When Germany’s Andreas Birnbacher left the shooting range for one more three-kilometer loop in Sunday’s mass start race, there was little doubt that he’d be beaten to the finish line. Yes, Birnbacher was leading. And yes, he was wearing the red bib denoting that he led the discipline standings on the World Cup circuit. There was just one problem: Emil Hegle Svendsen of Norway was right on his shoulder. Just one day earlier, Svendsen had...
At the start of Sunday 15 k skiathlon in Rybinsk, Russia, all eyes were on two women: Marit Bjørgen, the Norwegian who had dominated the 10 k mass start on Saturday and taken over the lead in the World Cup rankings, and Justyna Kowalczyk, the Pole who had won the Tour de Ski and held the World Cup lead until Bjørgen took it over. “It has turned out to be a lot of Marit and...
After what was perhaps the best day ever for North American women on biathlon’s World Cup circuit, U.S. racer Sara Studebaker was offered a unique way to approach the coming pursuit. “There’s a bunch of you all hungry for more,” Studebaker’s brother Luke told her. Then he delved into new territory. “[You are] like a pack of North American grey wolves, once endangered to the point of extinction but now flourishing under revamped federal policies....
It’s hard to say which biathlete faced more pressure before the start of Saturday’s 12.5 k pursuit in Oslo, Norway: Evgeniy Garanichev of Russia, or the country’s own Emil Hegle Svendsen. 23-year-old Garanichev was coming off the first win of his career in Thursday’s sprint. After seeing just one weekend of World Cup action during the 2011 season, Garanichev started the first period of World Cups this year, but was then sent back to the...
In December, Norwegian broadcaster NRK reported that an unnamed member of the Norwegian national team had been flagged for low body weight and that coaches and staff were hoping to help the female athlete gain weight and return to better health. Almost two months later, it seems likely that the woman in question was Kristin Størmer Steira, who was benched for the Rybinsk races this weekend due to low body weight. Norwegian daily newspaper Dagbladet...
After a gray winter that seemed to always be either snowless or stormy, the world’s best biathletes were thrilled to head to Antholz, Italy two weeks ago, where the sun finally shone in the Alps. The North Americans, it seems, are even happier to be in Oslo, Norway, where the World Cup kicked back into action with a pair of sprint races on Thursday. “There is a good vibe here in Oslo,” U.S. biathlete Annelies...
In the summer of 2010, Isabelle Knaute found herself in an unusual position. Originally from Germany and a veteran of the Swiss national team staff, the physical therapist was hired by the Russians to work with a small group of skiers. “I don’t think there’s ever been a foreign staff member for the Russian team,” star athlete Alexander Legkov told Russian website skirun.ru at the time. Knaute, who took five years of Russian in school,...
Tuesday’s individual races in Osrblie, Slovakia, left the U.S. team at Under-26 Open European Championships one chance to grab the results they’d been hoping for all week. So could they do it? “The individual was another decent race, but not what I wanted,” Russell Currier told FasterSkier in an e-mail. “I’m a little disappointed, but there’s still plenty of room for hope left in the season.” Currier finished 21st in the 20 k, four-stage race, his...
After a successful but unspectacular start to the Under-26 Open European Championships in Osrblie, Slovakia, the American team kicked things up a notch in their second outing. In Sunday’s pursuit, not a single one of the six U.S. starters lost a place from their sprint ranking, and one – Leif Nordgren – rocketed up 24 places over 12.5 kilometers and four shooting stages. “It was nice to finally have a good race,” said Nordgren, the...
The U.S. biathlon team could be forgiven for having high expectations going into this year’s Under-26/Open European Championships in Osrblie, Slovakia. Last year, Leif Nordgren entered just one race at the event, and didn’t even finish. But a few weeks later, he notched three top-thirty finishes at senior World Championships. In that same U26 series in Ridnaun, Italy, Russell Currier repeatedly finished in the 20s and 30s. But just two weeks ago, he bettered those...
Thursday night, the Slovakian town of Osrblie kicked off the 2012 Open European Championships of biathlon with an elaborate ceremony featuring athletes from 32 different countries. On Friday, racers flooded past on the trails and hundreds of shots were fired on the range, by the best field the venue has hosted since its last World Cup in 2005. What are the Open European Championships? The event, which lasts a week, actually serves several purposes. It’s...
At the front of the race, Sunday’s World Cup men’s relay in Antholz-Anterselva was not especially exciting. Although the time gaps weren’t huge, there were few lead changes: after the first handoff, France took the lead and never looked back, remaining there for the rest of the race. After that point, Germany sat in second, Austria in third, and Russia in fourth: at each exchange, despite the intervening 7.5 kilometers, the scene was the same....
Mistakes can be a powerful motivator. In Sunday’s 12.5 k mass start in Antholz, Italy, the two biathletes with the fastest course times were the ones who really, desperately wanted to make up for errors in the very first shooting stage of the day. In that prone stage, both and Darya Domracheva of Belarus and Kaisa Makarainen of Finland – currently ranked second and third in the world, respectively – missed two shots. In a...
Both Tim Burke and Lowell Bailey had their moments in Saturday’s mass start race in Antholz-Anterselva, Italy. After two shooting stages, Burke was in the top ten. After three, Bailey was 11th. But in the end, after four stages and 15 k of skiing, the Americans ended up in a race with each other – for 20th place. “It was an up and down race for me today,” Bailey wrote in an e-mail to FasterSkier....
It’s a testament to Darya Domracheva’s speed that even with a 30-second lead with two kilometers to go, French relay anchor Marie Dorin Habert – the 11th-ranked biathlete on the World Cup and no slouch herself – was terrified of being caught. “I was very worried!” Dorin exclaimed in a post-race press conference. “Darya is better than me at skiing.” Luckily for France, Dorin is a better shot than the Belorussian star. After three legs...
The Swedish biathlon team has had to adjust to several surprise announcements in the last year. In the spring star coach Wolfgang Pichler decided to retire. In the fall, Mattias Nilsson Full results
After last week’s performances in by the men’s team, highlighted by Russell Currier’s sixth-place finish in the 10 k sprint during just his second World Cup start of the season, the U.S. women’s biathlon team needed a feel-good story of their own to stay in the spotlight. In Thursday’s 7.5 k sprint in Antholz-Anterselva, Italy, they did just that as World Cup rookie Susan Dunklee raced to her first top-20 result. The 17th-place finish was...
When American and Canadian skiers start consistently winning domestic races, they face a choice: do they stay on their home circuits, or head to Europe? And if a trip across the Atlantic is in the cards, where will they race? With limited World Cup quotas and a myriad of regional race circuits, skiers have to not only choose which of the many races they might attend, but also generally organize and fund the trips themselves....
Of all the nordic disciplines, biathlon is perhaps the one where small errors make the biggest difference. A centimeter here, a millimeter there – missing a target by that much, or little, can have drastic impacts on an athlete’s results. On Sunday, however, Magdalena Neuner didn’t make a small error. She made what is perhaps the worse mistake in biathlon: cross-firing. Coming into the third shooting stage of the 10 k pursuit with a sizeable...
With the U.S. men’s team notching their best day ever in Saturday’s sprint, hopes were high that the team could place athletes in the top ten or even the top five in today’s pursuit. But although the Americans were frequently close, they couldn’t pull it off. After starting with bib 6, Russell Currier missed a shot in the first prone stage which dropped him to 12th; and while Tim Burke, starting with bib 11, was...