How poor was the shooting on the third day of biathlon World Junior Championships in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic? In two races on Tuesday – the youth men’s and women’s individual – only a single athlete, Pavel Hancharou of Belarus, shot clean for the four stages of the race. He was rewarded with a 48-second victory in the 12.5 k race and his first World Juniors gold medal. Second-place Steffen Bartscher of Germany was so...
When American biathlete Kelly Kjorlien arrived in the Czech Republic for IBU Youth/Junior World Championships, she was confident – but she also came down with a cough. Has that slowed her down so far? No, not at all. After finishing 27th in Saturday’s youth women’s 6 k sprint, Kjorlien told FasterSkier that she was excited going into the pursuit, because shooting was her “strong point” and there were four shooting stages in which to best...
While all of the medalists from Saturday’s youth and junior men’s sprints repeated on the podium in Sunday’s pursuits, there was still plenty of excitement on the second day of World Youth and Junior Biathlon Championships in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic. In the junior men’s 12.5 k pursuit, Germany’s Tom Barth, who started with bib one and a 16-second advantage over teammate Johannes Kuhn, had to fight just to stay on the podium after missing...
The single most dominating performance on the first day of Biathlon World Youth and Junior Championships came in the second race on Saturday, the junior women’s 7.5 k sprint. Dorothea Wierer of Italy shot clean to win the race by over a minute. It wasn’t an entirely surprising result: Wierer has contested every Junior Worlds series since 2007, and won a gold medal in Ruhpolding in 2008 and one in Canmore in 2009. And of...
After a tough first day of competition at the World Youth and Junior Biathlon Championships in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic on Saturday, the American and Canadian men will be on the offensive in Sunday’s pursuit. With the top 60 finishers from today’s sprint races qualifying to move on, the North American teams – which notched just two top-30 performances – will have plenty of pursuing to do. “Overall the Canadian team didn’t have a stellar...
When the World Youth and Junior Biathlon Championships kick off in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic on Saturday, both the U.S. and Canadian teams will have high hopes. How high? In 2010 in Torsby, Sweden, Canadian Rose-Marie Cote won a bronze medal in the youth 10 k individual. In 2009 in Canmore, Canada, American Grace Boutot won silver in the same event, and Canadian Yolaine Oddou was one spot behind her. That was a banner year...
It’s not as if the U.S. men’s biathlon team hasn’t shown its potential this year: Lowell Bailey led the beginning of the last relay before missing too many shots to maintain his position, and Bailey has had a number of top-20 finishes in individual races, while Tim Burke has two top-20’s and Leif Nordgren shot clean to finish 35th in the very first World Cup race of the season. But still, the biathlon world was...
While the once-dominant Norwegian men are in a slump right now, their teammate Tora Berger is just getting started. With an exhilarating mass start win in Antholz, Italy on Sunday – which came down to the final hundred meters but at the same time was a foregone conclusion at least a kilometer earlier – Berger collected her fourth victory in as many individual races, after winning Friday’s sprint by almost 30 seconds as well as...
In the final shooting stage of Saturday’s mass start World Cup in Antholz, Italy, Martin Fourcade of France and Bjorn Ferry of Sweden went shot-for-shot for four bullets, each dropping all the targets. But while Fourcade quickly hit the fifth target, Ferry hesitated, waiting for the perfect shot. He kept waiting and waiting… and missed. While Ferry headed to the penalty loop, Daniel Mesotitsch of Austria and Anton Shipulin of Russia shot clean and embarked...
While there’s a full schedule of World Cup racing scheduled in Antholz, Italy this weekend, Friday’s sprint might very well have been the last individual race the U.S. women had a chance to contest in Europe before World Championships. With a relay on Saturday and a mass start, capped at thirty athletes, on Sunday, and then the entire World Cup circuit picking up and heading to the U.S. for a few weeks in February, the...
In Antholz, Italy on Thursday, Lowell Bailey of the United States was one shot out of the top five and just two seconds away from his first World Cup top-10. As it was, he had the tenth-fastest ski time of the day, the second-fastest shooting time, two penalties, and finished 12th overall. It was the top American result of the season so far. “It was a great race for me,” Bailey told FasterSkier in an...
When the small town of Ruhpolding, Germany, bid to host biathlon’s 2012 World Championships, they knew they had their work cut out for them. “Preparations for the World Champs 2012 start now,” said Mayor Claus Pichler in August 2008 when Ruhpolding won the bid. “I got plenty of feedback from the delegates at the IBU Congress.” And they have been busy ever since, completely renovating and reconfiguring the area’s stadium as well as giving the...
Laura Spector led he U.S. women with a 41st-place finish, while Rosanna Crawford of Canada finished the first World Cup pursuit of her career.
Ruhpolding, Germany, has been both kind and cruel to Olympic gold medalist Bjorn Ferry of Sweden. On one hand, the summer before his Olympic victory, he crashed while rollerskiing at the venue. The impact broke his collarbone and he had to have surgery and give up a period of training. But on the other, Ruhpolding is his second home. “I have trained here three times every year for the past ten years, so I have...
When U.S. biathletes left Altenberg, Germany after the pursuit race on Saturday, they were saying goodbye not only to the venue, but to the entire IBU Cup circuit. While the U.S. Biathlon Association is supporting the World Cup team for the rest of the year, no more Continental Cup races will be funded. Luckily, the team had plenty of satisfying results while in Europe, so the trip ended on a positive note. “I’m proud of...
So far this season, three Norwegian men have dominated the World Cup biathlon circuit, taking wins when it suits them and not always playing nicely together. 22-year-old Tarjei Boe currently sits atop the overall World Cup rankings, followed closely by teammate Emil Hegle Svendsen. Veteran Ole Einar Bjorndalen, who has won 92 World Cups in his career but only one this year, is third, giving the Norwegians a clean sweep of the standings halfway through...
After last week’s success at the IBU Cup races in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic, U.S. biathlete and 2010 Olympian Haley Johnson was promoted to the World Cup. You might think that sending the top finisher off to Rupholding would slow down the American women racing on biathlon’s second-most prestigious circuit. But you’d be wrong. Susan Dunklee, Tracy Barnes, and Annelies Cook – who all missed qualifying for the Olympics last year – didn’t need Johnson...
To say that it was raining in Rupholding, Germany, on Thursday would be an understatement. “It was pouring rain, perhaps the worst rain I’ve ever skied in, winter or summer,” said U.S. biathlete Sara Studebaker. “It was tough out there… today was all about fighting through the conditions.” For most of the women’s World Cup field, it was a tough fight as the tracks slowed to a cement-like consistency and the downhills became rutted and...
As the SuperTour heads to Lake Placid, the ski community can learn a lot if it just takes a minute to look around. Two-time winter Olympic venue? Check. A love of sports bordering on the insane? Check. More snow than Rumford? Check. But one of the best lessons might be about giving back to the community. Olympic biathlete Haley Johnson, who was born and raised in the Lake Placid area, returned to her hometown after...
Emil Hegle Svendsen of Norway hasn’t always been the most gracious competitor. After Sunday’s mass start race in Oberhof, Germany, he told the media that he was “shocked” about how fast his teammate Tarjei Boe had become. And after the season-opening World Cups in Ostersund, Sweden, he bragged that he was “in an attacking position all of the time. I feel unstoppable, really.” Since that claim, Svendsen has indeed been stoppable, but things changed today...