RUHPOLDING, Germany – After winning a World Junior title in 1997, Jay Hakkinen has gone on to compete in four different Olympic Games and notch nine individual World Cup top-tens, including one this year. But despite Hakkinen’s long contribution to the U.S. team, in past years he has been more visible in Europe than in the sport in his home country. In 2008 he moved to Oberhof, Germany, when he and his girlfriend Kristin Orlameunder...
JERICHO, Vt. – If one thing is constant in summer biathlon races here at the Ethan Allen Firing Range, it’s the sight of Lanny and Tracy Barnes near the top of the results sheets. Since 2009, only one of the sisters, Tracy, has been off the podium – and it was just once. Lanny has won the majority of the races. And the 2012 edition of the North American Rollerski Biathlon Championships was no different....
JERICHO, Vermont – With the entire U.S. senior field and several top Canadians donning bibs this weekend, there was plenty of excitement at the Ethan Allen Firing Range in Jericho, Vermont. In the senior divisions of the North American Rollerski Biathlon Championships, the men’s races were characterized by close finishes, with Tim Burke outsprinting JP Le Guellec for the pursuit title, Ethan Dreissigacker edging Lowell Bailey by one second for fourth, and Sara Studebaker besting...
JERICHO, Vermont – Just how excited was Jean-Philippe Le Guellec to make the drive from Quebec, Canada, down to Vermont this weekend for the North American Rollerski Biathlon Championships? “Let me put it this way,” he said. “I was supposed to go on a fishing trip this weekend and I ended up cancelling on my friends because I was so happy that Tim [Burke] and Lowell [Bailey] were here. These guys are in the top...
At its highest level, biathlon is an extremely lucrative sport. After her first full year on the World Cup circuit, now-retired German star Magdalena Neuner reportedly earned 1.3 million Euros by endorsing products – and that was in 2007, before her several overall World Cup titles. By contrast, in 2010, after several seasons of World Cup racing, Petter Northug was worth just over a million dollars in total. But regardless of the top athletes’ success...
HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE – When Laura Spector left the East and drove to Bozeman, Montana, this spring, she knew she was headed for school, but she wasn’t sure what was going to happen after that. The 2010 Olympian and national team biathlete had finished up her first full year of training and racing since graduating from Dartmouth College, and it wasn’t what she had been hoping for. After starting the early-season World Cups she struggled,...
Canadian biathlete Brendan Green has had back problems before, but things came to a head in Oslo in February when he herniated a disc warming up for a World Cup race. It was a bittersweet weekend: Green finished 10th in the sprint, 13th in the pursuit, and then 9th in the mass start – the last with the herniated disc – but then faced excruciating pain that necessitated a harrowing trip back to Canada and...
Note: This is the second of two pieces based on an interview with Biathlon Canada’s High Performance Director, Chris Lindsay, from earlier this spring.
Like a lot of national teams, the U.S. biathlon squad has training camps at different facilities around the country throughout the year. And after a stint at the Camp Ethan Allen Training Site in Jericho, Vermont, this week, they needed to get home. Unlike most national teams, they solved the logistical challenge by biking there – all the way to the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid, New York. “It’s funny because it sounds kind...
Note: This is the first of two pieces based on an interview with Biathlon Canada’s High Performance Director, Chris Lindsay, from earlier this spring. Any way you look at it, 2012 was a good year for Canadian biathlon on the World Cup. Jean-Philippe Le Guellec, Brendan Green, and Zina Kocher all notched multiple top-tens. While Green continued an ascent that began with top-20 finishes in 2010 and 2011, for the older two athletes, the results...
Note: This is the fifth preview in a quick-and-dirty series on U.S. elite teams. We asked coaches to send their 2012/2013 rosters and tell us what’s new for the coming season. We will be publishing additional reports over the next few weeks. Teams are presented in no particular order. Team: Craftsbury Green Racing Project (GRP) Coaches: Pepa Miloucheva (head coach, 15th season), Jeremy Nellis (junior coach) Senior roster: Ida Sargent (U.S. Ski Team), Susan Dunklee...
Our recent series on biathletes facing the question of when and whether to go to college (parts two, and
Our recent series on biathletes facing the question of when and whether to go to college (parts two, and Development Team alumnus who had risen to the “B” squad but was left off of this year’s national team. Goessling went straight from high school in Minnesota to MWSC, where he has trained for the last two years. In total, he’s made five trips to World Youth and Junior Championships, but the 2012 edition was actually...
Our recent series on biathletes facing the question of when and whether to go to college (parts two, and expressed frustration that star athlete Laura Spector was returning to school for the summer after a disappointing season and did not seem to plan on joining the national team program in Lake Placid. It was not an unreasonable sentiment: without actually seeing an athlete, a coach’s job is certainly much harder. And as a European (Kahkonen...
Our recent series on biathletes facing the question of when and whether to go to college (parts two, and first part of our series, we focused on several elite junior biathletes who, bucking the conventions of the early- and mid-2000’s, decided to go to college before returning – often extremely successfully – to biathlon. Without a single exception, the five athletes said that today’s juniors should not rule college out as a means of facilitating...
Note: This is the last piece in a three-part series following several groups of biathletes as they negotiate the college question. part two looked at USBA’s 2007-2010 Development Team. In November, 2011, Casey Smith was named Junior Biathlete of the Year for 2011 by the United States Biathlon Association (USBA). In a European country, that might mean a pat on the back from a coach at practice, perhaps an honorary celebration thrown by an athlete’s...
Note: This is the second piece in a three-part series following several groups of biathletes as they negotiate the college question.
BEND, Ore. – Jean-Philippe Le Guellec was riding high in 2010 when he finished sixth in the sprint, 11th in the pursuit, and 13th in the individual at the Vancouver Olympics. The Canadian biathlete – then 24 – was motivated and aiming for his first Word Cup podium. The 2011 season didn’t go quite as expected; he picked up just four top-20 results and late in the year received a diagnosis of mononucleosis, which explained...
The Maine Winter Sports Center (MWSC) officially grew by two on Thursday, adding U.S. Ski Team veteran Kris Freeman and US Biathlete Annelies Cook to its roster. They join another national team member, biathlete Russell Currier, and three others on the Caribou-based club’s Olympic development team. While the MWSC’s competitive program took off in earnest 11 years ago and produced several Olympic biathletes and cross-country Olympian Ben Koons, the recent signings mean more good news...
BEND, Oregon – Biathlon Canada Head Coach Matthias Ahrens, a native of Germany, had never been to Bend until this month. But now that he’s seen what the town has to offer, he anticipates being back. “It’s perfect,” he told FasterSkier as his athletes did an interval workout on Wednesday. “It’s so nice that now we have winter conditions – every day it has been perfect conditions for skiing, plus you can go down and...