Snow Woes Continue as First-Ever Biathlon World Cup Weekend in France Is Canceled, Moved to Austria
Chelsea LittleDecember 5, 2011
HomeCategory
Biathlon
Coverage of elite Biathlon racing and news – from the junior level to the World Cup.
Berger Jets to Pursuit Victory, Leaving a Fading Neuner Fighting for the Podium
Chelsea LittleDecember 4, 2011
Sunday’s 10 k pursuit in Ostersund, Sweden was set up to be a barnburner from the moment the previous day’s sprint ended. With Olympic and World Champions Tora Berger and Magdalena Neuner separated by just 0.2 seconds and last year’s overall World Cup winner Kaisa Makarainen lurking 15 seconds behind, there was no doubt that things would get exciting. Germany’s Neuner and Norway’s Berger skied the first lap together, a study in contrasting styles. Berger’s...
At the start of Sunday’s World Cup men’s pursuit, there was one man out in front: Carl Johan Bergman of Sweden. After picking up the win in Friday’s sprint in Ostersund, Swedene, Bergman had a seven-second advantage over the rest of the field. But as Friday’s victory was just the second of his career, the big question was how long the 33-year-old would be able to hang onto the lead. The answer, it turned out,...
Neuner Edges Berger By 0.2 Seconds in Ostersund Sprint, Setting Up Exciting Pursuit
Chelsea LittleDecember 3, 2011
Today in Ostersund, Sweden, two women returned to the spots they’re used to occupying on the World Cup biathlon results sheet. For Germany’s Magdalena Neuner, that spot was at the top. The 24-year-old won her 25th World Cup after placing third in a wind-dominated individual race earlier this week. For any other champion, an occasional bad day is standard. But Neuner is so good that seeing her finish over a minute and a half behind...
After finishing the 10 k World Cup sprint in Ostersund, Sweden on Friday, Lowell Bailey didn’t have to be chatty. He only needed a few words to describe how his race had gone. “It was a great race for me,” Bailey wrote in the opening of an e-mail to FasterSkier. That might be an understatement. The American placed fifth, the best finish of his career; he was less than ten seconds off the podium. Every...
Big Wins, and Winds, Are the Thing In Ostersund As Domracheva Takes Minute-Plus Victory
Chelsea LittleDecember 1, 2011
Perhaps never before have the world’s best biathletes’ dreams of perfection been dashed so quickly at the beginning of a season. Over the last two days in Ostersund, Sweden, each one of the world’s top shooters has missed at least one shot. Usually, there’s just a few races like this in a season. This year, both the men’s and women’s World Cup openers have featured incredibly gusty, unpredictable winds. Even without shooting clean, a few...
Bailey Ninth, Hakkinen and Leguellec Top-Twenty in World Cup Biathlon Openers
Chelsea LittleNovember 30, 2011
One by one, last year’s heroes succumbed to errors over the course of the opening biathlon World Cup race in Ostersund, Sweden on Wednesday. Norwegians Tarjei Boe and Emil Hegle Svendsen, wearing the yellow and red bibs of as the previous overall and discipline leaders, only made it four kilometers before the mistakes began. Racing near the beginning of the field in the interval-start competition, each missed two shots in their first of four shooting...
While U.S. and Canadian skiers have been competing at FIS and World Cup races for several weeks now, the American biathletes waited until Sunday to kick off their season in an IBU Cup sprint. The race in Ostersund, Sweden, was actually the second of the weekend, but the U.S. team sat out of Saturday’s race. While the men were lucky to have skipped the windy conditions that shook up the result sheet in the opener,...
Not Quite Winter in Sweden
SusanDNovember 26, 2011
A month after the rest of the GRP left for Finland, I finally found myself on a plane getting ready to start my biathlon race season. A week ago, I arrived in Ostersund, Sweden for US Biathlon’s first on-snow camp of the winter. With temperatures in the 40s (Farenheit), rain pouring down, and [...]
It’s a question that seems to come up every year: how fast, exactly, are biathletes? Skiers imagine that their shooting cousins couldn’t possibly be as fast since they train differently, while biathletes maintain that they would do just fine on the cross country World Cup, thank you very much. Over the years, there have been plenty of opportunities to answer that question. Norwegian biathlete Lars Berger won three gold medals at cross country World Championships...
Team Canada wrapped up its World Cup selection trials in Canmore on Tuesday with a pair of mass start races, which were won by Megan Imrie and Nathan Smith. With barely any snow in Scandinavia, the team was lucky to be at home in Canmore, where there has been skiing thanks to “Frozen Thunder,” a snow-saving operation. The team was racing to select two women and one man to join prequalified racers Imrie, LP Leguellec,...
Interview: Bjørndalen Says “Nordic Skiing Is Terribly Boring, It Can’t Even Compare With Biathlon”
Chelsea LittleNovember 15, 2011
This interview originally appeared in
Canmore’s Aidan Millar might be the only Canadian biathlete headed to the Youth Olympic Games who doesn’t have international racing experience, but that doesn’t mean that he’s unprepared for the world stage. For one thing, training in Canmore has meant that he can keep an eye on the competition: Canadian teammates Danielle Vrielink and Stuart Harden are also members of different clubs based out of the 1988 Olympic venue. The plethora of talented youngsters makes...
Anchorage has long been home to many of the country’s best nordic skiers. With elite teams like APU, Alaska Winter Stars, the University of Alaska Anchorage, several strong high school programs, and a thriving recreational and masters race scene, skiers couldn’t ask for a more supportive community. But biathletes? That was another story. “I started biathlon in 2003, back when the Kincaid [shooting] range was at its old location,” 2011 World Junior Championships team member...
Youth Olympic Games Presents: Danielle Vrielink
Chelsea LittleOctober 31, 2011
(Note: This is the fourth in a series of interviews with athletes who will be competing at the first-ever winter Youth Olympic Games in Innsbruck, Austria this winter. The second with Anna Kubek, the third with Aleksandra Zakrzewska, all U.S. biathletes.) 2011 was a big year for Canadian biathlete Danielle Vrielink. Perhaps the most obvious accomplishment for the Calgary native was a trip to the World Youth Championships in the Czech Republic, her first international...
Wasatch Mountain High
SusanDOctober 27, 2011
The end of the Utah camp ended on a high note for me. First of all, I’m going to Sweden! The Utah rollerski races, along with the Jericho races back in August, served as qualifiers for the first international races of the year. I saved my best race for the last qualifier [...]
Altitude and Sunshine
SusanDOctober 18, 2011
It’s October, which means I’m training in Utah’s Heber Valley for our biathlon team’s annual fall altitude camp. Every day so far has been warm, sunny and beautiful on the valley floor. The surrounding Wasatch mountains are capped with fresh snow; a promising reminder of the skiing soon to come. Solider [...]
Altitude and Sunshine
SusanDOctober 18, 2011
It’s October, which means I’m training in Utah’s Heber Valley for our biathlon team’s annual fall altitude camp. Every day so far has been warm, sunny and beautiful on the valley floor. The surrounding Wasatch mountains are capped with fresh snow; a promising reminder of the skiing soon to come. Solider [...]