund	DNS	69th	—	—	—	—
2009 Pyeongchang	Bronze	14th	25th	19th	—	—
2012 Ruhpolding	Gold	11th	8th	—	—	Silver
2013 Nové Město	20th	Bronze	6th	19th	13th	5th
2015 Kontiolahti	10th	14th	8th	Gold	8th	15th
2016 Holmenkollen	6th	39th	5th	7th	-	13th

Individual victories

8 victories (1 In, 3 Sp, 2 Pu, 2 MS)

Season	Date	Location	Discipline	Level
2011–12 1 victory (1 In)	6 March 2012	Ruhpolding	20 km individual	Biathlon World Championships
2012–13 2 victories (1 Sp, 1 Pu)	8 December 2012	Hochfilzen	12.5 km pursuit	Biathlon World Cup
	13 December 2012	Pokljuka	10 km sprint	Biathlon World Cup
2013–14 1 victory (1 Sp)	20 March 2014	Oslo Holmenkollen	10 km sprint	Biathlon World Cup
2014–15 4 victories (1 Sp, 1 Pu, 2 MS)	7 February 2015	Nové Město	10 km sprint	Biathlon World Cup
	8 February 2015	Nové Město	12.5 km pursuit	Biathlon World Cup
	15 March 2015	Kontiolahti	15 km mass start	Biathlon World Championships
	22 March 2015	Khanty-Mansiysk	15 km mass start	Biathlon World Cup