Ostersund, Sweden, February 12. The US Biathlon Team today released their team song and video, “Fire Them Down.â€
The song’s title refers to hitting targets in a biathlon competition, with all of the images in the video of US Biathletes in World Cup and World Championships’ competitions in Europe.
US Biathlete Lowell Bailey (Lake Placid, NY) wrote the lyrics. He performs the vocals while also playing the guitar in the song. The 26-year old Bailey is a talented musician proficient with both the guitar and mandolin. When home between training camps and competitions, he plays a local band in upstate New York. Even with all of the equipment a world-class biathlete must carry during the season, Bailey always has his guitar with him. Nine other US biathletes and US Biathlon Coach Per Nilsson provided the background vocals for the song.
The idea for the song came from Coach Nilsson. He mentioned to a friend, Ola Rylander that Lowell Bailey was a good musician and it would be fun to get him into his recording studio, Cleensound Studios in Solleftea when the team came for a training camp. He was very enthusiastic, thinking it would be a fun project. By the time the US team arrived in Solleftea for a pre-World Championships training camp in late January, Rylander and colleague, Daniel Persson had written and produced the music tracks. Bailey commented on how he came up with the unique lyrics, “One day during the training camp, I was sick in bed, and could not train. Therefore, I just sat there all day and worked on the lyrics. Later we went to the studio on our off day (from training) with the whole team, added my guitar tracks, and the vocals to the original tracks, and recorded the final version.â€
The video montage for the song was created by Emmy Award winning sports producer Kent Gordis, who is in Ostersund working on video productions for the US Biathlon Association. Still photographs in the video are by the official photographer for the US Biathlon Association, Christian Manzoni of Nordicfocus Photo Agency.
The song has received several airings here in Sweden on local radio as well as on a television newscast in Sundsvall, Sweden.
The video and song follows.
The “Fire Them Down†video will be shown to the public on the video screen in the stadium tomorrow prior to the start of the Women’s 15K Individual competition here. Over 20,000 spectators are expected for the evening competition.
Live streaming video coverage of the Biathlon World Championships as well as Biathlon World Cup competitions for the remainder of the season, and archived highlights, are available by clicking the athlete photo at the top of the news column at http://www.usbiathlon.org .
Source: USBiathlon
