Martin Fourcade has mono and Emil Hegle Svendsen lacks motivation. Will new superstars break through this season? The men's World Cup field has been heating it up this summer with a YouTube shooting challenge, showing that they are just as on-target as ever.
Retirements were expected after an Olympic season - but the women's biathlon field will be shaken up even more, as several top competitors are taking the season off for babies or injuries. Plus, Darya Domracheva has switched her coach and Ukraine stars face a funding crisis. All the updates inside - the World Cup is on in less than two months!
“You know we do other workouts,” Tim Burke says with a laugh more than halfway up the 4,867-foot Whiteface Mountain. Minutes before, the U.S. biathlete completed Tuesday's big effort in 13 minutes, 21 seconds, finishing about 1,300 feet higher than he started for a new record in the hill climb named after him.
U.S. Biathlon's Max Cobb also chaired the IBU Technical Committee for the past several years - and he just passed rule changes at the IBU Congress that include a system-wide qualification points system and added Wild Card entries to major events. "People voted in favor of a more fair, open, and sporting system – I was really gratified," Cobb said.
In her second year of biathlon, Clare Egan is a member of U.S. Biathlon's development group and already seeing strides this season. In August, she placed third at North American Rollerski Championships for her best-ever biathlon result. "My skiing’s just going to keep getting better ... and with the shooting, I have to just put in the time," she says.
James Upham had a good run in Sochi: his Paralympic skiers won three medals - the first by U.S. women in 20 years - and before that at the Olympics Susan Dunklee, a college skier he had recruited to be a biathlete, turned in the best performance ever by a U.S. woman. Now he's returning to his home of Maine as an assistant coach at Bates College.
Emma Lunder placed 30th in her World Cup debut last season. The Canadian biathlete has since gained funding, training partners, and motivation: "Anytime I'm doing a really brutal workout, I just think to myself, if you can get through this, you're one step closer to racing in Pokljuka again!"
Max Durtschi left cross-country ski racing in 2009 for a professional career in cycling. Now that he's retired, Durtschi has his sights set on a new frontier: Biathlon.
Lowell Bailey went 2 for 2 on the weekend in Jericho, and two different U.S. women edged Canada's Rosanna Crawford for victories at the North American Rollerski Championships at the Ethan Allen Firing Range.
Up for voting at the IBU Congress in September will be proposals for how to deal with mid-race cancellations, whether to amend the penalty in youth individual races, and whether age limits are appropriate at Open European Championships - as well as the creation of an entirely new junior racing circuit.
When Nicole De Yong stepped down from the UAA coaching staff, head coach Andrew Kastning wanted to hire another woman - but female coaches aren't easy to come by. Luckily, 2010 and 2014 Olympian Sara Studebaker had just moved to town. "I’m really excited to be here," she told FasterSkier.
With another World Cup crystal globe in hand, Finnish biathlete Kaisa Mäkäräinen, 31, is gearing up for another season and World Championships at home in Kontiolahti. It hasn't been easy: she was sick for two months from May through June.
Convicted in arranging the attempted murder of a regional governor in 2000, Alexander Tikhonov is never dull. One of the best biathletes of all time, he hopes to return to the international spotlight by becoming IBU President. Canada's Jim Carrabre is also taking on Anders Besseberg, who has held the position since 1993.
Despite being handed a two-year ban at age 33, Germany's Evi Sachenbacher-Stehle isn't throwing in the towel. Rather, she's seeking a three-month ban instead so she can repair her image and retire on a high note.
Following the final week of training in Finland and three days of rollerski races at the coveted Blink Festival in Norway, U.S. Biathlon coach Jonne Kähkönen gives an across-the-pond update from his native Finland.
Biathlon in Bozeman was booming in the 1980s but in the last two decades, the sport has declined in the mountain town as cross country skiing popularity has grown. However, a group of community members is trying to bring biathlon back to Bozeman with the formation of the Bridger Biathlon Club, and they are off to a good start.
The U.S. Biathlon Women's A-team has been spending the last two weeks soaking up Finnish life and studying the 2015 IBU World Championships course in Kontiolahti with reigning World Cup champion (and local hero) Kaisa Mäkäräinen.
With two biathlon gold medals under his belt from Sochi, France's Martin Fourcade is setting his sights on competing in both skiing and biathlon World Championships in 2015. It's not an easy team to join: the French men took bronze in the 4 x 10 k relay in Sochi. So Fourcade is joining them for training camps.
Evi Sachenbacher-Stehle had three of her nine supplements - recommended by an experienced nutritionist - tested for banned substances. She read the ingredient labels carefully and googled their names with the phrase "doping". But the IBU rejected the idea of accidental ingestion and slapped her with the same 2-year ban that a Russian using EPO received on the same day. Is that fair?
The International Biathlon Union has finally announced the verdict for Irina Starykh of Russia: a two-year ban beginning on December 23, 2013, the date samples were collected which eventually tested positive for recombinant erythropoetin. Starykh claims that the substance must have been in a drug she injected to improve her skin, but this seems unlikely.