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Andreas Birnbacher

After Blocking Birnbacher Into Finishing Lanes, Fourcade Picks Up Victory Number 16, Moving into Fifth on All-Time List

ÖSTERSUND, Sweden – After placing a disappointing tenth in yesterday’s 10 k sprint, Martin Fourcade of France was seeking redemption – and to stay in the overall World Cup leaders bib that he had earned after winning Wednesday’s individual race. Last year’s overall champion missed only a single one of his twenty shots in today’s 12.5 k pursuit, which put him on a trajectory towards the front. The penalty came in the second standing stage,...

Fourcade Makes It Three Golds in Four Tries, Is King of World Championships After Hard-Fought Mass Start Victory

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...

Svendsen Again Uses Explosive Sprint at the Finish, Takes Mass Start Victory for Home Crowd in Oslo

When Germany’s Andreas Birnbacher left the shooting range for one more three-kilometer loop in Sunday’s mass start race, there was little doubt that he’d be beaten to the finish line. Yes, Birnbacher was leading. And yes, he was wearing the red bib denoting that he led the discipline standings on the World Cup circuit. There was just one problem: Emil Hegle Svendsen of Norway was right on his shoulder. Just one day earlier, Svendsen had...

Frustrated in Mass Start, American Men Regroup and Prepare for Relay

Both Tim Burke and Lowell Bailey had their moments in Saturday’s mass start race in Antholz-Anterselva, Italy. After two shooting stages, Burke was in the top ten. After three, Bailey was 11th. But in the end, after four stages and 15 k of skiing, the Americans ended up in a race with each other – for 20th place. “It was an up and down race for me today,” Bailey wrote in an e-mail to FasterSkier....

In Front of 28,000-Strong Home Crowd, Birnbacher Takes Mass Start Victory for Germany

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...

Snowy Trails and Packed Fields Make a Barnburner in Hochfilzen; Le Guellec, Hakkinen Top-Ten in Pursuit

There were a lot of unusual things about the World Cup biathlon races in Hochfilzen, Austria on Saturday. First, there was the inch of snow that fell during the men’s 12.5 k pursuit. Then, there was the fact that the field was incredibly compressed thanks to some strange weather in the original sprint race. “The snow storm that stopped [mid-race on Thursday] had a bigger effect than I expected,” U.S. biathlete Jay Hakkinen told FasterSkier....

Burke, Johnson, and Studebaker Finish 21st, 22nd, and 23rd in Oslo Sprints

Despite coming off of a successful World Championships in which they led the count with eight medals (including two relay golds), the Norwegian team was unable to keep their hot streak going when the World Cup landed on home turf in Oslo. At Holmenkollen Stadium on Thursday, the best the team could muster was a second-place finish by Tora Berger in the women’s 7.5 k sprint. She finished over 30 seconds behind Magdalena Neuner of...