U.S. Biathlon Nationals might not actually feature all the best biathletes in the country, but so far it has proved one thing: the team selected to compete in Europe is really, really fast. Saturday didn’t seem auspicious for anyone, with rain blanketing the West Yellowstone course and every biathlete winding up soggy. But for the second time in as many races, the two World Championship team members who decided to compete at U.S. Nationals took...
On the second day of Canadian Biathlon Nationals in Valcartier, Quebec, one thing looked exactly the same: Rosanna Crawford and Marc-André Bédard finished atop the results sheet. This time, the field was faced with 7.5 and 10 k sprints, with each competitor facing a prone and then a standing stage. In the men’s race, Bédard raced to a six and a half second victory over Scott Gow of Alberta, despite having three penalties to Gow’s...
Both the U.S. and Canada had high hopes and lots of opportunities in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, but for the men competing in the 12.5 k pursuit Saturday, most of those possibilities didn’t materialize. For the U.S., Tim Burke started with bib number four after a season-best finish in the sprint on Friday. He missed a shot in the first stage, and then one in each of the next two, and hovered around tenth position. But after...
Kilometer after kilometer, Martin Foucade of France and Arnd Peiffer of Germany skied on and on, unable to break one another on the trails. Starting today’s 12.5 k World Cup pursuit just five seconds apart, the pair were initially trailed by Sweden’s Fredrik Lindstrom, who finished third in Friday’s sprint. But after just one loop on the Khantiy-Mansiysk trails, Lindstrom missed a shot and lost his spot with the leaders. From then on, it was...
It’s not that Darya Domracheva hasn’t been fast before. No, that’s not what makes her form in the last several weeks so impressive. She’s always been fast: the 25-year-old Belorussian biathlete has won eight races and picked up 27 more podiums, including Olympic bronze, in the past few seasons. But in many of those victories, Domracheva has won by sheer force of will, digging in to the intense head-to-head competition offered up by the World...
Canada’s Zina Kocher took steps to overcome a solid yet frustrating World Championships series by placing ninth in the last World Cup sprint of the season, which was held in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia on Friday. The result tied her best of the season. Coming off a six-race series at World Championships in Ruhpolding, Germany, Kocher said she actually felt great on Friday. “I had no idea how i would feel this week,” she wrote in an...
The world’s top biathletes recently competed in six races in eleven days at World Championships in Ruhpolding, Germany, but as exhausting as that may have been, their season isn’t over yet. The racers hopped on a chartered plane and headed for Siberia – home of the Russian venue Khanty-Mansiysk – to contest three more races over the extended weekend. For American Tim Burke, the last World Cup series wasn’t simply something to check off a...
I like to describe biathlon as an emotional rollercoaster. For athletes, the highs are very intense and the lows can feel devastating as we seek to have the “perfect race.” I rarely come close. Many different pieces must come together on the same day. I lucked out on a special day in [...]
Fresh off of World Championships appearances in Ruhpolding, Germany, U.S. national team members Leif Nordgren and Annelies Cook won the 10 and 7.5 k sprints at U.S. Biathlon Championships in West Yellowstone, Montana, on Thursday. While most of the rest of the World Championships team continued on to Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, for the final weekend of World Cup racing, Cook and Nordgren headed home for a different kind of racing – which Nordgren said was actually...
After spending literally only a few days in North America since arriving home from biathlon World Championships in Ruhpolding, Germany, Marc-André Bédard wasn’t overly confident in himself going into Canadian Championships at the Myriam Bédard Cener in Valcartier, Quebec. “I have only just returned from World Championships and I didn’t much know what to expect with the time change and my fatigue,” he wrote in an e-mail to friends, media, and sponsors. “But it seems...
On Sunday, IBU Championships wrapped up in Ruhpolding, Germany, after eleven days of exciting racing that saw both dominating performances from overall World Cup leaders and refreshing victories and medals from lesser-known athletes. The big winners at the championships were Martin Fourcade of France and Tora Berger of Norway; Fourcade picked up three individual gold medals in the sprint, pursuit, and mass start, along with silver in the men’s relay. That was almost matched by...
RUHPOLDING, Germany – While biathlon doesn’t draw huge crowds in the U.S., Germany is another story. As in Norway and Russia, biathlon is the most successful winter sport; over the course of the 10 weekends of World Cup and Championship racing in this season, 450,000 spectators will have attended competitions. And nowhere are they more vocal than in Germany, home of Oberhof and Ruhpolding, the two most popular venues on the circuit (during Germany’s partition,...
RUHPOLDING, Germany – When U.S. women’s coach Jonne Kahkonen showed up on the shooting range for Saturday’s women’s 4 x 6 kilometer relay, he looked a bit…. different than the last time he’d been there. The previously blonde Finn, who is in his second year coaching the U.S. women, was sporting a dark purplish pink hue atop his head, which turned out to match well with the red and blue U.S. team gear. His new...
RUHPOLDING, Germany – With rain finally falling in this small Bavarian town this morning, it would have been easy to stay at home, watching a television broadcast of today’s mass start races from safe inside a dry living room. But that thought never crossed the minds of the 30,000 fans who packed the Chiemgau arena today, just as they have for every other competition of the 2012 IBU World Championships. And they weren’t disappointed. In...
RUHPOLDING, Germany – Martin Fourcade is a glutton for punishment. At every chance he got, the Frenchman would push the pace over the top of the last steep hill during today’s World Championship 15 k mass start. As the rain gently fell on the Chiemgau Arena and competitors looked more and more bedraggled, Fourcade attacked again and again, jump-skating up hill after hill, and dragging himself back from penalties that may have come from pushing...
RUHPOLDING, Germany – With only Susan Dunklee qualified for Sunday’s mass start race, Saturday’s 4 x 6 k relay was the last race of World Championships for the rest of the U.S. women. They wanted to end the Championships on a high note, but rather than set a tough results-based goal, their approach was more in line with the temporary pink hair dye they’d all used for the occasion: the Americans wanted to have fun,...
RUHPOLDING, Germany – After a week where not many team members were satisfied with their performances, the Canadian women’s squad crafted a new strategy for the 4 x 6 kilometer relay on Saturday. In most cases, Megan Imrie and Zina Kocher have skied the first two legs. But not this time: for World Championships, the women wanted to mix things up. “We just decided to try switching it because usually Megan and Megan and Yolaine...
RUHPOLDING, Germany – Right from the start of the 4 x 6 k relay here at World Championships, the German women made it clear that they were going to give their fans a show – and, most likely, the gold medal that they so vocally craved. Tina Bachmann, a lithe, six-foot-tall 25-year-old, put the field on notice when she turned in the fastest first-leg time, making up for the single spare round she used to...
RUHPOLDING, Germany – The U.S. men’s relay team had high hopes coming into Friday’s 4 x 7.5 kilometer relay. At last year’s World Championships in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, the team turned in one of the most surprising relay performances of the week, placing sixth after losing a photo finish with Italy just 38 seconds behind the victorious team from Norway. The Americans had been seeded 14th and not considered a threat in the race. This year,...
RUHPOLDING, Germany – Going into today’s men’s 4 x 7.5 k relay, the field was wide open. France, with double gold medalist Martin Fourcade and silver medalist brother Simon Fourcade, was a prerace favorite. But last year’s top two teams, Norway and Russia, hadn’t dominated in the individual races, and neither had host country Germany. Meanwhile, Sweden’s Carl Johan Bergman had won two medals, and three Swedes had finished in the top ten. Slovenia and...