After a frustrating individual race on Thursday, in which the top finish was 44th, the U.S. men’s biathlon team was left with two choices: wallow, or rebound for a great day Saturday. Luckily, the men in red, white and blue aren’t prone to feeling sorry for themselves. They picked up and moved on, notching top results in today’s 10 k World Cup sprint in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic. They were led by a man who...
A day after Alessandro Pittin became the first Italian to win a nordic combined World Cup event, the Olympic bronze medalist repeated his success, edging Jason Lamy Chappuis of France on Saturday in Chaux-Neuve, France. After ranking 22nd of 54 athletes in the 118-meter large hill jump, Pittin went on to catch the leaders in the 10 k Gundersen start and pulled out the victory in a photo finish with Lamy Chappuis and Fabian Riessle...
MILAN, Italy – Inside or out was the question of the day, and the right choice in the men’s final was in. Eirik Brandsdal (NOR) won his first race of the season, and just the second of his career when he held the inside line into the homestretch in the Milan freestyle sprint. Germany’s Josef Wenzl was just behind in second, with Teodor Peterson (SWE) riding an aggressive lane change in the final 200 meters...
Kikkan Randall might have been the only North American to appear in the final of today’s sprint in Milan, Italy, but several other women joined her in the heats, with pretty much across-the-board success; two had personal-best finishes. For Canada, both Perianne Jones and Chandra Crawford skied their way into the semifinals. After the heats were drawn, it seemed that the team had bad luck; both women were placed in heat five, making it unlikely...
The narrow, winding sprint course through Milan’s Parco Sempione was not good to the North American men on Saturday. While three of them made the heats, not a single one advanced to the semifinals, done in by the narrow course which left little room to maneuver. “It was really tight from the gun and with such a monotonous course you’re not going to get a lot of shifting around,” said American Simi Hamilton, who finished...
MILAN, Italy – Eat your heart out Justyna Kowalczyk, there is a new sheriff in town — or in this case, sheriffs, and they are hanging out in central Milan. Kowalczyk, the ironwoman of cross-country skiing, who rarely misses a race, is back in Poland, recovering from the Tour de Ski, and preparing for the next phase of World Cup racing, while Ida Ingemarsdotter (SWE) and Kikkan Randall (USA) are duking it out in the...
So far this season, Sadie Bjornsen has been on a quest to make the heats in a World Cup sprint. And while her silver medal with Kikkan Randall in the team sprint in Dusseldorf, Germany was more than she had expected, she still hasn’t crossed her original goal off the list. Today in Milan, Italy, Bjornsen came the closest she’s ever been to the quarterfinals, finishing 31st in the qualifier. That put her just 0.14...
MILAN, Italy – The sun is shining, flowers are blooming, runners circle the Parco Sempione in shorts, on benches couples stare lovingly into each others eyes—just another Saturday morning in the center of Milan. Or is it? Among these scenes of urban tranquility, in the shadow of the looming Castello Sforzesco, the fastest skiers in the world engage in ritual battle, competing for a one of 30 spots in the sprint heats. The World Cup...
Under an hour until race time in Milan. The sun is shining, fans are streaming in, and there is definitely snow to ski on.
This year’s World Cup biathlon schedule has presented a confusing dichotomy: it seems like races are either characterized by a lack or snow, or too much of it – sometimes at the same venue, just days apart. While panning television shots of athletes racing along thin white ribbons in the woods has become all too common, so too have the fuzzy, gray screens where cameras struggle to pick skiers out through heavy snowfall. “We’ve had...
MILAN, Italy – Benvenuti a Milano, the fashion capital of the world! No, FasterSkier has not expanded coverage to the catwalk (though you have to wonder how those French suits would fare)—the conclusion of the Tour de Ski does not mean a break on the World Cup—racing continues this weekend in the heart of Milan, Italy with a city sprint weekend a la Dusseldorf. In this in-between year of no World Championships, and no Olympics,...
If there’s one race in biathlon where shooting really, really matters, it’s probably the individual format. The distances are the longest on the circuit – 15 k for women and 20 k for men – but the penalties for missed shots are so harsh that even the added length makes it difficult to compensate for errors. Instead of hitting the penalty loop, which usually takes 20 to 25 seconds, racers see a minute added to...
By this time last year, Finland’s Kaisa Makarainen had won two World Cups, podiumed in five more, and sat atop the rankings on the World Cup. The 2011-12 season is shaping up differently, not just for Makarainen, but for the other women as well. On Wednesday Makarainen became the fifth athlete – each from a different country – to win a World Cup. The 22-second victory, which came despite having one more penalty than second-place...
A couple of days ago, Canadian biathlete Megan Imrie couldn’t tell which way was up. Luckily, she’s feeling better – and up was where she landed on Wednesday, near the top of the results sheet in a World Cup individual race in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic. Despite a case of vertigo, Imrie finished a career-best 20th place. Athletes have to deal with a lot of variables when they’re preparing for competitions, but vertigo – a...
During Stage 7 of the Tour de Ski in Toblach, Italy, spectators standing at just the right spot on the race course could have witnessed something surprising enough to make them choke on their cappuccinos: two Swedish fans screaming at the top of their lungs for Kikkan Randall, the American cross-country ski racer. The scene made little sense, until one realized that the fans were the parents of Emil Jönsson, the star Swedish sprinter and...
As with most stage races these days, the Tour de Ski included some handicap start pursuits. Generally, the athletes will start in a staggered fashion based upon their time back in the overall standings, and the first person to the finish line wins the stage. This creates some very unusual incentives for the athletes, depending [...] Related posts:
In the first competition of this week’s six-race series in Oberhof, Germany, Olga Vilukhina anchored the Russian women’s relay team to a victory, the nation’s fourth in a row on biathlon’s World Cup circuit. But in the last competition, Sunday’s 15 k mass start, a different team became dominant. Germany’s Andreas Birnbacher shot 20 for 20 and skied to a 24-second win, annihilating the rest of the 30-man field. In the process, he gave his...
I didn’t do nearly as much writing about the Tour as I would have liked, but here are some graphs summarizing the way things shook out. Men Here’s a bird’s eye view of the men’s Tour, measured using seconds behind the median skier: These sorts of bump charts are nice, as they can allow you [...] Related posts:
VAL DI FIEMME, Italy – By the time most athletes arrived at the top of the Alpe Cermis on Sunday, in the final stage of the Tour de Ski, they were ready for a nap. Or a massage. Or a beer. Or all of the above. Not Kikkan Randall and Liz Stephen, though. No fewer than eight hours after crossing the finish line here, they were already competing in another race: a team sprint on...
VAL DI FIEMME, Italy – With the conclusion of the 2012 Tour de Ski, it may not make sense to mention bridesmaids to Devon Kershaw (CAN). Kershaw may hold a World Championship gold in the team sprint, but after a fourth in the Olympic 50k in 2010, and now a fourth in the Tour de Ski, he is getting a little tired of being runner up in the individual events. “I had dreams of being...